Hopefully by this time you have impressed your Interviewer with a good sense of your relevant Job skills. And perhaps you have developed a decent rapport with them as well. While many career counselors and Jobhunting experts suggest it is taboo to ask about pay, I think the point is over-dramatized. Any reasonable person would expect rate of pay, health benefits, and what comprises your workweek to be vitally important topics. To pointedly ignore them diminishes the honesty of your relationship with someone who may become your immediate supervisor and mentor at work.

Similarly, it is rude to walk into an Interview with the attitude that 'you're lucky to get me', and I'm not working for any less than X amount. But by the end of the Interview you should feel comfortable in asking questions like these:

Will this position provide a salary similar to my last position?

Do you foresee this Job involving significant amounts of overtime or work on weekends?

How will my work here be evaluated, and at what intervals?

How long have you worked here, and what position did you start with?

Does this firm focus on promoting from within?

If I excel at the tasks I'm given, where might I be within the company in five years?

There are no right and wrong answers here. It all depends on the personality of the Interviewer, and how you feel you are relating to them at the moment. It may be take several Interviews before you develop a knack for this, so discretion is probably the better part of valor. Interviewers have to sit through a lot of Employee wannabes blowing hot air (and saying all the 'right' things), so one way to stand out in their mind is by NOT playing the game by a strict set of rules. If you come across as too formulaic you may leave a bad taste in their mouth, or equally disastrous, no taste (or memory of you) at all.

-Mark Poppen

2nd Best

March 11, 1999

We get a lot of calls from recruiters here at IBN. This is not unusual, considering we do publishing and consulting for the spectrum that ranges from recruiters to Jobhunters, and human resource personnel to executive headhunters. We are a source of information, both online and off, for these groups.

What strikes me as odd, though, is that everyone seems to be looking for 'The Best Job Candidates', or the 'Best Employer'. The facts are this: If you want only the best, then you are bound to fail. Bill Gates' resume wouldn't have gotten him hired at McDonalds, let alone a decent paying Job. It's time everybody woke up and realized that (typically) the top ten percent of Employees in any field will end up at the top ten percent of the best places to work. The real work is in finding the next tier below 'the best' and seeing how we can fit in to their plans.

Most of our skills fall into the large area under the bell curve, rather than the tiny ends where the 3^rd standard deviates live. This may be a shocker, but your Job skills aren't really that important once you're hired. What matters is your attitude toward work, willingness to learn new skills, and your ability to get along with coworkers. Managers are deathly afraid that by hiring you they will upset the apple cart.

Think of your 'other' Job strengths, besides your specialized work abilities. Are you able to diffuse tense situations at work with a well-timed remark? Perhaps you are a mediator, allowing opposite sides to realize the benefits of their opponent's view. Most employers are desperate for team players, people who can brainstorm in a group one minute and go off on their own the next, requiring little or no supervision.

Odds are you are not the best person, at least on paper, for the Job you are applying for. It is worth reminding the Hiring Manager that there are other qualities that come into play on every Job other than pure technical ability. I'm sure your prospective Employer can recall a few bozos they hired that were sure-fire winners during the resume and Interview stage.

If you think that your resume or credentials don't stack up against your competing Job Candidates, all is not lost. Known references that someone in your target firm can vouch for can be a strong point in your favor. By the Interview stage you should be on a relatively level playing field, so anything that tilts the decision in your favor is important.

Now is the time to play your trump cards.

-Mark Poppen

Portfolios, Anyone?

March 09, 1999

No one really likes resumes.

You hate to write them, and feel (correctly) that they are one-dimensional misrepresentations of who you are and what you might be able to accomplish for an Employer. HR department heads hate them; they feel (correctly) that they are puffed up misrepresentations of Job candidate's abilities. It is clear to both parties that a face to face Interview is a much better way for them to understand each other's expectations.

Resumes are boring, long-winded fluff without much in the way of hard core substantiation. Their focus tends to be in the past, when what matters is what you can do for this company right now. Often they mislead the reader in two ways: they balloon small accomplishments into big ones (while trivializing or ignoring problem areas), and their writing doesn't reflect how the Job candidate speaks because someone else writes the resume.

Unfortunately, they are a necessary evil in the ongoing attempt to match Employees and Employers. Hiring Managers can screen through 100 or so resumes in the time it takes to do one interview, if done manually. The average amount of time a resumes is studied? About eight to fifteen seconds. An auto-screening program can easily sort thousands of resumes in a fraction of that time. So despite their flaws, resumes are here to stay.

Or are they? Some firms are shifting toward the use of portfolios to either replace or supplement resumes. Portfolios can be graphic content on disk, actual product that was produced, include pictures & graphs, etc. They can come a lot closer to fleshing out who you are, where your creative interests lie, and what skills you are bringing to the Job bargaining table. These content-driven 'super' resumes allow a company to get a better feel for the quality of your work, rather than just the number of years you put in at your previous place of Employment.

Some of the possible ingredients of a portfolio might be:

Listing of technical competencies

Executive Summary

Listing of Projects Completed & Why they are Important to This Employer.

Link to your Web Page detailing your accomplishments, goals, etc

Suggested Solution to one of the Problems your target firm faces

It's OK to try something a little different to get noticed. When your future Employer looks at your resume, portfolio, or you in the flesh, you want them to be as excited about the chance to hire you as you are to work there.

-Mark Poppen

Practical IQ

March 08, 1999

I receive Jobhunting horror stories by email every week. Though they may be painful to read, I sympathize with their plight - and I need to get them to stay abreast of the current Job market. Please let me know your successes and failures in Jobhunting! We are always willing to print excerpts from your experiences that can either shed light on a different approach that works in finding a Job, or that simply brings a smile to a discouraged Jobhunter. We all know how it gets, trudging from one rejection to the next. Email me at mark@interbiznet.com with your thoughts, comments, and stories.