Candidate Tips

If you prepare like a champ, you won't look like a chump. So these are the things you should take to your interview:

• Take a pen
• Take your glasses (both long and short distance for tests or presentations)
• Take a note book (something smart and new)
• Take a list of questions
• Take a copy of your CV

You might not need all of these but it would be very handy if you had them with you, just in case.

CV Writing

Avoid Adobe and PDF CVs. Rich Text Format will do the job if you don't own a copy of Word.

Recruiters need to process your CV and most recruitment software can't process PDFs.

So you end up not getting loaded on the recruiter's database, or all the formatting from your CV is removed and it looks dreadful.

There are plenty of jobs out there with stable, cash rich companies who have full order books and tons of work for you.  Don’t believe the media hype; the ERP, CRM and Accounting Softwaremarket is still strong and there is a demand for good people. At the moment, you can have your pick of the good jobs – and with decent money, as clients compete for the best people, so don’t sit still in a bad job, get out there and find yourself a good one.

Please use Word format for your CV, PDF documents are much more difficult to process. It doesn’t matter how many pages your CV is as long as the last job has great detail. 90% of people get their next job on experience gained in their last / current job, so you need to go into detail about what you are doing currently:

How many projects; size / scope of the projects; technology that you have used on the project; what was your involvement?

If you fill in the gaps on your CV you will get more interviews; if you believe that you will be asked these questions instead at interview, you are mistaken. Fill out the gaps, so that the client can imagine putting you on a project from day one.

And please - no weird type faces. It is proven that people can read Times New Roman faster than anything else because we learn to read books that are written in it. So your CV is more easily read in Times New Roman. More easily read = more interviews.

Dress sharp for interviews. They say that you only get one chance to make a first impression, so dress up.

Even if you are being interviewed at a company with a casual dress code, you should be wearing a suit and looking as professional as you possibly can. I have had clients moan about the following things:

Brown suit, dirty shoes, nasal hair, carrying a newspaper, comedy tie...

You need to be ready to smile. When the interviewer greets you they will be looking at your face first, so a smile is vital.

Then you need to think about the first thing you are going to say:
"Good to see you"
"Great to meet you"
"Thanks for taking the time to see me"

When we get nervous our body assumes we are either going to fight or flee; it increases the blood flow to the muscles and opens our lungs and throat so we breathe faster, and the blood is sent to the muscles. We sweat and our voice goes squeaky. It is this process that makes our “minds go blank”.
 
To counter this you need to remind yourself to be calm, slow down your breathing, by taking deep breaths, open your palms and give your body a chance to slow down.
 
I find leaning against something cold, like a wall, with my hands flat against the cold surface helps.
 
Understanding why you feel that way is the most helpful thing.

Have a sensible email address when applying for jobs. I laugh at some of the email addresses I see, but are they helping you to find a new job or hindering you? It is very simple to set up an extra name on your hotmail account so that you don’t need to use your funny one; you can still keep your old email address and run them in parallel.

A shared email address makes you look lacking in independence, for instance jonny&lisa@

A super-work focused one makes you look too serious, i.e. Jim_sage_job@

But some of my personal favourites are:

Psycho_bunny@
Lazysod@
Shagnasty@

My advice is that you use your name and a number such as: tomwhite35@ (not your date of birth).