CVs, tips and suggestions

Over the past few years I've had to do a lot of interviews. The current round, this past Monday, drove me nuts. By far the worst session I've had to sit through. I've also been lucky that I've had some excellent role models on how to interview people. Recently I've worked with someone who had done a lot contract worker interviews, and previously I worked with someone who was very good at putting people at their ease (they pulled me in to be the grumpy voice of reason, no idea why...).

What pissed me off the most was one applicant who had an excellently written CV, so we gave them an interview. they barely comprehended English, so obviously the CV was written by an agency. To make matters worse, the first question (the generic, why do you want this job opener), was answered well. But once we got on to job specific questions, we got answers that even sounded coached and generally had nothing to do with the question. No matter how many times we rephrased questions, we got nothing useful. It was a total waste of our time, and reflected very poorly on the applicant.

Also had some idiot who was basically a making up examples on the fly, and not relevant answers. Also talking too fast, with very little content behind the words - think radio DJ.

The role is targeted as an entry (ish) level one, so we weren't too nasty, knowing that for many of the applicants it was probably the first time they've written a CV and probably their first formal interview as well.
But even so you'd expect the following:
- dress well (one guy turned up in t-shirt and jeans)
- look interviewers in the eye (I was particularly looking for this as it's a customer facing role)
- address the (E)ssential aspects in the job description specifically in their application (it's why they are there FFS)
- keep your answers direct, and use personal pronouns
- don't hide things in your CV, put it in the covering letter

Generally the day left me a bit discouraged. We figured that most students wouldn't be looking for employment until later in the year when they are heading back. So we'll advertise again.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, two of them were OK and I could work with them, so we've put them on a reserve list. And one was excellent, exactly what I was looking for. Admittedly their application was good (not great), and if someone hadn't recommended them they wouldn't have got to the interview list (I'd dumped them in the longer shortlist).

If there's one thing doing all this has taught me over the years, is how to structure my own CV and covering letters. Given last time I was applying for jobs, I had 4 interviews from 7 applications (once the tier1 came through), I think it's working.

B