Job Interview Tips

Sorry to hear that, but don't fret. It's holiday season and things can progress slowly.

I had a telephone interview with someone a while back. As telephone skills are an important part of my role we use this as a pre interview. They called back within a week to demand to know why they hadn't been called in for a full interview. We were going to call them in for a follow up interview but these things take time to arrange with the bosses. I was very unimpressed with their telephone manner when they called up, failed to introduce themselves properly, bordering on rude. Needless to say we're still looking for someone and a big red cross was put through their name.

If as a recruiting company you've had direct contact with a candidate then it's bad form to not at least thank them for applying. As a recruiter you should weed out the vast majority from the CVs and I don't think in this day & age a reply is required to every application. Anyone who has had communication via email telephone or interview in person deserves at least a sorry email anything less and it's likely to be a company that doesn't give a toss about the people who work for it.

Another person I was in email contact with I asked her to call me for this pre-interview conversation, or if she preferred I could call her. Her response was "Call me anytime" tomorrow. I called at 10am (I think it's bad form to call a residential number before 10am even though I've been working for 2 hours). This had obviously woken her, she wasn't with it, everything was "fine" no questions, one word answers another big cross.

It never fails to surprise me how unenthusiastic some people are when you're offering them the chance of a job. The amount of people that just never reply after you contact them is incredible. Especially those form the jobcentre who are obviously just applying to satisfy their minimum requirements.

 

Doesn't surprise me. A lot of interviews I went for never got back to me. Makes me laugh really - "We believe developing people is important, and is key to the business. We pride ourselves in improving people etc" - Yet they won't even give feedback. Poor professionalism in my book. Even a mail shot saying "Sorry, we had a better candidate we've taken on" is better than nothing.

 

So I'm intent upon working in the travel industry and have had several interviews, all have which been unsuccessful. I feel I've performed quite well in the interview, but as one company highlighted yesterday, my lack of sales experience has let me down. That same company said that they really liked me however, and perhaps I should consider working in recruitment for a year or so, to gain some experience of selling over the phone etc. before reapplying to said travel company again.

Does anyone here work in recruitment, and can you share your experiences? What key skills have you learnt so far?

 

I'd be quite interested to know myself even though I now have a job in something quite different, because I have tried applying for jobs in recruitment and never even got to the interview stage or received any meaningful feedback, and I was prepared to start from the beginning as a trainee or "graduate" despite being much older than your average graduate, with it being a complete change of career.

Don't want to dampen your hopes, but it seems if you don't have any sales experience you're going to find it difficult to break into the recruitment industry. At the least they seem to want some record of non-academic achievement, or evidence of an outgoing personality, like captaining a football/rugby team, leading a team of volunteers or walking expedition, public speaking (chairing a debating society, promoting charity work), demonstrated ability to sell/promote stuff etc. You could take a course in recruitment to find out what it's about if nothing else, if you can find any going for cheap at the mo.

 

I applied to several different recruitment companies yesterday afternoon via linkedin and this morning, one rang me back and after having a conversation about the industry and my motivations, offered me a place on their assessment day in 2 weeks time. I did not expect them to ring be back so quickly!

In terms of sales experience, I don't have any over the phone but do have experience of working in high St retail, which I think is linked.

I have some extra curricular uni experience, and perhaps my years of teaching abroad after graduating helped me. I guess we'll see eh!

Edit: thanks for the recruitment course suggestion, I'll keep that in mind

 

given the absence of sales experience the best thing to do is spin the teaching element. how you found your private students, negotiate prices, keep them happy, upsell to the companies they worked for. but even that's a stretch

 

I started this thread about 18 months ago ahead of my first job interview out of my undergraduate degree...

Start my first full time employment in the industry next month after two years of freelance work! This thread was definitely massive help so thanks guys

 

Congratulations. What will your role be?

 

Watford manager 2017/18