July 06, 2016

Preparing for an interview doesn’t begin with practicing your elevator speech in front of the mirror or picking out your most professional outfit. It actually starts before you even apply for a job. Recruiters read through hundreds of resumes, so the first step is getting you noticed via your resume, especially in a competitive job market such as information technology (IT). Your resume needs to capture the recruiter’s attention, but the process doesn’t end there. This week we’ll touch on past blogs, as well as current articles, to help strategize a plan to nail that next interview.

Revamp Your Resume

It’s often said that values and positive attitude are what employers really look for in a candidate. They want to hire someone who can lead their team to success. Your resume’s job is to explain your industry experience and communicate who you are to the reader. So, how can you reflect this effectively on paper?

CIO.com tells the story of how a Senior Security Systems Administrator modified his resume to better represent his skillset, experience, and personality. He consulted with a technology career coach and they began reorganizing his resume. Throughout the process, he learned to fight the urge to include all of his experience details and how to objectively critique his own resume. These are two great ways to adjust your resume as it takes much self-discipline to evaluate your own work. Check here for other tips on how to enhance your resume to read more like a story.

And, as York helps match IT professionals with IT jobs, we have a few of our own suggestions on how to make your resume stand out:

• Be Transparent from the Start – Make sure that you mention the most important and appropriate qualifications that the job description detailed.
• Showcase Your Measurable Success – Instead of just listing your responsibilities, detail your accomplishments within the role that were measurable.
• Tailor Your Resume to the Position – It can be difficult to tailor your resume to every single job application, but take some time to think about the roles for which you’re applying and create one or two easy to tweak templates that cater to those roles that you can update if necessary.

Interview Tips

Interviews themselves can differ depending on the field of work which means that preparing for an IT interview is different than prepping for a nursing interview. Below are some great interview tips from other recruiters in the tech arena.

• Avoid feeling overwhelmed during your job search. It’s important to remember to stay positive as you don’t want that negative mindset to follow you into the interview room.
• Don’t prep for an interview like you’re studying for a college exam. Instead of memorizing your answers to popular interview questions, show your critical thinking skills and explain to the interviewer that you know how to solve problems.
• Make sure you interview with companies that aren’t your number one choice. This will give you more opportunity to prepare for the interview you really want.
• Know your background like the back of your hand. Everything from your skillset, project successes, failure (and what you learned from it!), and how your experience has prepared you for the job for which you’re interviewing.
• If you start to feel nervous, don’t hesitate to let the interviewer know.
• Dress for the occasion. If you’re interviewing with a start-up, you may want to dress on the casual-side. On the other hand, if you’re interviewing at a corporation’s headquarters, then consider dressing up.

If you’re interested in learning more behind each tip, click here to read the original posting.

What other tips have helped you during an interview?

Posted By: Jaclyn Roman

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