Wondering About Your Job Application? The Best Way To Follow Up On Your Resume

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It is frustrating to invest the time and energy into applying for a job opportunity and not hear back about your application. If you want to know the status of your application and stay top of mind, you will need to follow up.

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Here's One Way To Make Everyone Happier At Work

• 2-minute read •
One of the most profound moments I’ve had was encountering a woman at a triathlon that I attended to cheer on a friend. The woman was alone and was cheering like there was no tomorrow. Not such an uncommon sight at a triathlon…but when I asked her who she was cheering for, I was amazed by her answer:

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The Right Way to Quit Your Job

After the stressful process of looking for a new job while you’re still employed, accepting an offer is a huge relief. At last, you’re free! You probably can’t wait to share your good fortune with the world and tell your boss where she can shove that evil assignment she gave you last week. You might think that since you’re leaving, you don’t have to worry what people think of you anymore. This is not the case. Unless you want to erase everything you’ve accomplished since you first accepted this job, your departure must be as strategic and deliberate as your arrival.

This starts with your resignation. Under no circumstances should you let on that you’re leaving before you have a signed agreement and official start date from your new employer. If you jump the gun and blab to everyone and your job offer falls through, your best case scenario is that you’ve got egg on your face. The worst case, of course, is that your boss is insulted enough to fire you. Here are some other suggestions for making a smooth exit:

Tell your supervisor first: you want him to hear the news from you, not from someone else in your department.

Give two weeks notice: stay for the full period unless the company requests that you leave sooner.

Be modest: don’t alienate your colleagues by bragging or chattering incessantly about your awesome new gig.

Don’t insult anyone or anything: whether it’s true or not, show that you regret leaving such wonderful people behind.

Stay on top of your responsibilities: remember that you’re accountable for your work until 5PM on your last day.

Continue to adhere to office protocol: you worked hard for that corporate persona, so leave them with a lasting impression of professionalism.

Review the employee handbook: understand what you’re entitled to regarding benefits and compensation for unused sick or vacation days.

Organize your files: make it easy for your colleagues to find materials so that they can transition your workload seamlessly and won’t need to call you at your new job.

Do a great job training your replacement: these people paid your salary for a year or more, you owe it to them to leave your job in good hands.

Don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you: this includes office supplies and work product that was not developed by you personally.

Many companies request that departing employees do exit interviews with HR. The person conducting the interview, who probably doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall, will usually expect you to divulge why you are leaving and how you feel about your experience with the company. When it comes to exit interviews, the general rule is: if you don’t have anything nice to say, lie. Stick to official business as much as possible, and if you must provide constructive criticism, proceed with tact and caution. While it may be tempting to use the meeting as a forum to spill your guts about the company’s difficult personalities and insufferable policies, don’t give in. Once you’ve made the decision to leave, airing your grievances won’t do you a drop of good and the risk of offending people is way too great.

The most important thing to remember when leaving a job is to fireproof your bridges. It’s a smaller world than you think and you never know when you’re going to need these people again. And who knows? Maybe you won’t even like your new job and will want to come back someday. At the very least, you want to be able to count on at least one person at the company to serve as a reference for the future. During your last few weeks, do everything you can to leave behind a squeaky clean reputation. Be conscientious and thorough as you’re wrapping up or transitioning projects. Even if you’re leaving because you can’t stand your department, act like a team player and keep your negativity to a minimum. If your colleagues take you out for lunch or throw you a going away party, congratulate yourself. It means you’ve handled your departure in exactly the right way.

Interviews: Remembering it’s a 2-way process

Round 1

Interviews: Remembering it’s a 2-way process

Many people new to the market see interviews only from their own point-of-view, e.g. they only prepare to answer questions, not to ask them. However, despite the pressure of the moment it is important to remember that it is a 2-way process.

They are interviewing you but do not forget you are also interviewing them.

Yes, you might want a job but do you really want this job? Is there a better opportunity somewhere else?

Do you really want to get this job and then spend time looking for something else, when if you had done your homework, properly in advance, you wouldn’t even have bothered to apply in the first place?

In addition, it is easy to have a good HR department who make everything sound wonderful, whilst all around is crumbling. So your interview questions to your potential employer are vital.

Don’t wing it, prepare them well in advance (if you can, memorise them) list and then prioritise them. Work out your plan of attack, how do you want to come across hard-hitting, thoughtful... …Just like your C.V. if you haven’t written and rewritten them at least 20 times they probably are not as good as they could and should be.

Just remember not to be intimidated. Yes they might be older than you. Yes they might be more senior than you, so what?

There are a multitude of questions that you can source from the net, some of them very good. So, go seek.

Empowerment clues to a great job!

The key to any good job (let’s do the pay, location argument later) is empowerment. You need to know, if you are going to take that job, that once you have found your feet, you will have the necessary “muscle” to make a difference.

So work out some key questions to test whether or not they really will give you the budget you need, the support staff necessary… …find out if your line-manager really does make the decisions that s/he is meant to, or are they just puppets with someone higher up pulling the strings.

Ask your potential line-manager

“Who was the last employee you wrote a letter of commendation for?”

It is a massively overlooked gesture, it only takes 5 minutes, it flatters the hell out of the person concerned and produces a nice warm feeling all round.

What’s more, people remember that gesture for a lifetime!

Unlike that bottle of German wine (I like my wine, why do want to insult me with cr*p), the box of chocolates (I don’t even like milk chocolate) pay bonus (what £500 for all that work, what a joke), we’ve all had so many that I bet you can’t even remember how much the last one was!

Better still if they can tell you, you know that you are in the right place.

The people clues to a company!

People are the key to any organisation. Your line-manager will be one of the biggest ingredients to your happiness or otherwise.

A good one and your on the way up, a waste of space and you will stay in the same position or worse, until you decide to leave. You need to find out if that person is organised or disorganised.

Organised = good and it means that that person is on-top-of-things, which means your working life will be proactive. It means that you will not spend your working life having to things at the 11^th hour and waste valuable time fighting a rear guard action.

So make sure that you have a few “tactfully” worded questions to ascertain how organised that person is.

Do you team build?

An easy way to spot a company which has very little people management skills (don’t be fooled by that 9001 ISO fluff, in every organisation that I’ve worked in it hasn’t made any difference, whatsoever) and, therefore, is a cr*p company to work for, is to ask about their team building programme.

You are talking about away days, time spent on all aspects (you do not mean the usual meetings and other fluff) your talking business + team + fun + individual career building programmes – things that help to bring people together and keep a team happy. Happy employees = more productive employees = a great place to work.

So just because your interview time is up, that’s only round 1.

Round 2

Most machines break when you thrown a spanner in!

I like to throw some spanners into the works and see if the well-oiled machine grinds to a halt. One of my favourites is “I would love to talk to a few people in the company, is that ok? Do you mind if I wander around?".

If they are slick they will already have people lined-up… that’s OK, talk to them. But over the years I’ve found that it’s the people on the ground floor that hold the secrets to an organisation – I’m talking about cleaners, janitors, porters… (forget security they are breed apart).

If you smoke step outside and hang around, there will always be someone there (a comrade-in-arms), strike up a casual conversation, start of gently “nice day, weather… type stuff”.

Once the conversation is flowing lead up to “wow the last time I was here was x years ago and it looks like things have certainly changed, what’s this place like now?”

They will tell you in exactly what they think; they are the type of people who see everything in black & white. If they say things are on the slide, you know that they really are!

The next one I like is useful when the company does not operate PRP or overtime bonuses “how do you encourage & reward a member of staff who performs exceptionally?” Their reply to this one tells you the type of company you are about to start work for.

Lame answer = lame company… Just make sure that you can qualify exceptionally in whatever context you are in.

Visual clues to a company!

Get a guided tour of all the buildings (unless your applying to a large corporation) or walk around on your own (if security let you). What does the place feel like and look like? Scruffy and neglected, poorly equipped… = a bad job.

Check out the local area, what are the demographics? High social deprivation = low quality admin and support = bad job (for UK job applicants you can find these stats on every local authority web site).

Ask yourself

• Do people look happy?

• Do people look busy?

• Do people look focused?

• Do people look unduly stressed?…

All these clues tell you about that company.

Media clues to a company!

Depending upon the size of the company the media can hold an insight into that company.

For example if we assume a large F.E. (further education) institution number of employees 2000+ upsets its employees by imposing a wage freeze or is trying to downsize a department, one of the easiest ways for employees to hit back is via the media.

A quick letter pointing out mal-practise in an area, poor working conditions, failing to adhere to correct health and safety procedures… … can quickly be picked up by the local media. OK, none of previous will interest the nationals but it will get local exposure.

If the local rag does not publish on-line, a quick trip to the local library a scouring through the backlog of publications will soon unearth any potential info. Yes you will get a denial of some sorts from the company in question but if you keep spotting articles, well there is no smoke without a fire!…

Current trends are clues to a company!

If you know and understand your market you can also spot the clues to whether or not a company is on the up, treading water or worse on the slide. It’s easy. Are they implementing current (and more to the point, well thought out) trends, ideas, technology… ?

No, then are they about to, in the near future?

No, oh dear, even if you are desperate are you sure that you even want to go for that interview? Well OK let’s make this one a practise session, that is if you need the practise!

Qualifications are a clue to a company!

Having worked in the F.E. & H.E. sectors for 10 years, I know the value of qualifications. They fall into 2 categories from a good educational institution they are worth having from a bad one they are a waste of space.

The problem is how does an employer know which is which? Hell, I can tell you how to get various qualifications by just turning up!

There is a massive difference between “degree level applicant…” and “must have a degree in…”. The former is elitist whilst the later makes perfect sense.

Give me experience any day of the week! So if you have the experience but not the right qualifications, don’t beat yourself up about it, there are people out there who think like me, you just have to find them.

Alternatively if having the right qualification is the only way you can get to where you want to be, what are you doing reading this? Get on with it.

Clues to the big con!

Location, location, location. I was born in London, I used to like working in London, well I used to. Until I woke up to what has to be one of the biggest cons going. Working in London is crap, it’s dirty, smelly, takes forever to get anywhere and NO ONE PAYS ENOUGH!

If you want a comparable job done -- pay me a comparable wage! If housing costs 3 * the national average + insurance blar, blar, blar.

Then you need to pay me at least 3 * as much, or else forget it. I do not need you, you need me, because I am good, I am really good and I really make a difference. Don’t try to give me some poxy living allowance I don’t want it. I want the real deal!

……………………………

OK I hope you understand the points I am trying to make. Don’t get suckered into the big is best philosophy make it work for you, not against you.

Think laterally at all times. Is it better to have a pay cut and potentially move sideways in order to have a better quality of life? Only you can answer that.

If nothing else, I hope that after reading this article you feel empowered and more positive about yourself.

5 Tips for Getting Your Way Without Authority

In today's team-based work world, success depends not only on the quality of your work but on your ability to get others to work with you. This is not always easy, especially when you need to enlist the cooperation of your boss, a peer, or even a potential customer.

"Everybody has to influence beyond their formal authority," said Steve Levin, an executive coach who teaches a course for leaders called "Powerful Conversations."

Experts offer five tips for persuading even when you don't have authority:

1. Know what's in it for you.

What is the larger purpose for asking your colleague to call a potential customer for you, or your boss to offer his support for your project?

Make sure you can answer, "For the sake of what?" about each request, Levin said. Is the goal to keep a key customer happy? To save the company money?

2. Know why you're asking.

You don't need to spell out an exact exchange each time you ask someone for help. But you do need to understand what the other person's goals are, and frame your request in a way that shows how that person will benefit.

If you ask a colleague to call one of your accounts, your colleague could say, "It's your customer -- why do I care?" And you need an answer, such as, "Retaining this customer will enhance our reputation in the marketplace, and that affects all of us," Levin said.

3. Tailor your request to your audience.

Some people are best persuaded with a lot of data; others respond better if you tie what you want to a big-picture goal.

"Communicate with the person the way they want to be communicated with," said Glenn Parker, a team-building consultant in Princeton, N.J. and author of "Team Players and Teamwork: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration."

4. Ask for a commitment.

Often, meetings with colleagues have "a lot of discussion and not a lot of clarity" about who is to do what, Parker said. If you're asking for help from people who don't work for you, you need to be especially careful that everyone understands who has committed to what.

Casually asking, "Can you pay extra attention to this client?" may get your colleague to say yes, but she may not be committed to doing anything differently, Levin said. A more precise request, such as, "Will you call this client before the end of the day?" is more likely to elicit a "meaningful yes."

And don't worry that a specific request will make it easy for the person to say no. "We actually want them to say no, if no is their answer," Levin said.

5. Be fearless.

Many people "give up before they try" to influence beyond their authority, Levin said. But don't assume that others won't listen. Instead, remember why you're asking: You want to help the company keep a customer, or implement an innovative cost-saving measure.

If you're asking for selfish reasons, you probably won't be successful anyway. But if you're asking "on behalf of something larger" than yourself, Levin said, "that's exactly what every leader wants people to do. That's called taking initiative."