Marathon

For my sins, I’m running the Berlin Marathon on the 20th of September (the day before my daughters’ 2nd birthday!). I’m raising money for CHASE (www.chase.org), a charity that supports life-limited children and their families. You can sponsor me by visiting: www.justgiving.com/marie-downes

 

We’ve been busy!

sorry for the lack of updates recently; we’ve been incredibly busy with recruiting but also moving to our new offices.

You can now find us at:

7 Birchin Lane
London EC3V 9BW.

I’ve taken a couple of photos of the new office. Enjoy.

Don't judge me!!

[caption id="attachment_113" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Our cool new reception area complete with Microsoft Surface"][/caption]

 

Don’t curb your enthusiasm

I just spoke with a very experienced and very sharp candidate regarding one of our Java vacancies. Whilst he did well in terms of demonstrating his considerable technical skills, I was seriously put off by his blase approach to the interview. When I speak with candidates, I work hard to convey enthusiasm, interest and energy. It’s a terrible shame when a candidate can’t reciprocate.
Don’t forget that we are not only looking for people with good technical skills. Excellent interpersonal skills are vital in the kind of work that we do. You must be able to interact with a variety of people and demonstrate knowledge, enthusiasm and interest to end users. Interviews are an opportunity to shine; make the most of them!!!

 

I tweet!

Not very well. I’m certainly not as interesting as Stephen Fry or say, John Mayer but still, I tweet! You can follow me as: Lab49Marie.

Twitter have just launched twitterjobsearch which aggregates the jobs postings on Twitter. I like the interactivity and immediacy of Twitter and so being able to tweet with those interested in your vacancies/company is pretty cool. We use gtalk for that too (Lab49Careers) but given that many work places block instant messaging tools, it might not work for all. Feel free to contact me on Twitter instead and I’ll do my best to respond to your message.

 

Ethics smethics

Not one of our clients I’m pleased to say

 

Don’t call us…….

The kind of candidates that Lab49 look for really are few and far between. Technically solid developers with client facing skills are not as available as they once were and so my job is alot harder!

The kicker for many internal recruiters is that we can no longer rely on job postings, internet searching and massaging our network in order to find candidates; we have to adopt a head-hunting approach. The main elements of a head-hunting approach are (simplified version!) targeting an organisation, identifying suitable candidates, contacting and piquing the interest of those candidates.

There are so many books and websites out there telling recruiters how to head-hunt; one article by Lou Adler suggests that the best thing to do is to get candidates to tell you about what they do before you tell them anything about the role that you have. My concern here is that I mostly call candidates at work and for the most part, they are unable to articulate much about what they do for fear of raising the suspicions of colleagues. I imagine that having someone on the end of the phone asking question after question can be a little embarrasing – all of those “Yes” and “No” responses may only sound suspicious to you but you never know!

The bottom line is that we want to contact candidates directly that perhaps aren’t actively searching for a new role but would be interested in learning more about what we do. What kind of approach would you favour from a head-hunter?

 

If you can’t beat ‘em – join ‘em!! Why Lab49 is a GREAT career move.

Okay – let’s think about your current employer:

Do you get the opportunity to work on a variety of challenging and complex projects?

Are you constantly stretched and challenged (to an appropriate level) by your role?

Do you get the opportunity to learn and work with new languages/platforms etc?

Do you work in a respectful environment?

Do you work for a company whose directors are super-techies and fully understand and appreciate what you are doing?

Do you work for a company where your knowledge and skill set is appreciated and we want to learn from you?

Do you work for a company who see you as a long term and fascinating opportunity?

Do you work for a company whose clients are amongst the most prestigious in the world in their field?

If you can’t answer yes to all of the above questions, you’re with the wrong company!! Lab49 offers all of the above and more. We’re a damn good employer with a great deal of opportunity for highly talented developers (.NET with Java/C++) – if you are an innovative developer who really needs to stretch his/her skills and work in a refreshing environment, drop me a line at: mgriffiths@lab49.com or visit www.lab49.com for more information.

 

Application Tips

Hi All,

I’ve blogged about the content of a CV on a previous post (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor) but wanted to include some of the basic tips for CV content. When considering the content of your CV, it can be overwhelming to think about what to include and exclude so I’d recommend the following as a structure for content:

In no particular order:

Name
Location
Contact Number/s
Email Address
Current employment details (including dates)
Previous employment details (chronological order)
Education and certifications
Hobbies and interests (including memberships to any career relevant groups)

There are many layouts that you can find on the web for your CV but most of all, it should reflect you and your personality. I really hate it when agencies mess around with candidate CV’s – more often than not, they will make mistakes whilst doing so.

The CV should be clear and free of typo’s and other errors. Get someone else to proof read it after you have finished as they will more likely be able to notice any mistakes. Please Please Please don’t refer to yourself in the 3rd person (eg. “Mr. Smith is a skilled negotiator”), it’s reads incredibly strangely – take ownership of your achievements – “I negotiated….”, “I sold……..”, it sounds so much more definite.

I’m not a huge fan of lengthy CV’s so think that about 2 or 3 pages is about right. You should include enough to interest the reader but leave yourself enough to talk about during interview.

One CV that I saw at a previous employer had me in stitches. He had certainly included all of the basic content but included a line that read something like: “Why do I want to be a Credit Controller? Because I love this sh*t!” If that wasn’t enough, he then stated that his favourite part of the day was “going home” (I am NOT making this up!). Included in hobbies and interests was a film critique – apparently I-Robot was “ace” but The Village was sh*t!

If you’ve received some good CV advice previously or have seen a particularly good or bad CV – please feel free to add a comment.

 

Friday Fun – Interview Do’s and Don’ts

I have spent 8 years as a recruiter and have had the pleasure of interviewing some amazing candidates. Interviews can certainly be nerve-wracking although I have always been aware and made candidates aware that it is a two-way process. Regardless, there have been candidates who have exhibited certain “interesting” behaviour in interviews that you should certainly consider a “don’t” should you be on the hunt for a new job!

1) Keep your hands where we can see them!!

There was the candidate whose CV looked just fantastic and my colleagues and I couldn’t wait to meet him. He turned up, looked well presented and appeared smart so off the interview went. Things started to go slightly awry when he started to “play” the pen top – distracting pipe kind of noises throughout the interview. However, the icing on this particular cake was that he seemed unable to stop touching himself (you know what I mean!!!) – how we managed to keep straight faces – I will never know!!

2) Breathe!!

I met a candidate who, when asked a question, went on for 15 minutes without pausing for breath. It’s pretty hard to interrupt someone without appearing rude but if your interviewers eyes start to glaze over – consider it time to pause!

3) Tell me about yourself.

It never makes a good impression if it takes you 10 minutes to think of an answer to the question, “Can you tell me about some of the highlights of your career – something that you are most proud of”.

4) Cleanliness is next to Godliness

It never, NEVER, makes a good impression if you come into an interview, shake your interviewers hands and then ask if you can then wash your hands!! Did you have something on your hands that you just “shared” with us or are we too disgusting for you?

5) Put the mouse back in the house….

Make sure your flies are zipped! Before you ask, someone else pointed out that the guy’s flies were open – I didn’t look! However, I was torn as to whether to let him know that his flies were open – did it imply that I had been looking or to leave him to it and to occasionally be distracted by the “appearance”?

Have a great weekend!

 

First Contact

By not keeping your contact details on your CV/resume current, you are creating a rod for your own back. Finding a job can be a tricky enough experience in the first instance but don’t go creating obstacles for yourself. Having the out of date contact details on your CV/resume is an easy mistake to make (some recruiters have even done it…… but it can be a real pain when you are a recruiter holding the details of the ideal candidate in front of you but you can’t get hold of them.

Email Addresses:

My recommendation is that you don’t put your work email address as your only contact information on your CV – what happens if you leave there? The recruiter with the job of your dreams won’t be able to get in touch. So a good recruiter will track you down, certainly, but trying to find a needle in a haystack is tricky and time consuming and more likely to lead the recruiter to look elsewhere for a good candidate.

It just makes good sense to have a gmail, yahoo, hotmail account or similar that we know we can send emails to. I am always wary of sending emails to what is evidently a work email address on a candidate’s CV. Can I send through the job details? Will the mail be picked up by the offices IT department? It can lead to real delays in the recruiting process and to tricky situations for the candidate. Oh and for those with gmail accounts and the like – please please clean them up on occasion. I can’t count the number of times that I have tried to contact a candidate via one of these accounts only for the mail to be returned.

Mobile/Cell Numbers:

So you bought yourself a funky new phone huh? Got a new number? If so, put it on your resume!! It made that mistake myself many years ago in that I forgot to update my CV and got so many emails from recruiters saying that they had been trying to call – for every one that emailed, there was surely at least one who didn’t so I may have missed out. Same goes for home numbers, make sure it’s up to date and wipe messages off your machine when you have dealt with them (sorry to sound like your mother there).

Listen folks, if you want the job, give yourself the best possible chance of getting it by keeping all of your contact details up to date (and correctly typed!) on your CV. Good luck!