A Kaplan Survey-Very Intriguing

Kaplan Survey: Today’s Teens Are Much More Likely To Give Parents Full Facebook Profile Access Than No Access At All

Using Social Networks in Your Job Search

Recently my friend decided that he was going to start looking for a new job. Since I work in recruiting I decided to offer some job hunting advice and told him to begin developing his network on LinkedIn. His response was, “I don’t see how social networking can help me find a job”. Normally I would be a little surprised at this limited point of view but I knew who I was conversing with and his retort was absolutely no shock to me. However, he did make me think; is that a common attitude?

Do people mainly use social networks in a social setting and does it even occur to them to proactively use it with a job search? Since I am particularly interested in utilizing social media in recruiting and employer branding I read a lot about the subject. Needless to say, big advocates of using this outlet are saturated in my life at work. On the other hand, when I am with those who aren’t in the ‘job search’ business I think my friend’s opinion is actually more common than it should be. It’s not that people are reluctant to use social networks for job hunting but that they don’t think of it that way….yet. Yes, LinkedIn is great, as you can see from #4 in this article but I know way too many intelligent and easily marketable people who just don’t take advantage of such things.

If you’re following the trends you know that this is definitely changing. The people entering the workforce right now basically grew up using social media. As the century creeps on it’s going to be more and more the norm and those of us who are over a certain age must realize that these are absolutely necessary tools. LinkedIn is a place to keep your resume out there, even when you’re not looking for a new job. Recruiters love passive candidates. One day you could get lucky by having your dream job fall into your lap because someone saw your info on LinkedIn. The naysayer might ask, “What are the chances of the perfect job falling into your lap just b/c you have an account with a social network?” OK so I have no idea the probability but common sense tells me you’re still upping that chance by having the account.

Facebook is a little different because it really is more social, but I definitely do think it has its value too. For example, you can re-connect with an old college buddy who you lost touch with and maybe he/she is working at your dream company. What is the harm in sending that Facebook connection a little note saying “Hey, I noticed you’re at XYZ Company, do you know of any job opportunities there?” No harm at all. Of course, everyone must realize if you stalk and harass those people who you’re asking for help, the networking will probably will have the opposite result. Which is the case in “real life” too, being annoying never helps!

Twitter, ah twitter….I love it! I find it to be so useful and informative. I follow various people and brands both with my company account and my personal account. I stick to following those who post valuable information and I find twitter to be the most educational of all the social networking tools. A lot of people still view it as purely a narcissistic tool, which it definitely can be, but it is so much more than that. I follow career advisors and other tweeters who post links and/or comments that have really helped me grow both professionally and in my knowledge on American Idol ;). Seriously, I don’t really follow celebrities because, in all honesty, I don’t care what they had for lunch, it’s just not my thing. I do follow experts and industry leaders who provide useful insight through their not too frequent posts. Not everyone uses twitter the right way, but those who do are gems of knowledge. This is why I suggest to the skeptics to do a little research and then sign up and play around with it before judging it.

To end my “pro social networking” monologue my advice is to hop on monster, careerbuilder, hotjobs or any job search site but don’t stop there. You should take full advantage of the great virtually interactive world around you and get in the game, better late then never!

Why Can't I Get That Job?

So, you’re a great employee, you know it, your boss knows it and your coworkers know it. Then why are you having such a tough time landing a new job?


There are many answers to this question; one to consider is that interviewing is a skill in and of itself, so is resume writing. Neither one is rocket science, but that old cliché of just being yourself can actually benefit you more than you think. People, especially those who interview for a living, know when someone is being genuine or when someone is just producing a lot of self promotional fluff. Sometimes it’s glaringly obvious on paper and sometimes the interviewer is fooled by a nicely written resume but after a few minutes of speaking with you, they know whether or not you were being honest in your resume. Don’t embellish but yes do feel free to brag.


If you’re not a great writer and fear your resume is causing people to overlook you, consider your options. You can write a basic resume and then ask a scholastic friend to help make it more impressive. You could also pay for a resume writing service. Just make sure you have a clear, browse-ready, well written and specific resume.


Before the interview, try writing down your accomplishments and practice talking about them to someone you know and trust. Ask your confidant to give you an honest critique, and work on it. If you’re not a natural extrovert, it might take a little more practice than you wish it would take, but it’s worth it. Also, you should always be able to bring up examples of past accomplishments and have the ability to go into detail about these accomplishments. Your interviewer will be able to pick up on your sincerity. For example, before I was a recruiter I remember making the mistake of giving one of those canned responses about my “weaknesses”. So when I was given feedback I was informed that my responses were too canned or generic. I was offended at first because of course I didn’t think I was answering generically, but in retrospect my nerves did get the better of me and I over thought my answers, making me way too guarded and insincere. It was something I reluctantly took note of, and used it to improve my interviewing skills.


One thing I have noticed is that people who don’t do any research on the prospective company are shooting themselves in the foot. This is such a simple thing to rectify and gives you a better change of doing well on the interview. Also, you do need to make reasonable eye contact and stop that fidgeting! These are pretty basic tips, so let me go onto more specific ways to increase your interviewing skills.
With this being said, I hope you all have a great new year and I wish you the best of luck in your current jobs or new job adventures!

• Know the different between confidence and arrogance
• Feel free to crack a joke or two but stay appropriate. A badly chosen joke can change the course of the interview and not in a good way.
• Communication is mostly nonverbal, so take a queue from the interviewer’s body language
• Be confident. Think of a few of your favorite activities or places to go then listen to how you think and talk about these things. Then repeat that enthusiasm when talking about your skills.
• Before going into an interview, think of career highlights and other specifics to talk about with the interview. You might not even need to use them but this preparedness can come in handy if nerves do get the better of you.
• Not every place is a place where you want to work, regardless of the position. So if the interview isn’t going well just do the best you can and stay professional.

With this being said, I hope you all have a great new year and I wish you the best of luck in your current jobs or new job adventures!

Talk to you in 2010!

Writing A Great Resume

Resume writing can be a daunting task. So, when you decide that its time to look for a new job this is the first obstacle you face. Forget perfecting the interview, if you have a poorly executed resume you are closing doors before you ever have the chance to show off your dazzling personality. While every hiring manager has their personal preference there are definitely some basics to use as a guide for writing the ultimate resume!

1. Write the resume for the skim reader
• My advice is to always use bullets; it’s easier for your greatness to stand out since you have about 5 seconds to really catch the reader’s interest.
2. Don’t just list your duties
• Yes, your resume should have main responsibilities but that shouldn’t be the only thing you bullet: keep reading…
3. Brag about your accomplishments
• Now don’t lie or exaggerate but when writing you definitely want to highlight your successes
4. If you have metrics -> Use them!
• Managers love metrics. This rule goes triple for anyone interested in sales and marketing. Numbers peak interest, trust me!
5. Saved a company some money or added to their profits ->Mention it!
• If you came up with a great idea that wound up creating more revenue for your company or streamlining a process, mention this.
6. Focus your resume
• If you’re looking for sales….focus your resume on sales. If you’re looking for management, focus your resume on management, etc…
• Create 2, 3 or even 4 resumes if you have to
7. This is your personal marketing tool
• Try to stand out, but don’t be too gimmicky either
• Why do you feel you deserve a raise over your co-worker? Put it in writing, in a professional style of course.
• Focus on your strengths
8. Proofread, have a friend proofread and then have another friend proofread.
• Spell check will cover spelling errors but it will not correct silly mistakes, like forgetting the ‘f’ in ‘for’ - > ‘Or’ is still a word.
9. Always put the phone number that you want to be contacted on your resume
• This might seem like common sense but if you use your cell phone, put that on your resume. Home phone numbers aren’t the standard anymore.

There are a ton of resources out there with tips on writing a great resume. However, I really believe the above 9 are some of the most crucial. You can either get fancy or be straight to the point but if you follow this advice, you’re increasing your chances of getting a call. And well, we all know that once you land the interview it’s a cakewalk from there. :)

Ask This, Not That! Avoiding Illegal Interview Questions

Ask This, Not That! Avoiding Illegal Interview Questions

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Back To School

So September is right around the corner and at Kaplan that means, BTS or Back to School time! This is probably the busiest time of year for anyone who works in a center. The months prior to August and September are probably some of the busiest for those who work in the home office, especially for those of us in recruiting. All open positions need to be filled and there is a big push to speed up the recruiting process, hence my absence as I'm sure I was horribly missed.....right? Marketing or Business Development is a very big deal at Kaplan and BTS is a very crucial time for our Marketers. Last September I went to 2 locations to help with some of the marketing at both Fordham and Harvard Universities. I would like to share what turned out to be quite the experience being out there pounding the pavement with our big marketing personalities. I actually really enjoyed it, which surprised me since I'm not a sales type.

What we did was wake up very early and set up a booth as a focal point for all of us BTS helpers to meet and for students to stop and ask questions to the big cheese marketers, who all had such great, enthusiastic energy. Us BTS helpers were given a schedule by the big cheeses which consisted of going to classrooms and posting bulletins throughout campus. We also walked around campus and talked with students and if they were interested, we got their information so we could send them more of our information, or as marketers say "we got leads".

I was surprised at the response of the students. There were a lot of friendly people, much friendlier than I am when approached by someone promoting a product. Standing out there talking to students and yes, getting rebuffed by many, I realized what hard work this was and that I should probably be more engaging to the marketers I encounter in my daily life. I have to admit I have sort of failed to do the latter, but I do live in NYC, that's my excuse and I'm standing by it! I digress, my experience was just fun. I really liked being out in the "field" talking to people and meeting people. Being outside in the nice late summer weather was such a treat and a nice break from 9 hours of sitting behind a desk every day. It was also exhausting!

So I have to give credit to all those people who participate in marketing and field sales because it is such a rewarding yet exhausting business. The people in these positions need to go out and do this stuff on a regular basis, granted BTS is a bit more intense. A person who handles the business development for Kaplan will spend some time in the office setting meetings up and doing "homework" but a good majority of their time is spent meeting people and talking about our products with high energy while still being genuine. Phew! The big cheese marketers all seemed to just have the enthusiasm and product knowledge with no effort. They spoke of and promoted Kaplan's products as easily as I speak of and promote my favorite burger place. Point is the people I met in the marketing roles were naturals and really good at their jobs, even though they spoke of the same product to 100s of students, they never faltered with their enthusiasm. This is definitely the type of role for someone who doesn't consider themselves an office type. It's hard work, you really learn marketing, relationship building and you burn more calories than you would sitting behind a computer all day!

What to look for when hiring

So the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge is over and my co-workers did a fantastic job. I also hear the post race celebration at The Dublin House was a big success!

Today I would like to focus my attention on a topic that I think is pretty important when interviewing. What do you look for when hiring? At first this question seems like a pretty easy one to answer but once you start interviewing it quickly becomes apparent how difficult narrowing down candidates can be with only one opening and multiple qualified candidates. There are a lot of good candidates out there and deciding which person is the best can be a little stressful because let’s face it, you can never be 100% sure.

I have heard some Hiring Managers request that we look for candidates that are similar to themselves. I don’t necessarily agree that it’s the best approach to finding a great employee. For starters those who want their own clone tend to have pretty strong personalities and might be better off with a personality that compliments theirs instead of a replica. Also, if you do your job well wouldn’t it be a better asset to have a co-worker who is slightly stronger in an area where you might be a little bit weaker?

So back to the original question, what do you look for when interviewing? First, as a hiring manager, you must be able to listen. Listening is probably the most important part of the process and to help this process along you need to equip yourself with the right questions to ask. This takes me to the 2nd most important tip, preparation!

You’ll need to ask yourself some questions before you post this job. Some good starting points are: What are the requirements for this position? What does this person need to be able to accomplish? What will they need to know? Who are the top performers in this role and what characteristics have they shared? What type of personality tends to be the most successful?

Once you answer those basic questions then you can move on to creating more specific questions to ask in the interview.

I like to mix and match interview styles, starting out with some basic questions on the candidate’s various experiences. Most of this can be found on the resume but it’s always helpful to see how the candidate articulates their experience to you. After the introductory portion of the interview, I will throw in some specific questions to some bulleted points on his/her resume. I like to hear the candidate expand on the parts of his/her career that was important enough to bullet.

I then move onto more behavioral questions about how they handled certain situations in the past, if they ever encountered those situations at all. These questions are very particular to the job I am hiring for so there are no set questions to list. A quick example of this style of questioning for an administrative assistant job would be: “Can you tell me about a time when you were able to successfully help your boss out of a pickle”. If you’re speaking with an experienced administrative assistant, he/she should be able to give you an example. Obviously you need to tailor your questions to the job, asking questions that are appropriate for the level of experience and the type of experience necessary.

Lastly, I will interview for company culture fit. These tend to just be inquisitive questions and again I like to mix and match my style of questioning. I might ask one straight forward question and then throw in another question that’s a little bit more behavioral but gives me an idea of how they would fit in our company’s culture.

If you want to hire the best person for a job, you should have an “ideal candidate” outline before ever even speaking to a candidate. Yes, personality matters and you want that person to fit into your culture but you also want that person to have the experience and intelligence necessary for the tasks at hand. When it comes down to it, interviewing is very subjective. You can try and tailor your questions to be as objective as possible but if you have two great candidates sometimes you just have to choose who you think will fit better and time will tell.

To summarize on how find the best people for the job you’re hiring:

• Listen
  
• Prepare
  
• Mix/Match Interview Styles
  
• Interview for Company Culture
  
• Be as objective as possible

And that’s all for today folks, please feel free to comment and don’t forget we’re on Facebook andTwitter!