The author, motivator, and entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said "If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree."
This quote applies very well to many aspects of life, especially to where you spend almost 1/2 of your waking hours...your job. In past centuries, the main reason for having a job was to put bread on the table and to be able to sleep under a roof at night. Now, times have changed. Many of us are now not just using a job to provide financial security and stability for ourselves or our family, but also as a way to expand on our passions and really enjoy what we spend so much time on.
There is no such thing as the perfect job since there is always a component of the job that won't be perfect. But we can continue to sharpen that knife that is our job and continually seek something we are both passionate about and that lets us earn enough money to live a comfortable lifestyle. For those blog readers out there that are thinking of changing jobs, are currently in their job search but still working at their current job, or decided to bail on their job and travel for 6 months and now look for a job...look no further.
After approximately 3 years of work experience under my belt, I decided to say "adios" to my job to travel through South America for ~6 months. Knowing that I would not return to my previous job, I knew I had to find one upon my return. Also knowing how long the job search takes I decided to begin my job search before finishing my travels, so I could hit the ground running upon my return.. I also began my job search during my 6 weeks of volunteer work as a way to stay busy whenever I was bored or unoccupied. I was "settled down" for a few weeks in Cochabamba, Bolivia and thus was not on the move all the time anymore, so it was a good way to use my time wisely.
The CV
The whole process started around Oct 15, which is when I began updating my CV or resume. I put it up to date with my past job responsibilities, added a few new skills, threw some volunteer work on it, and spent a good deal of time working on my "Objective".
I think the objective is the most important part of the CV since it is the link between what you want from a job, and what the recruiter can offer in terms of jobs that correlate to your objective. The key with the objective is to come up with one sentence that be detailed enough to show the recruiters you are looking for something specific, but not too detailed to the point where you are eliminating just about every single company in the world. You want enough detail in your objective so that you
don't end up wasting your time with companies or job offers that don't
fit your needs or wants as opposed to a vague objective that will potentially
get you replies from companies you are not actually interested in. Also the objective is oftentimes strategically positioned on the resume so that it is the first thing recruiters look at. By positioned, I mean that it is near the top of the front page of your CV, but not exactly at the very top. Lets say more like 1/3 of the way down. That's oftentimes where your eyes will glance at first when you start looking at a piece of paper. So in other words, first impressions count, so make that objective count!
Going back to my CV, I then used good old Google Translate to translate that bad boy to French. I then had to go through the resume I had just translated to French and proofread it (from the exact words of my mother..."Google Translate c'est vraiment nul!" aka "Google Translate really sucks!"). Anyways a lot of the phrases did not make sense using Google Translate but it provided for some solid French vocabulary or terms I would not have thought of. After updating both CVs, I fired off the French version to my mother who is a spelling/writing whiz. She fired back a few corrections and then my CV was ready to go. In conclusion, I had already done a lot of the leg work for my CV during my job search days 3 years ago. But there was a lot of tweaking to do as well as translating it to French. I would say in all I spent about 15 hours improving my CV over the course of a week.
The Cover Letter
The cover letter was the next step of the ladder in terms of the job search process. This letter is the first impression the recruiter will get from you besides the CV. This is your way to show that you've got a personality and have some charisma outside of the plain, bullet point CV you sent to the recruiter. I think looking at sample cover letters is a good way to get a grasp on the structure or format of the letter.
In my cover letter, I formatted it the following way: Intro paragraph with interest in position X with company Y, first paragraph on my background/basic skills and how they apply to the job position, second paragraph on my past job skills and how they apply to the job position, third paragraph on my extracurricular/humanitarian work skills and how they apply to the job position, with a final short paragraph/sentence(s) again on my interest in position X with company Y.
The key with the cover letter is really show the recruiter how your background and skills are suitable/applicable for the job position as well as assets for the company. It's nice to tell the recruiter you spent a summer doing volunteer work in Kenya, or how you spent 3 years with your previous employer, but if you can't show the recruiter how it will benefit THEM, then they've got no reason to want to pursue you any further. At the end of the day, the recruiter is looking out for the best interests of his/her company in terms of time and money. They know if you don't have the skills and they still hire you, time and money will have to be spent on YOU for job training, which means that's time and money being lost for THEM.
In conclusion, over the course of a week about 10 hours was spent creating, modifying, and re-modifying my cover letter before being happy with the final draft.
The Job Search
The way I decided to approach my search was first do some googling online of companies that were in the field I wanted to work in. Specifically, they included building services, energy efficiency, and alternative energy. I came up with around 10-15 companies after doing around 2 hours of searching. I then went on their websites to look at job openings and see if I was qualified for any of the positions they had available.
The official job search began on Oct 24, when I applied for my first job. Of those 10-15 companies I had researched, only about 4 of them had offers on their site I was qualified for. As soon as I had applied to the first job, I created an excel document with several columns:
-Company
-Position
-Action
-Location
-Applied How
-Status
-Salary
I decided I would continuously update this spreadsheet during my job search to keep a tab on jobs I had applied to and have an approximate timeline in terms of following up with recruiters. I would continue updating this spreadsheet even once I started having interviews because organization is key, especially during the job search.
Since I was applying for jobs in France, I used primarily French job search websites/engines: Apec.fr, Adzuna.fr, Cadremploi.fr. To be specific, I typed into the job search engine "Energy Efficiency Engineer" and started with locations in Paris, France. After clicking on many offers, I was able to apply to about 4 that I was qualified for. Most of the jobs were similar enough that I could use the same CV and Cover Letter structure, besides changing the name of the company and the job position I was applying for in the Cover Letter. My CV was universal enough that I could use the same one for all jobs I applied for. Applying to these 4 jobs took me about 3 hours. It took a bit of time since each job had its unique application on top of the CV and Cover Letter. Thus, it took a little bit less than 1 hour per job.
The next day I decided to open my search up to Lyon and Nantes. Again about 4 jobs total came up that I was qualified for. That took another 3 hours. The following day I did another search for jobs in the Paris, Lyon, or Nantes area on the search engines, but no new job postings had showed up. Thus, I waited another 3 days and again did a search. At the point a few new offers had popped up I was qualified for. I fired off applications asap. 3 days later there were some new offers up, and I applied to those as well.
Between Oct 24 and Nov 17 (my last application) I had applied to a total of 26 jobs with about 14 different companies. The majority were from normal job posting websites, but a few of them I had emailed the company or applied on their website directly.
The Interview Prep
The interview stage is like preparing for a big exam. Preparation is key. You need to know your CV from top to bottom, left to right. This is basically the outline the interviewer will use to base his questions from. So you should need every single aspect of that piece of paper in anticipation of questions he/she may ask. Even the things on the CV you may think are not really important, could be important to the recruiter, since you put them on the CV. Thus, they may quiz you quite a bit on something you thought was irrelevant (like that sophomore year dancing robot project or that home made trebuchet you built the summer of your freshman year).
To be honest though, you will likely be quizzed most on your previous job, since that is the "freshest" experience you have on your CV. You better have your responsibilities nailed down, along with the magnitude of your involvement in each project, and technical terms you can throw out during the interview to show you know the industry "lingo".
Next, you should be ready to talk about 2-3 case studies or projects that your worked on in your previous job. Have the name of the project, time frame you worked on it, project members involved, goals, results, and overall your role in each project / case study. If you are not specifically asked to talk about each case study, then bring them up during the interview. Tell them something along the lines of. "since I am talking about my job responsibilities at my past job, may I present 2-3 case studies of projects I was involved in that may interest you?" Keep the case studies brief and to the point, but with still enough detail to put your point across.All in all, those 3 case studies are your time to shine, so you better know them from A to Z.
Also before your interview, spend some time thinking about yourself and your pros/cons. Write a list of things you are good at and things you aren't good at. Next, analyze your previous job and write a list of things you liked about it and things you did not like. Finally, along the same lines from your previous job write a list of things you felt you were good at and were easy, but also a list of things you weren't so good at and that were challenging. These lists don't have to be long but at least 1-3 items per category are good enough talking points. It is really important you do the above, as I can almost guarantee in at least one of your interviews you will be asked these questions. There is nothing worse than having to answer these questions on the spot with no preparation. Especially on skype, if you try to make these answers up on the spot, you will sound like the biggest BSer and they will just look at you like a deer in headlights. Been there, done that, and not a good feeling.
The Actual Interview
If you have a phone or skype interview, make sure to be in a quiet and isolated area. Have a big desk with lots of room for your papers/folders. During your interview you will be thanking yourself for giving yourself so much room, I promise! If your interview is on skype, test out the internet connection beforehand to make sure you won't get cut off 2 minutes into the call. Also print out as many relevant papers as possible. It may sound convenient having all of them on your computer, but it is much easier to read papers than internet tabs especially if you are a visual thinker. Also it gives you a chance to take notes and highlight relevant info on each paper ahead of the interview. To give you an idea, I would usually set up 1-2 hours before each
interview to do some last minute "studying" or review of the job
posting, case studies, my CV, Cover letter, etc....
That it be a phone or skype interview, always have your call with a dress shirt tucked into a pair of pants and take a shower before. Ideally nice pants and shoes as well, and depending on the job, possibly a suit and/or tie. The reason I say these things is if you have a dress shirt on and you took a shower, it means you have your A game on. You will look sharp, thus look confident, and therefore sound confident during your call. If you are dressed in PJs and haven't taken a shower in 3 days, the interviewer may not visually see that during a phone call, but I really wonder how you will be able to bring your A game to the show if you can't even dress to impress.
During the interview, if you have the chance to throw a little humor into it, DO NOT hesitate. There is nothing better for the interviewer than to have it be a little fun and out of the ordinary. You have to put yourself in his/her shoes. He/she has likely interviewed about 10-20 other candidates and you do not want this interview to fall into the boring pile of the other 10-20. You have to be a bit spontaneous with the humor part as it has to be a spur of the moment reaction. Each situation is different, but I'll give you a quick example. During one of my skype interviews the internet was pretty bad so we got disconnected. Once we reconnected, rather than saying some boring "we got disconnected" comment, I went on to tell the interviewer jokingly that the 2 minutes of disconnection gave me time for me to comb my hair and readjust my tie (not true). It doesn't sound that funny when I write it now, but the interviewer was laughing for a a few seconds after I told him that and took it as a positive that I find some humor out of this internet-being-down-hurdle. Another example of adding humor to the interview: I wrote at the end of my CV my activities/hobbies. One of them being surfing. He then brings up my activities, notably surfing, for a job position based in Paris. He asks me where I will go surfing in Paris, and I quickly responded with "there is this river in Paris called the Seine, and I heard there can be some pretty good waves when those big houseboats go by!" Again, doesn't sound so funny right now as I write it, but the interviewer was cracking up for a few seconds after I told him that. In summary, interviews are usually boring, but if you can find a way to add a little humor to the conversation and show your personality, you will definitely stand out.
To give you a quick status update on time frames for my interviews...
The first interview is typically a phone interview with HR.
I had phone interviews on Nov 4, Nov 11, Nov 19, and Nov 25 all with different companies.
The second interview is done via skype with HR.
I had skype interviews on Nov 25, Nov 28, Dec 1, and Dec 3 with the last 2 being with the same company.
That's it in terms of updates on the job search. I will likely post another blog once my job situation is finalized!
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