Top 3 Interviewing Tips
August 19, 2009 by Damian
I came across this article on the ‘top 3 interviewing tips’ today and thought that it would be useful to disseminate a little further -
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/BlogDetail.aspx?BlogID=837.
It is written by an American so is quite long winded (sorry to any Americans reading – although that is probably quite unlikely really) but it does make some very good points.
In the current market, getting an interview is an achievement in itself and it really is criminal to blow your chance when you get there by a lack of preparation or understanding of how the interview process works.
As well as the three mentioned in this article, there are a few more that are worth noting so if you are preparing for an interview and want some pre-interview hints and tips, give me a call I would be more than happy to offer some assistance.
The Importance Of CVs
July 15, 2009 by Damian
It never ceases to amaze me how little time and effort some people put into their CVs. I regularly see CVs with typos, bad grammar, inconsistent formatting etc. I remember one CV where a candidate wrote that he had excellent attention to detail but he had spelled ‘detail’ incorrectly! This sort of thing is unforgivable and would result in the CV automatically going into the bin.
Apart from your passport and birth certificate, your CV is probably the most important document that you will ever have. You may be the best lawyer with the best personality but if your CV is not good enough, you will not get the chance to prove this in an interview.
When writing your CV, two things should be paramount in your thinking:
(i) write it from the perspective of a partner/general counsel/hiring manager who does not know anything about you apart from what is on your CV. What information does he/she need to know about you before making a decision on whether to interview you or not? Just because something is obvious to you does not mean that it will be obvious to someone else. Explain everything – if you leave too many questions unanswered, you will not get the interview.
(ii) when you have finished your CV, you must be impressed by it. If you are not, then no-one else will be. I remember being at a seminar and the speaker said: “good enough is not good enough”. What he was trying to say is that if you do something and you think that it is ‘good enough’ to get the job done, that is not enough. It must be the best that you can do and that is surely better than ‘good enough’. So in terms of your CV, if you do not sit back and think that you look good on paper, you can guarantee that no-one else will either.
Writing a CV is a very difficult and time consuming thing to do. At Simply Legal, we can help you put together the best CV possible for you. If you want some information on how to do this, give us a call now or drop us a line. We would be delighted to help!