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Article: Dont-Let-Resume-and-Interview-Gaffes-Wreck-Your-Job-Chances
by Dona DeZube
That skill is the ability to go to the tool bar in Microsoft Word and click on "spell check."
Spelling goofs and other resume mistakes were high on the list when Robert Half asked 1,400 chief financial officers (CFOs) from U.S. companies with 20 or more employees: In which of the following job application areas do you feel candidates make the most mistakes?
Some people's resumes are minefields just waiting for an interviewer to step on. "You do see some exaggeration when you drill down as an interviewer in finance and commercial banking," says Jerry McGrath, senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International in New York.
"There's an inability to be crisp and succinct in terms of demonstrating what your commercial banking results have been," McGrath says. "When you go to someone's resume and see a specific bullet point and ask about it, you're often under-whelmed with what you hear about the specifics of that person's contributions to that accomplishment."
Over 20% of the CFOs polled said candidates make the most mistakes on resumes, but 32% said most errors occur during interviews.
Preparation Makes Perfect
"There are all kinds of bizarre things that candidates do when they go out on interviews," says Robert Half's Rickart, adding that interviews make people behave in ways they normally wouldn't. "They don't adequately prepare. For instance, for a financial analyst position, you want to know overall revenue and as much as you can about how the revenue is broken down. If it's a bank or brokerage, how much is retail and how much is institutional? What's the breakdown of profitability? If they're a publicly traded company there are easy ways to gather that information."
But you don't want to over-prepare your answers. "The most common mistake I see is preparation for the interview that becomes boilerplate," says Steven Seiden, president of Seiden Krieger Associates, and executive search consultancy in New York. "I usually ask, 'What are your weaknesses?' and I expect an honest answer. Instead I get boilerplate, stock answers, which are really strengths disguised as weaknesses. 'I'm impatient. I don't suffer fools gladly, or my work-life balance is out of kilter.'"
In a recent interview with Seiden, a CFO candidate kept giving him stock answer after stock answer. "It colored my feelings about the individual," he explains. "This person couldn't come up with one real example of where she had corrected a deficiency in herself."
Rising through the ranks is no guarantee that you won't blow an interview either. Seiden recalls recruiting a rainmaker for a Wall Street investment bank. He took an internal, and likely-to-be-hired, candidate to lunch at the Yale Club where they could relax over a glass of wine and a nice meal.
The man ordered a salad and at the end of the meal there were a few pieces of lettuce left on his plate. When the busboy tried to clear the plate, the candidate said he hadn't finished. "We talked, he nibbled, and there was a piece of tomato on his plate,' Seiden says. 'The waiter tried to clear the plate. He turned to the waiter, looked him in the eye, pointed with his fork and with seething anger said, 'I told you not to touch this plate.'"
Needless to say, Seiden didn't tap that candidate for the role.
Dona DeZube
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