The Most Dreaded Interview Question

If job interviews themselves aren’t nerve-wracking enough, you are forced to wait on pins and needles for the most ambiguous (and possibly most important) stock question of the interview – “Why should I hire you?”

Though there are many ways to approach this vague question, Yahoo! HotJobs has been kind enough to walk all of you potential job hunters out there through the gambit.

They suggest instead of thinking up a clever retort or a comedic one-liner, tell a brief, situational “story” that will separate you from the pack. This story should cover the 5 main things that the employer is interested in:

• Your skills
• Your knowledge about the company
• Your manageability
• Your affordability
• Whether you can go above and beyond your job description

Want more job advice, or even help landing your new career? Contact MetaTech today.

Know Thyself

“Know Thyself” is a saying that has been around since the Greeks wore tunics, but a saying that still resonates true today, and maybe could even be your best weapon in nabbing your dream job.

According to writer David DeJean, knowing your own work style and having a vocabulary for thinking and talking it is important. One way of getting a feel for your personality, DeJean suggests, is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI isn’t a test as much as it’s an indicator of how your personality affects the things that you do.

While I would personally not suggest becoming a gentleman farmer just because the MBTI indicates that this career would suit you, the MBTI would help you narrow your choices to find something that you would mesh well with. Bob McAlpine, president of Type Resources says, “any person can be successful at any job, yet some people are more comfortable – have a more positive experience – at one job than another. If we look at the mental processes used in the job and the processes preferred by the person, there's a high correlation. We're not talking skill, but if interests match requirements, people are more successful.”

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

Written By
Tom Parrish
MetaTech Sales Guy

What we’re reading:

http://www.fightthebull.com/index.asp

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/alternative.pdf


At MetaTech, we are ever vigilant about the use of corporate-speak, and seek to root it out wherever and whenever we hear it. Of course, this is easier said than done, as it is strewn across our language landscape like our children’s dirty laundry, and has been bred into us from our first day in the corporate world.

So, when one of us says something like, “Kim, how are you coming on the development of our Talent Acquisition Program…”, or, “ Jan, how do you think our Human Capital Management Strategy compares with that of our competitors…”, we immediately grab Nerf baseball bats and mercilessly beat the wayward speaker with abandon before signing them up for MetaTech re-education sessions later at the local watering hole.

Although the way is long and the path is dark, we are committed and focused on our goal of creating a company where real people speak simply and directly to one another in a language we can all understand. Mission impossible? Maybe. Are we up for the fight?

You bet!

The Ultra Honest Resume

As MetaTech’s Tom Parrish wrote last Friday, a successful resume creates the “illusion of reality” – where the applicant can list their qualifications in a real, living and breathing, story-like manner.

Along that same line, there is another kind of honesty that is just important. While it is common knowledge (or at least it should be) that you should never lie on your resume, some companies fact checking on your resume can trip up even the most upstanding applicants.

Many companies hire outside background checkers to verify resumes and job applications. These companies note every inconsistency and piece of information they can't confirm -- even the difference between starting a job on April 1 and April 5 -- although some problems are treated more seriously than others by employers.

So, in short, even a harmless mistake could cost you. Here are a few suggestions that can help you “work on your honesty”:

1. If you're not sure, don't guess.
2. Provide extra information if the company's situation has changed.
3. Be careful with titles and temp work.
4. Don't obsess over it.

What We're Reading

Written By
Tom Parrish
MetaTech Sales Guy

Resumes. Thousands of resumes. We love reading people’s resumes. When my wife asks me what I’m reading this weekend, I say, well…I’m reading this really great resume. It’s based out of Boston, and it’s this incredible story about this guy who works as a software engineer for a capital management firm. But what’s really interesting about him is that he’s written this thing in a way that he’s actually accessible to me as a person rather than as a two-dimensional abstraction of him.

And of course, this is the trick in resume writing – creating the “illusion of reality”, so to speak, not unlike a great short story, wherein the reader has access to the thing-in-itself, the real, living person, under the covers of symbolic abstraction.

I used to work for a staffing company where the recruiters would come up to me and say…”Look at this guy! Doesn’t he look great for the blah, blah, blah job?!” And I’d think, well, first off, this isn’t a “guy”, it’s just a two-dimensional symbolic abstraction of a guy. Now, as we all know from our History of Western Philosophy class, getting at the thing-in-itself is notoriously difficult if not impossible, due to the problem that human beings really only know the world through symbols, (i.e. - language, mathematics, art) and don’t have immediate access to being like, say my cat Angel, who’s blessedly not burdened with the fact that thought and language are inextricably bound.

So if you’re sending us a resume, it would be helpful for us if you wrote this thing in a way that we can somehow see you, the real person, so we can move on quickly to what we’re all here for, having a meaningful conversation with you about how we can help you advance your career.

Economic Recession? Tell that to the IT Industry

It’s hard to go a day without hearing about how bad the economy is. Unemployment rates are up and the housing market is in the dumps. With all this negative news, it’s easy to consider moving into a cave and disconnecting from society.

But hold on a second all you hermit hopefuls. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that between 2002 and 2016 jobs in the IT sector are projected to increase by over 35%. That’s right – increase! Not only that, but these occupations enjoy higher salaries compared to the national average.

Sounds pretty good, right? Why not let MetaTech help you get your IT career started.

June E-Newsletter

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Understanding

Written By
Tom Parrish
MetaTech Sales Guy

“Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
- Eric Burdon and the Animals

Driving back home to Seattle at 3:00am in the morning after taking my 13 year old daughter and her friends to see The Cure at the Gorge, it occurred to me that Eric’s plaintive wail in this classic Animals song could be the wail of the modern day software job applicant or technical hiring manager in their desperate attempt to be understood by the legions of recruiters that seem to grow exponentially in number day-by-day.

Part of the problem here of course is that software engineering, a jargon-laden and difficult to understand affair even by its most ardent practitioners, is a domain of experts, whereas 99.9% of the recruiters who traffic in this world are laymen, having never studied, practiced or held the positions for which they recruit.

The upshot is placement by accident rather than design, and this is the reason that the vast majority of technical staffing firms consistently fail to meet their constituencies’ minimal expectations and why the staffing business’ reputation is just one notch above that of the legal profession.

At MetaTech, the people that talk to people looking for jobs and the customers looking for the technical people to fill them, are people that have written extensive amounts code, designed complex databases and applications, and managed a bunch of technical people. We deeply understand the work and the kinds of know-how it takes to get the work done.

If you’re a committed software professional or technical hiring manager just wanting to be understood, talk with a MetaTech recruiter and experience what it’s like to be heard, perhaps for the first time.

Official Launch

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Please feel free to ask questions and discuss our posts, after all, that’s what we’re here for.

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