Don't aim your CV at the bin

How many times has it happened to you? You apply for a job that sounds perfect for you. You have the appropriate qualifications and oodles of applicable experience and yet you don’t get called to interview. Someone, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to file your CV in the ‘circular filing cabinet’ rather than putting your forward for interview. Why? Why do so many CVs end up in the bin?

I read CVs every day – some for career management and outplacement clients and many, many more when I am sitting in the hiring chair working on behalf of a client company. I can tell you in a few short words why so many CVs don’t make the grade: It’s because someone else makes my life easier than you do.

Someone else has taken just a little more time and a little more trouble to pitch their CV just a little bit better than yours … and so, they make it to the short list and you do not. I wish there was a blueprint for how to do this; I wish there were hard-and-fast rules; but there aren’t. There’s just common sense, a bit of canniness and meticulous attention to detail.

I have long maintained that the term “Screening and Selection” is a misnomer and the process should be called “Screening and Elimination.” Any online or offline advertised position in a half-decent company is going to attract a goodly number of applicants, so the early part of the screening process is a numbers game, plain and simple.

Example:
I have 100 applicants for a middle management job and I intend interviewing eight to ten of them. As I go through my first pass of the pile of CVs, am I selecting or eliminating? It’s a numbers game! With no malice in the world, I am going to dump 90% of the documents in my in-tray. Your task is to not give me a reason to dump yours.

You want to get on to the short list? Make my life easier! Be the right candidate for the job – right qualifications, right experience, right personal attributes. Let me know that you are madly keen to work with me. Let me know you are polished and professional. And finally, let me know that you understand what a pain in the ass it is to read a pile of 100 applications by engineering your CV around my requirements, my concerns and my issues.

A CV is a living document right up to the moment you lick the stamp or hit the ‘send’ button. Keep drafting, fiddling and playing with it. Keep canvassing opinion on it. Identify what works for you. If it doesn’t work, follow up to find out why and then go back to the drawing board.

Related Posts:
A screener's perspective on CVs
Wooing them
3 Simple thoughts for your CV

Next: My top 7 CV sins and how to avoid them

Redundancy / Downsizing - call it what you want ...

I suspect we'll be talking about the topic of redundancy / downsizing a lot over the coming weeks. Here are some introductory thoughts I had in a conversation with the ever switched-on Mr Williams on Q102:

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Shrinking to greatness? I think not. A lot more on this topic soon.

Golden Oldies - Simple courtesies

Reruns from the Dusty Archives No.2: In my book, this subject is never out of date.

I was in France with my family some years ago and observed some lovely, old-world courtesies in action. My then 9 year-old daughter asked me to translate what the people were saying as we were standing in the queue in the boulangerie early one morning. And she was very impressed as each new customer would enter the shop and say, in a lovely sing-song voice, “Bonjour Monsieur!” to the baker and, “Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs!” to everyone else standing in the shop.

I explained to my kids that, in France, to not greet the shopkeeper is considered as rude as spitting on the floor of a shop in Ireland. They were horrified [not least by my demonstration and sound effects] at the thought of being so rude, so I was delighted when they both started saying “Bonjour” as they entered shops and “Merci beaucoup, au revoir a bientot” as we left. And I have encouraged them to continue that courtesy back at home.

I have long found the value in a cheerful greeting to whomever it is you are dealing with – shopkeepers, bank tellers, receptionists. It costs you nothing to extend these small pleasantries and you will have a better experience and better ongoing relationship if you do. I now regularly hear how well-mannered my girls are and how unusual it is to see that in children nowadays. My kids have discovered the value in these niceties; they get lots of positive feedback, as the local shopkeepers are forever smiling at them and bestowing the occasional free lollipop.

Where have the old courtesies gone? I accept that the Googles of this world would bankrupt themselves if they wrote acknowledgement and PFO letters to everyone who applied to them; but I find it extraordinary that so many companies who accept e-applications don’t have some form of polite “Thank you for applying” automated response. Better yet, the big guys should automatically generate a tracking number so you can see at a glance if your application has made any progress yet.

I have long recommended that my clients courteously telephone the night before, or morning of, a job interview to confirm that the time and place still suits the interviewer; but more importantly, that they follow up the interview with a concise thank-you note. Almost no-one does this anymore and I find myself having to 'come the heavy' to persuade some clients of the benefit. Read a marvellous post on this subject by Google recruiter Jason Warner if you don’t believe me. It bears out my experiences with clients at every level of the org chart.

I got an email from Seth Godin in the Spring of 2007. Me and about a bajillion other people, I’m sure. And what a thing of beauty it was. I had subscribed to his advance notice about his upcoming book The Dip. He thanked me for my sign-up and wrote:

If you don't want to get the updates, do nothing. You'll never hear from me again about this. … Thanks again for your interest, and I apologize for the impersonal nature of this note. I'm doing my best to keep up, but failing more than I'd like!

When I followed the link the The Dip blog, he had written:

I just hope you'll try to avoid the temptation to hit 'reply' to every post! Or at least forgive me if I don't get back to you right away. The last thing I want to do is waste your time or abuse your trust. And thanks for reading.

Old-school courtesy. Beautiful phrasing. Seth obviously got lots of lollipops from local shopkeepers when he was a kid. There’s just not enough of it about.

Generation Dumb - follow-up

While reading up for a post about the wilful ignorance endemic in "the young people today," I came across a reference to a book called Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter by Rick Shenkman. Deee-pressing:

• Only 2 in 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government.
• Only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.
• Only 1 in 5 know that there are 100 federal senators.
• 49% of Americans polled think the President has the authority to suspend the Constitution.
  

I would be interested to see how similar the results would be among Irish and UK citizens. Churchill, as ever, was right - the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with an average voter.

I was interested to note the feedback from my 21 year-old nephew with regard to a referendum we had in Ireland about signing up to the Lisbon Treaty. His friends, according to him, opted out from voting and expressed crudely simplistic views with regard to the treaty. Also, he said, most of them refused to acknowledge that their vote could possibly mean anything. I gave him a number to use with these dissenters:

537

"What's that?" he asked.
"The number of votes that George W Bush won by in Florida in the 2000 election against Al Gore," I smugly replied, knowing that my nephew and his friends are not W fans.
"537? That's all?"
"Yup. And on average, about 40-45% of people in the United States don't show up to vote in Presidential elections."
"Really?"
"Yup."
"Thank you Rowan, I'll be using that ..."

There's another line I forgot to give him - a thought from Plato which essentially states that if you refuse to participate in the political process, you have no right to complain when you find yourself being governed by your inferiors.

CV design and layout 2 - Making it easy for the reader

“At Sony, we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.” (Norio Ohga)

Distinguishing yourself from the herd in a large pile of CVs is no easy matter. What you say about yourself is obviously vital, but how you present it can also have a large bearing on whether or not you get short-listed.

Every aspect of the document needs to be perfect. Layout and styling can only be finalised when you have a specific job to apply for and no matter what anyone tells you, there are no hard-and-fast rules for CVs – different people will inevitably like different things. That being said, you won’t go far wrong if follow these seven rules of thumb when you are sending your CV, either physically or as an email attachment:

1. WORD-PROCESS IT
Unless you are going for a job as a calligrapher, your CV should be crisply produced on standard word-processing software. If you are stuck with a legacy system or a little-known and not widely used application, save your CVs and letters in Rich Text Format (filename.rtf). This will allow you to transfer your files between different computers with little or no difficulty.

2. FONTS
Use appropriate typefaces – word processing packages these days come with umpteen fonts, the majority of which are worthless for business use. Save them for fun activities and use Times or a similar, serifed font. (Serifs are the little tails that finish the strokes of letters. Sans Serif fonts are cleaner and more modern looking, but can also be a little soulless). Most of what we read is produced in serifed fonts – newspapers, magazines and books – and we are accustomed to reading them.

If your CV is likely to be scanned, you may need to use a sans serif font like Arial, Verdana or Tahoma and test it by OCR (Object Character Recognition) scanning it to assess layout and legibility. Underlining can also cause problems for scanners. Don’t use rare or specialist fonts, particularly if you are going to send soft copies of your CV by e-mail (see below) as the receiving computer may not have them installed and all of your careful formatting will be ruined.

3. LEGIBILITY
Allow generous margins and plenty of white space on your CV – this will make it easier to read. Your font sizes should also contribute to making life easy for the reader. Headings should be 2-3 points larger than your body text and the bulk of your CV should be in a font size no smaller than 11 point. If you are going smaller than that to cram in more information, you should question the utility and impact of every word that you are including.

Another issue for font sizes – some placement agencies still fax CVs to client organisations, so your layout needs to retain its legibility when it has been sent to a crumbly old fax machine and the lettering becomes fuzzy. Once again, test it and see if it works …

4. WALK ON BY
Walk your readers through the document – think about what matters most to them and put that up front. In the majority of cases, that is going to be a thumbnail profile of who you are and what you have to offer, followed by details of your current employment. Demarcate your sections clearly using headings in a different font (or style) and lines or white space. Look at how the text in your favourite newspaper or magazine is laid out and get ideas there or talk to a friend in the design business.

5. PACKAGING
You don’t buy products in the supermarket with cheap, dented, torn, rusty or faded packaging and funnily enough, neither do employers. If you are sending a printed CV or handing one to anybody you ever meet:

• Use high quality paper with a weight of 100 gram or heavier. Don’t ‘liberate’ 80 gram paper from the photocopier at work, invest in a ream or two of decent paper for your job search. Human beings are fundamentally tactile and while you won’t get any extra marks for using good stationery, if you don’t, it can indicate a less than professional approach.

• Print everything at high resolution (600 dpi) on a laser printer. Some of the latest inkjets print text quite well – if you have one, experiment with different resolutions on different papers until you are happy.

• Don’t photocopy your CV for submission, unless you have access to a professional photocopier the size of a bus. [Anyway, why do you need dozens of copies of your CV? You are going to be tailoring it for each application you make.]
  

• If you are posting hard copies, send your CV flat (not folded) in a crispy white A4 envelope.

• Print your address label or envelope. Hand-write your return address clearly.

• Buy your own stamps – do not frank your envelopes at work. The reader will check and it is theft.
  

6. BINDERS
I am amazed that I still have to give this piece of advice, but if you are sending in a hard copy by post, DO NOT BIND IT! Binders are just a nuisance and always get torn off and thrown in the bin, to the accompaniment of a lot of irritation on the part of the reader. Binders make reading, photocopying, scanning and filing your CV more difficult, so don't! A paperclip or staple is perfectly sufficient. If you are neurotic [like me] you can use a clear plastic slip cover – the kind that opens on two sides. [When I was in primary school, I firmly believed that you got an extra 5% if you handed up your homework in one of these - if only life were still that simple.]

7. SOFT COPIES
If you are e-mailing your CV, you need to make absolutely sure that it arrives in the same shape that you sent it in. Word processing software is inclined to foul up your beautifully formatted document (another reason for using standard fonts), so send it to a few friends' computers first to make sure it arrives properly. Get them to print it and then you should check every element of its look and feel.

The other detail you need to watch out for if you’re sending soft copies are the 'Properties' of the file that you send. If you have asked friends to look at your CV or if you sought professional help in composing it, they may leave footprints in the Properties of the document. Save a clean copy of the CV onto your hard drive and open the properties (generally found under the 'File' menu on your word processing application). Make sure that it is your name in there as author and as the last person to save and print the file.

You can avoid all this hassle with layout and footprints by converting your file to the Portable Document Format (filename.pdf) using Adobe Acrobat (some operating systems and word processors have this capability built in now). This ensures that the file will arrive with exactly the formatting you sent it with and also that no-one can tamper with it – as placement agencies are wont to do.

“At BMW, design is treated like a religion.”
(Fortune Magazine)

CV design and layout

"Yes, I'd like to talk about getting a large, unsecured loan please."

Look-and-feel is the first 5% and the last 10% of a well-crafted CV / Résumé. It's the first 5% because when I am wading through a large pile of CVs it is very hard for me to be so professional as to not throw your CV in the bin if it is in any way hard for me to read. [Have you ever noticed that, while CVs aren't particularly aerodynamic, they do make a very pleasing fluttering noise as they head toward the bin?]

Look-and-feel is the last 10% because when I have eliminated all the dross and no-hopers, I pay very close attention to people who have paid very close attention to the details on their CV. The one assumption we can fairly make as hirers is that you give a damn about yourself. Therefore, if you haven't bothered with attending to the fine detail ON YOUR OWN BEHALF, what prospect is there that you will attend to the fine detail on behalf of your new employer?

You don't show up to the bank wearing torn jeans and an "All Bank Managers are bastards!" T-shirt and expect to get taken seriously. In today's market, you need to take the look-and-feel aspects of your written representation of yourself very seriously. Yes, of course, the other 85% matters immensely, but people get screened out on the basis of sloppiness in their written representation of themselves just as they get screened out for having scuffed shoes at the interview.

My final 2c - have a design professional from your network give your document a once-over. Hand him/her a red crayon and invite them to make look-and-feel amendments. You will nearly always get a pearl of advice with this approach.

Golden Oldies - So your job is under threat

Reruns from the Dusty Archives No.1: I thought that this one was particularly topical, given these turbulent times.

The lesser-spotted executive with its head in the sand ...

Why do people fail to take action when they see threatening signs in the workplace? One word answer: DENIAL. Denial is one of the key human coping mechanisms; we all go around eating things that are bad for us, smoking, drinking too much or whatever – denying to ourselves the long-term impact of what we are doing. The form of denial we are talking about here is often presented to the world as ‘loyalty.’ “If I am loyal to the organisation and keep my head down, I’ll be fine. They’d be crazy to let me go …”

The only certainties in life used to be death and taxes. Now you can be fairly sure that you will have to change job at some stage in your career. Have to. Even a public service ‘job for life’ can look a little uncertain these days because a bunch of ministers may want to decentralize key government departments down into their constituencies.

If you get a whiff this sort of thing is coming down the pike; suck it up, be brave and take action. Listen to your gut. More to the point, trust your gut! If it’s a 'little picture' problem and you have ANY input or control that may head the issue off at the pass, take control and do it. If it’s a 'big picture' problem and the SEC have carted your Chief Executive off in handcuffs, you need to be getting your lifeboat ready. Stock your lifeboat with:

• A polished, up to the minute CV.

• In-depth knowledge of your sector - who is up/down? Who is hiring/firing? Who is expanding/merging/hostile-takeovering?

• You may wish to 'liberate' copies of the latest research and reports on your sector. If you are going to go this risky and illegal route, be very careful how you do it - companies are [rightly] very protective of research data and customer information.

• A (resurrected) network – the number one tool to keep you abreast of movement and opportunities in your arena.

It may be just your job that is under threat. A new boss who can’t stand you? A change in standards and you are not coming up to speed quickly enough? An actual cataclysmic screw-up of biblical proportions on your part? In this case, you have to decide (a) do I want to save my job and (b) is it actually salvageable? I would start low-key, confidential and off the record:

• First and over-ridingly, make sure you are seen to be committed, enthusiastic and contributing. Don’t expect people to notice your successes, you need to develop a framework so that you can get the good news out there.

• If your skills have been sliding, you need to get serious about keeping them current. Talk to your boss, HR and T&D. Do some computer based training (CBT) or home study to kick you off; but stay current.

• Try and get yourself on to a key project – something that the company isn’t going to walk away from in the short term. Volunteer for the nightmare (but very important) organisational transformation jobbie. The one you KNOW is going to last 12-18 months and they can’t afford to dump anyone involved in it.

If all that fails and the axe seems imminent …

• Review your personnel file (you are entitled to do this at any time).

• Have a quiet chat with your union. If you are not unionised, have an initial conversation with a legal expert.

• Close friends or former colleagues who have moved on – get them onside and try to lay out a balanced picture so they can give you objective advice.

• See if it is possible to have a frank, off-the-record discussion with the ultimate decision maker.

NB: I have many friend and clients who are HR professionals and I love them dearly, but please, please, please remember the HR Department is not your friend; they will ALWAYS report back to your boss. If your company has an Employee Assistance Programme, they may be able to offer confidentiality – check. If you are not 100% sure, talk to a career management specialist, a total outsider.

If the reasons for letting you go are legitimate, you need to negotiate the ‘exit story’ and the subsequent reference. If they are not legitimate, you need to decide can you afford to take on the fight – with all the financial, emotional, and career implications.

Or you can get to like the taste of sand ...

Faking illness - good idea or bad idea

Whether you think faking an illness to get a day or two off work is a good idea or not, I think we can all agree that producing forged note from your doctor in order to justify those days off is firmly in the realm of a bad idea.

But that's just what the website DoctorsNoteStore.com is doing. From their website:

• Next Day Sick Certs - Next Day Sick Note Delivered To Your Door
• Real & Genuine Doctors Stationery
• With Real Doctors Stamp
• We Are The Internets Only Supplier Of Real Doctors Documents for the UK and New Zealand- Explain Your Time Off Work Or School With Our Genuine Doctors Medical Certificates
• Available Blank Or Filled In
• Available With Or Without Genuine Doctors Stamp
• Exact Replicas Of NHS and Private Doctors Certificates Used In Britain - England, Scotland & Wales
• Exact Replicas Of Doctors Certs Used In New Zealand
• Don't Be Fooled By American Download And Print Doctors Certs - They Won't Work !
• Our Fake GP sick notes are exact replicas of the real thing
• Easy Ordering with Online Secure Payment - Often Cheaper Than A Doctors Visit

"... Often cheaper than a doctor's visit." Ouch! I had a chat with the fine folks of Q102 on this topic:

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Personally, I blame Ferris Bueller ...

Carnival of HR 40

The big four oh! From a little gathering of like-minded loonies under the tutelage of her Evilness to the sprawling congregation that the Carny has now become. I remember it when it were nothing more than a little nipper ...

Scott is the ticketmaster [and doesn't he look so dapper!] this time around and somehow manges to corral the flesh-eaters away from the herbivores and stop the children from eating too much candy floss. A great Carnival and well worth a visit when you've just poured yourself a nice long cup of tea.

Click, click, clicky I say!

Moist robots - a belly laugh on a Friday

What every week needs - a really good advertisement. Who cares that they're hawking some service you don't need or want? This is just superb:

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I love Scott Adams' concept of humans being nothing more than moist robots. Here is a stunning little story called "They're made out of meat" by Hugo and Nebula award winner Terry Bisson, reproduced on Thomas Bätzler's website:

"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

Do yourself a favour and click through.

H/T: Graham

Presentation party pieces

The comedian Al Franken performs his party piece at a fundraiser. Al can draw the United States of America, state by state, freehand. It's one of those fairly pointless man things - "Hey look what I can do!" - but when you're running for the Senate, it's a slightly more concrete demonstration of how much you are interested in your country than wearing a lapel pin.

Most trainers and skilled presenters have a couple of these schticks that they can pull out at the drop of a hat. It's a very good idea, because you never know when you are going to have to fill some 'dead air' because of a technical hitch or a late arrival.

Steve Jobs illustrated this really well in his January 2007 keynote. His remote clicker stopped working and so did the backup. He paused for a moment, smiled and said, "They're scrambling backstage right now." He got a big laugh and then led off into a riff about himself a Woz building a TV Jammer and messing with people's TVs while they were watching Star Trek and forcing them into contorted positions trying to fix it. Lots of laughs, a story that related to the glitch Steve was experiencing at that moment and, sure enough, the techies fixed the problem and he went back into his flow. [You can see a short YouTube of this incident here]

Franken is able to make his party piece an integral part of his stump speech. If you can do that, well and good, but even so, have a couple of pieces of sure-fire material that are not technology dependent. What would you do to fill the dead air if:

• All the lights went out in the room?
• Your microphone stopped working?
• The PC crashes or the lamp on the projector blows?
• Your guest speaker is nowhere to be found?
• The markers for the whiteboard were all dry?
• Your presenter notes were not visible to you because you are up on stage and, due to the room setup, your laptop is not in your line of sight?
• There were intermittent 3-minute bursts of loud construction noise from the street outside?

People always used to make fun of my fanatical preparations and backups for big presentations, right up to the point where something went wrong and I was able to continue despite the problem. I was never a boyscout - too much walking - but for presentations, I am Mr 'Be Prepared' guy. What's your party piece? Can you use it in professional settings? And if you have any horrors and catastrophes that you would like to share - whether you overcame them or not - I'd love to hear about them. Do drop me a line or a comment.

Related posts:
Technology failures
H/T for the Franken piece to Crooks & Liars

Finding a position in 'the hidden jobs market' Part 2

The newspapers and news broadcasts are full of doom and gloom about the state of the economy, we’ve seen the highest rate of job losses and the highest number of people signing onto the live register for many a long year here in Ireland. If you find yourself wanting to move job – or having to move job due to difficult trading conditions or a redundancy – what should you do? How do you go about hunting for a job in 2008? Is it the same as it has always been, or has the advent of the internet forever changed the way in which organisations hire people?

There are three keys to success in any job-hunt. They are essential when times are good, but if you are lacking in any one of them when times are bad, your job-hunt will be over before it begins.

"Weaknesses? Yeah, whaddevah ..."

1. Attitude
Someone once said that “Attitude determines altitude” and just because it’s an ancient old cliché, doesn’t mean that it’s not true. For the job-hunt, your attitude is the foundation; it’s the first thing about you that a potential employer will remark upon and if it is in any way ‘off’ that employer will immediately draw a line through your name.

When I lecture on this topic, I always ask this question - “Who counts in the job-hunt process? Who is the process all about?” Allow me to break the answer to you as gently as I do to those audiences:

NOT YOU!

This process is all about the employer – their needs, their worries, their issues, their timeframe. And in the midst of that, no-one, no-one, cares about you. Build your attitude and approach to your job-hunt from that certainty and you won’t go far wrong. I say this because when I am interviewing, an amazing number of job-hunters come across as self-centred, whiny and petulant. You must not fall into this trap.

The other part of the Attitude strand is that it can be very difficult to maintain your equilibrium through the rollercoaster of anticipation, expectation and rejection that a job-hunt can involve. It’s a very topsy-turvy process, conducted by a very cold and unfeeling market. Keeping a positive mental attitude in the face of all of this can be very difficult. But. You. Have. To!

2. Knowledge
So, the job-hunt is all about them, therefore it stands to reason that you need to know all about them – the sector, company, competitors, big issues, the opportunities, the problems, the disposition of the interviewer(s). Knowledge is power in the job-hunt and that includes self-knowledge, market knowledge and even insider knowledge.

You have to do a lot of research and you need a network that is feeding in information to you. Your fundamental approach as a job-hunter is to present yourself saying, “I am the answer to your problems.” If the interviewer asks, “Well, what exactly are our problems?” you’d better have some concise and coherent answers. The company you are applying to lives, sleeps, eats and breathes this business – you have to as well. You need to understand what causes the CEO to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. You need to know the context behind that, the specific causes of it, and be ready to talk about your ideas to solve that problem, so that the CEO can sleep soundly in his/her bed at night. Anything less and you’re not a contender. Why? Because you can bank on the certainty that at least one other applicant [and maybe more] for the job will be this clued-in, so you have to be as well.

You can't afford to go for a passing mark in any aspect of your job-hunt and, when it comes to knowledge and insight into the business/sector, you need to be the highest common denominator. Any interviewer who has ever heard the immortal line, "What is it you guys do here exactly?" will know what I mean ...

3. Preparation
So let's assume that you are brim full of a healthy attitude and you have uncovered all the minutae of the business through your digging and research. What are you going to do with all this? The most common error employers see among job-hunters is plain, simple underpreparedness. Once again, remember that the job-hunt is not about you – it’s about you in the context of all the other applicants the hirers are going to see. There will be a spectrum of preparedness among those candidates and you have to be up at the top end of that spectrum.

Put simply, you need to be more clued-in and better prepared than the other candidates. There are no short cuts here – this is a simple matter of perspiration. For so many jobs now, there’s little or nothing to tell between candidates when it comes to qualifications, training or even experience, so the hirers are frequently judging on the intangibles. One key thing that interviewers will be scoring you on is your team fit – you can’t fiddle with that, nor should you. You are who you are, don’t wear a mask in the interview, be who you are and let them make their decision on that basis. But the other big intangible factor that hirers use as a decider is your professionalism – and that you can control.

I see numerous candidates come into the interview room flustered, badly-presented and with a few half-formed ideas that they have never said out loud before. Job interviews are largely predictable, so it really is inexcusable for you to demonstrate ill-preparedness in answer to any of the chestnut questions. Likewise, if you are trying to position yourself as any sort of player in your arena, it is equally inexcusable for you to demonstrate ill-preparedness in response to issue-based questions.

In his Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote that in order to enter battle unafraid, you need to know three things:

• Yourself

• Your opponent

• The terrain

I meet very few candidates who display all three. The good news is, this isn’t rocket science, it’s donkey work. You need to be able to cogently and concisely tell me who you are, what you have to offer, what contributions you have made in previous employments and why you are the best person for this job. Along the way, you can expect to have to field questions on the state of my organisation, the issues that are affecting it now and the problems and opportunities that are coming down the pike.

Not rocket science as I say – so while it is simple, it’s not easy.