critical mistakes

[meenakshi sundar]

Hi

Johanna Rothman ,In your opinion what are the critical mistakes that aspirants do in today's job market place?

Thanks
Meenakshi Sundaram

[Campbell Ritchie]

If you go through this forum and look at the questions you will see many. Two recent posts suggested possible problems:-

1: Leaving a job after a very short time

2: Lying about job problems (the recent thread suggests the person concerned did not lie).

[Ulf Dittmer]

Leaving a job after a very short time

If there's a pattern of it, yes. It can happen to anyone to find that a company or a role is very different from how it was presented or imagined, so if it happened once I wouldn't worry about it.

What is a red flag for me when hiring is multiple jobs of a year or so. If someone has gone through 4 jobs in 5 years, then I figure the odds of that person staying with my company are as low as with the previous companies. Given the expense in everybody's time that bringing someone on board entails, I'd probably not hire that person.

[Johanna Rothman]

Certainly, a pattern of leaving a job after a short period of time is a mistake. The question is why. If you have been unfortunate enough to have been laid off several times as one candidate I interviewed had been, you have several choices:
1. You can treat each job as if it was a short-term contract.
2. You can address the topic in a cover letter.
3. You can explain it to a sympathetic hiring manager.

What you can not do is lie. If anyone catches you lying, you are likely to be thrown out. That is another critical mistake.

Another critical mistake is "spray-and-pray." You are not right for every job. You do not need to send your resume everywhere. You need a target list of say, 25 companies. Then, you need to network to find your sympathetic hiring manager in those 25 companies.

That is how you will find your next job.

[meenakshi sundar]

Well said Rothman

Some times on the ground situation is quite contrary,you should get lucky to have a sympathetic Interviewer to explain the circumstances as to why you had to quit in the first place.

Thank
Meenakshi Sundaram