Eye contact with an interviewer during an interview conveys many different messages; the most important being confidence and self-esteem which are both important qualities to have as an employee. The interviewer is also able to gauge your interest level based on the amount of eye contact you make. In today’s discussion we are sharing interview tips on eye contact.

Build Trust

Eye contact during an interview is extremely necessary in order to help convey sincerity as well as honesty. If you continuously avoid eye contact, you will have a hard time building a rapport with the interviewer. Trust will be hard to establish because it is difficult to trust someone who you feel is avoiding making eye contact with you. The interviewer will think that you are trying to come up with a lie to the question they have just asked you. 

Show Interest

Eye contact is a really easy way to convey your interest during an interview. When you are excited and happy, your eyes naturally tend to dilate and exhibit a certain amount of sparkle. Which will help the interviewer pick up on how excited you truly are about the opportunity. Avoiding eye contact will make the interviewer think that you are not interested in the job, company, salary or worse—them.

Look, Don’t Stare – Interview Tips Eye Contact

Even though maintaining a good amount of eye contact is extremely important, remember to look and not stare. There are certain tactics that you can use in order to maintain a natural eye contact level. Take a short pause and look away to think about the question that was asked. Breaking eye contact to think of your answer shows that you are confident and interested enough to think about the question before you answer. You may even consider bringing a notebook to the interview. This shows your interviewer that you are interested enough to take notes and learn about the company. It helps create an effective and natural opportunity to look away from the interviewer. Often times there are more than one interviewer. It is important to make eye contact with everyone that is present in the room, and refer your answers to everyone, not just the person who asked the question.

Interviewing can be daunting, but you need to realize that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. In order to build good rapport and trust with the interviewer or within any relationship in life, eye contact and body language helps play an integral role. Use the information in this blog, Interview Tips Eye Contact, to prepare for your next job interview.

Today we will be talking about how to mitigate job search frustrations. The process of job searching is hard work. It is very taxing and can be a real challenge given today’s competitive job market. Here are some helpful tips on how to stay positive in your job search: 

Write Down your Goals

Take advantage of this time to make a list of your goals, big and small.  Actually putting them on paper will force you to think about what you want to achieve, and will motivate you to reach them.  It’s almost like a to-do list for your career; it will be very cathartic to check things off your list, which will in turn motivate you throughout your job search.  Writing down your goals can also help you to find links between certain interests which may give you some other ideas on careers options you may not have considered before.     

Stay Organized

Use a notebook or spreadsheet to keep track of all of your applications.  Often times when you are searching for a job, it can almost feel like you are sending out resume after resume into the abyss, especially when you don’t receive any response back.  Staying organized will help you keep track and physically see which positions you have applied to.  Be sure to customize each resume and cover letter for each specific job, and ensure you follow up with each application, unless the job posting says otherwise.  Your spreadsheet can include information such as: job title, company & contact, date you applied, date to follow up, and outcome. 

Don’t be too Hard on Yourself

It is often easy to adopt a negative attitude and become frustrated when searching for a job.  It’s common to start thinking that you’re unemployable, which only adds to the stress of the search.  Try to focus on the positive aspects of the job search even if you have not secured an interview.  You may be building a great network, and learning more about what careers specifically interest you.  Just because you have not secured a job, or an interview yet, does not mean no one wants to hire you.  Focus on your strongest qualities and skills and how you can make these stand out to employers.

Take Days Off

It can be frustrating and emotionally exhausting to be checking job boards and sending out resumes every day.  To mitigate job search frustrations, you need to take some time for yourself, and take a break from the stress of job searching.  If you don’t you run the risk of burning yourself out, which will only add to your frustrations and negative feelings.  It can also cause you to lose sight of your main objective, which is to find a job that is the right fit, not just to find any ‘job.’  Have scheduled days off – ‘free days’ – where you don’t think about resumes or interviews.  Taking a few days off here and there can help you to refocus and come back fresh and ready to continue your search. 

It’s important to be able to mitigate job search frustrations and try to work through them.  By following these tips, you’ll be able to handle the stress of the job search and persevere to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Social media has been trending for years. With new and improved social media outlets you are able to stay connected all the time. However, social media does have it’s evils and can affect your job search. Here are some social media do’s and don’ts for your job search:

Do’s:

• Create and maintain social media profiles to expand and grow your network. Create a LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profile. Presently, you can do a job search on any of those outlets and potentially find jobs.
• Take the time to join groups that pertain to your industry. Like or follow companies in your industry. This will help you expand and grow your network. Potentially connecting you to your next job opportunity. And stay updated and current on your profiles with your information.
• Google yourself. Search yourself and try to find out what is out there on you. You want to try and keep your privacy settings on the social media sites on high. There is a lot of sharing that happens and if you don’t want it in the hands of your potential employer then reassess your privacy settings.

Don’ts

• Post opinions that will reflect poorly on you. The staffing specialist or potential employer can do a quick Google search on you. With a click of button they may be able to see these things and deem you unworthy of the job. Be meticulous of your postings.
• Post an inappropriate profile photo of yourself. Keep it classy – get a nice clean cut picture of yourself. Also don’t post pictures of your pets as your profile picture either. Even though your social media site may not have anything to do with your job search. You can be searched and it may come up – be smart and keep it professional.
• Forget their are other social media outlets. By now there at thousands of outlets that can be explored. Don’t limit yourself to just the popular ones. There could be outlets that have been created specifically for your industry. Take the time to explore them.

Social media has it’s pros and it also has it’s cons. Follow the do’s and don’ts and it will help with your next job search!