Interview Tips Archives - Page 3 of 6

Workplace Conflict: How To Deal With It

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A recent study of remote workers found that 80% of respondents experienced conflict in a remote environment. If you broaden the focus to all types of workplaces, another study found that 85% of employees at all levels have experienced workplace conflict to some degree.

That means that most of us have dealt with our fair share of workplace drama.

Conflict at work is inevitable, but even though we can’t entirely avoid it, we can become better at resolving our disputes. How well you and your team handle conflict can make a world of difference to your organization, even when there are intimidating situations to address.

Have no fear because we’re diving into workplace conflicts — including what they are, how to spot them, and how to help resolve them.

What Is Workplace Conflict?

Workplace conflict occurs when there’s a disagreement amongst employees due to opposing interests, personalities, beliefs, or ideas. Conflict in the workplace is natural and bound to occur when you have people of different backgrounds and perspectives working side-by-side.

Conflict can be expressed in various ways, including lack of cooperation, verbal insults, bullying, anger, poor quality or delayed work, project failure, and more.

You don’t have to fear workplace conflict in your organization. It’s natural and can even be healthy when dealt with appropriately. Let’s explore the types of conflict in the workplace, signs of conflict, and tips for conflict resolution to help you tackle disputes in your organization.

Types Of Conflict In The Workplace?

Yes, not all conflicts are the same — there are different types of conflict in the workplace. Let’s take a look at some of the most common types to watch out for:

1. Personality Conflicts

Clashes due to different personality types are some of the most common types of workplace conflicts. These conflicts are impossible to avoid because we all have our own personalities and won’t get along with every person we meet. Personality-based conflicts can be challenging and frustrating, but it’s beneficial to learn how to work with individuals whose approaches and perspectives are different from your own.

2. Interdependent Task-Based Conflicts

Think about the processes that help your organization stay afloat. Often, there are a lot of cross-functional processes that take place within interdependent workstreams. For example, your IT department may be responsible for setting up accounts and technology for new hires once HR informs them of the new hire’s start date. But what if HR forgets to tell IT about a new hire and the new employee arrives on their first day and isn’t set up and ready to work? These types of interdependencies can be frustrating and cause conflict, particularly amongst departments.

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10 Creative Interview Questions You’re Probably Not Using

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When it comes to hiring within the commercial real estate industry, there’s a lot at stake. How do you know that good first impression is really a rock star hire and not a poser? The cost of a bad hire can be startling, so knowing creative interview questions can be a valuable skill. The goal is to have a genuine conversation that fosters a better understanding of that person.

So, to find out what you need to know, what sort of interview questions will get a candidate to open up about their experience and skills? How can you find out if they’re really right for your unique needs? It helps to get creative.

Canned Conversations

Part of the problem with interview questions, is there are only a handful of them commonly asked in job interviews. So, prospective candidates can easily look them up and craft a scripted response for each of them.

The result?

A lot of canned talking points and speaking past one another. It’s entirely unhelpful! To really make it in CRE, you need better than that. You need creativity to flip the script and open a helpful dialogue. You need interview questions that really work.

So, without further ado, here are ten of the most creative interview questions that most hiring managers in commercial real estate never think to ask.

Productive and Creative Interview Questions

1. What are some of the qualities you like most in yourself?

The qualities someone prides themselves in are most likely the qualities they will work to excel in. Even if they’re not as strong in those qualities as they think, their confidence will become a self-fulfilling prophecy over time. And they just might give an example or two of these qualities in action at their last job.

2. What adjectives would your co-workers use to describe you?

Similarly, the way a candidate believes they are perceived is important in how they view themselves. And they just might be a bit more accurate when discussing the perspective of others.

3. If magic exists, how would you define it?

The great thing about this creative interview question is how it touches on their passions and gives the interviewer an opportunity to gage the way the candidate responds (behavioral interview questions can predict the future). Are they literal or figurative? Do they pause to think or shoot from the hip? Are they imaginative or a clock puncher?

4. If you had $10,000 to help the needy, what would you do?

Questions that aren’t about work are great for bypassing scripted responses and touching on the true soul of a candidate. This one helps you understand what motivates them and what kind of person they are.

5. What led you to choose this line of work?

Uncovering what fulfills someone in this particular area of CRE is helpful in understanding their cultural fit as well as their long-term potential.

6. If you couldn’t live in the US, what other country would you live in, and why?

Before asking this question, determine just what you are looking for and what you hope to learn. There is no correct answer to this question, but the way it’s handled will tell volumes about how a prospect will behave on the fly and in creative situations.

7. What’s your favorite movie, and why?

Again, this quirky question doesn’t have a right answer. But it will help you better understand the heart of your prospective employee and what drives them.

8. Let’s pretend you are interviewing me; what questions would you ask?

This one literally flips the script by reversing roles for a moment. With the candidate completely off guard, pay special attention to the focus of their questions as well as their demeanor in a managerial role.

9. If you were one of our properties, which type would you be?

This one only works if you deal in multiple property types, of course. But the responses will lend keen insights into how well they know your business, your properties, and what they value most in your company.

10. What is something you recently learned?

This creative interview question should include a time limit during which you will observe the way the candidate organizes their response, checks in for feedback along the way, and expresses emotion. Much can be gleaned from listening to your candidate relate a short lecture or moral story.

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Making A Good First Impression

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During the interview process, you have the opportunity to make a good first impression by the way you speak, act and how well you listen. Making the most of this opportunity is important to landing a job and winning over your new colleagues. In this article, you’ll learn what a first impression is, why a good first impression is important, how to make a good first impression during a job interview and how first impressions can affect you in the workplace.

Define A First Impression?

A first impression is the initial consideration or judgment someone makes about who you are after their first interaction with you. Several factors may influence someone’s first impression of you, such as how you look, what you wear, how you speak and your overall emotional state. When you are looking for a new position, how you present yourself on your application, in your resume and during an interview can all impact the recruiter and hiring manager’s first impression of who you are.

Why You Need A Good First Impression

First impressions are important because human nature compels us to hold on to our initial impression of someone and we can find it difficult to change this opinion even when the other person presents us with evidence contrary to that belief. This makes it very important for us to know the impression we portray of ourselves when we first meet someone in an interview or the workplace.

How To Make Good First Impression

Follow these steps to ensure you make a good first impression during your interview:

Prepare Beforehand
Arrive on Time
Dress Professionally
Use Good Posture
Use a Friendly Greeting

1. Prepare Beforehand

The best thing you can do to make a good first impression during an interview is to be well-prepared for the interview when you arrive. Before your interview, research the company and know what they do, what your responsibility would be in the position you are applying for, what the company’s core values are and how you can add value to the company. Showing you have done your research can leave the interviewer with the impression that you are serious about the position you have applied to.

You can also role-play with a friend or family member to practice interview questions you expect the interviewer to ask. Prepare answers to both technical interview questions related to the responsibilities of the job and behavioral interview questions. Practicing answers to interview questions will show your confidence during the interview.

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Answering The “What Is Your Desired Salary?” Question

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What’s your desired salary? It’s a question that can make any job candidate’s stomach drop, whether they’re reading it on an application or hearing it from an interviewer. And I completely understand the stress around this—you don’t want to give a lowball answer and have to settle for less money than you’re worth, but you also don’t want to seem like you have crazy-high, unrealistic expectations.

Here’s what you need to know about answering the desired salary question in the way that will benefit you most in the long run.

Define Desired Salary

Desired salary is simply the amount of money you’d like to make at your new job. It’s also the realistic amount of money you expect to make at your new job based on your level of skill and experience. (Otherwise, we’d probably all have a desired salary of $10 million.)

When a potential employer asks you this question, they’re expecting an honest, realistic answer—but giving your answer too soon could actually end up hurting your chances of making the amount of money you’re worth. More on that in a minute. First, let’s talk about how to figure out your true desired salary.

Ways To Determine Your Desired Salary

Before you can even think about giving a concrete answer to this question on an application or in an interview, you should have an actual number in mind—even if you don’t reveal that number right away (or at all). You should know what you’re aiming for so you can be confident about the salary offers you will and won’t accept. But I get that it can be difficult to land on a number or range, so here are a few factors that will help you figure it out:

1. Research Is KEY

A quick Google search can usually tell you the industry standards for salary in your desired position, and most job search websites will let you search for the standards in your geographical location as well. Sometimes pay ranges vary depending on state or region. The size of the company you’re looking at and its level of success will also affect the pay scale.

Another way to research is by asking other employees in similar roles what their pay is like, but keep in mind that it’s personal information that not everyone might be comfortable sharing. You could also ask any recruiters in the field (who don’t work at the company you’re applying to) if they can share the average salaries they see for the type of position you want.

2. Determine Your Skill Level And Experience

If you know me, you know I’m a big believer that you don’t have to get a four-year degree to get a great-paying job—and I stand by that! But education and training will still be taken into consideration at many companies, depending on the role. Having more years of experience working in a given industry will usually mean higher pay too. So, even if you don’t have a ton of education but you’ve spent years getting hands-on experience in jobs that are related to the one you want now, your pay should reflect that.

Another thing to consider is skill level. Of course, you can expect to be paid less for entry-level skill than for high skill. But skill level isn’t necessarily equivalent to the amount of time you’ve spent working in an industry—some people graduate from college with a higher level of skill than somebody who’s already been working in the field for a while. Be honest with yourself about your skill level, and if you know you’ve got a competitive edge, factor that into the amount you think you should be paid.

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How to Land Your First Job

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As you’re about to enter the work world, you might be so excited about the possibilities that lie ahead you haven’t given much thought to, well, actually landing one of those possibilities. A job search — especially your first one — can be tough work, wading through the unfamiliar waters of resume writing and job search sites, plus intuiting exactly what a potential employer wants while sidestepping interview landmines.

Relax! This is a totally doable task with this first-job guide at your side. Here are a few tips on how to land your first job:

Where to Start

Before you even think about submitting your resume to a prospective employer and land your first job, you have got a lot of work to do. You’ll need to tailor your resume to the job, reconnect with your references, come up with keywords to help you hone your search, create some business cards, and so much more.

How to Look for a Job

It’s not enough to search for an entry-level job. To find the right job for you — and to increase your chances of scoring an interview — you have to employ some job search strategies. For example, did you know that Monday is the best day of the week to look for a job? Or that you should always schedule interviews for the morning? Networking can prove to be very helpful as well! These tips and tricks will get you in the door and land your first job.

How to Discover the Right Keywords to Include in Your Resume

Have you ever heard of applicant tracking systems? It’s when a company uses a computer program to filter through applications and resumes, weeding out the candidates who aren’t a fit — simply because they didn’t use the right words. That’s right: your resume could be chucked in the proverbial trash before it ever reaches a human’s eyes, all because you didn’t use a word the system was searching for. How do you know which words to use? A good place to start is the job description.

Determine What Employers Are Looking For

Depressing statistic: recruiters and hiring managers only spend an average of six seconds reading your resume. (We know, it hurts.) That’s not a lot of time to capture their attention. That’s why it’s so important to know what potential employers are looking for in those few precious seconds, and put them in your resumes. Consider: technical skills, soft skills, examples of impact, certifications, and quantifiable success.

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The Best Salary Negotiation Tips

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Are you negotiating a job offer or a raise in pay in your current role? If so, a lot depends on what you do right now, before you even begin salary negotiations. Do your homework and learn about these salary negotiation tips, and you could wind up with more money in your pocket and maybe some life-changing perks and benefits, too.

How Much Are You Worth?

Especially if you’re negotiating with a prospective employer, you need to find out how much your skills and experience are worth in today’s job market. Take the time to research salaries long before you even begin discussing pay. That way you will be prepared to make your case and land a job offer that’s realistic and reasonable.

What Are Salary Negotiations?

Salary negotiations involve discussing a job offer with a potential employer to settle on a salary and benefits package that’s in line with the market (and hopefully, that meets or exceeds your needs).

The most productive salary negotiations occur between people who realize that they have a common goal: to get the employee paid appropriately for their skills and experience.

Negotiations can include all aspects of compensation, including salary, bonuses, stock options, benefits, perks, vacation time, and more.

How to Calculate Your Take-Home Pay

When you’re considering a job offer, it’s important to know the bottom line. How much will you be bringing home after taxes, FICA deductions for Social Security and Medicare, and contributions to health insurance and retirement benefits?2 That number is your net pay.

You can use free salary and paycheck calculators to estimate your net pay and figure out roughly how much you’ll bring home in your paycheck. It’s important to get a ballpark figure before you negotiate or compare job offers.

Salary Negotiation Tips

1. Know Your Responsibilities: If you are negotiating for your current role, you should review your current job description and note what you are doing above and beyond that.

2. Wait for the Appropriate Time: Once you know what you should be earning, how do you go about getting it? Start by being patient. When interviewing for a new position, do your best not to bring up compensation until the employer makes you an offer.

3. Resist Throwing out the First Number: If you’re asked what your salary requirements are, say that they are open based upon the position and the overall compensation package. Or tell the employer you’d like to know more about the responsibilities and the challenges of the job prior to discussing salary.

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Prepare to Answer the “Why Should We Hire You?” Interview Question

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Every interview question is an attempt to gather information to inform this hiring decision. Many interviewers will also specifically ask you to make your case with one of these questions:

Why would you be a good fit for this position?
What makes you unique?
Why are you the best person for this job?
Explain why your background and experience would be a good fit for this job.

To close the deal on a job offer, you MUST be prepared with a concise summary of the top reasons to choose you. Even if your interviewer doesn’t ask one of these questions in so many words, you should be prepared to tell them about yourself and communicate your top reasons for why you are the best person for this job.

The interviewer’s job is to hire the best person for the position. Most of the candidates that make it to the interview stage are qualified for the job. The winning candidate must be more than qualified, especially in a very competitive job market.

With this question, your interviewer is asking you to sell him on you and your status as the best person for the position. Make his job easier by convincing him that:

You can do the work and deliver exceptional results
You will fit in beautifully and be a great addition to the team
You possess a combination of skills and experience that make you stand out
Hiring you will make him look smart and make his life easier

Why Should We Hire You?

This is your chance to wow them with your highlight reel. Your answer should summarize the top three or four best reasons to hire you. It’s better to have three or four strong reasons with memorable descriptions and/or examples than to rattle off a laundry list of twelve strengths without context.

This is an opportunity to reiterate your most impressive strengths and/or describe your most memorable selling points, tailored to align with the top requirements in the job description. Your 3-4 bullet points could include a combination of the following:

Industry experience
Experience in performing certain tasks or duties
Technical skills
Soft skills
Key accomplishments
Awards/accolades
Education/training

Accomplishments and success stories are always good bets, especially if you can describe how a key accomplishment (a successful marketing campaign, for example) demonstrates a desired competency (creativity, results-orientation).

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Common Interview Mistakes and How to Recuperate

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Whether you stumbled on a tough question, shared way too much (or too little) information or slipped too far out of your professional persona, you’re certain that you’ve just blown any chance of landing your dream job. There are common interview mistakes that make many people feel like this.

Before you start doing your best to erase the entire experience from your mind and move on, consider the possibility that you might still be able to salvage your chances. Some of these corrections can be made mid-interview, while others can be applied after the fact.

UnAble To Think Of A Response

We’ve all been there: That well-rehearsed answer you delivered so confidently in the shower disappears from your mind when you’re seated across from an intimidating CEO.

If you find yourself facing one of these “brain freezes” common interview mistakes, all is not lost. Try this strategy to get your thoughts—and words—rolling again.

Ask the interviewer to clarify the question. This will give you some precious time to regroup.

Ask for time to think. There’s nothing wrong with requesting a few seconds to consider the question and formulate an answer. In fact, a good employer will respect that you’re taking the interview seriously and thinking before you speak.

Say something. Delivering a partial answer is better than nothing. And if you’re still drawing a blank, be honest and ask if you can come back to the question later.

Of course, a bit of extra preparation and practice will go a long way toward reducing your odds of going blank when it really counts.

Not Directly Answering A Question That Was Asked

This is often a result of the first common interview mistake we mentioned. When your mind goes blank, you might either evade a question completely or ramble on without providing a specific, relevant response.

If you realize the gaffe mid-interview, try to recover by steering the conversation back to the tricky question (see a strategy from the first mistake above).

If you cringe at the memory after you’ve already left, you can send a follow-up email with a more thorough answer.

Saying The Wrong Name of the Interviewer or Company

If you’re interviewing with multiple firms and people from various departments, this is an understandable flub. While it may seem mortifying at first, all may not be lost. Recover quickly by apologizing for the error, chalking it up to nervousness and excitement about the opportunity, and then moving on.

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5 Common Resume Mistakes to Avoid

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Effective resumes feature killer content, consistent formatting, and an attractive design. Careless mistakes, lack of detail, and general sloppiness can hurt your chances of making it to the interview, even if you’re fully qualified for the position. Here are five common resume mistakes to avoid – and tips on how to keep them out of your resume.

1. Grammatical Errors and Typos

By the time you finish writing, editing, and tweaking your resume, it’s easy to gloss over misspellings and grammatical errors. However, those mistakes can make you seem careless to a hiring manager. Correctable slipups send the message to potential employers that you lack attention to detail and don’t check your work. It’s a surefire way to torpedo your chances of securing the job you want.

Good writers follow a simple rule: everyone needs an editor. The simplest way to combat spelling and other errors is to have someone qualified give your resume the once-over. You can also ask a family member or friend to read through your resume and look for any errors. To a fresh set of eyes, spelling mistakes and grammar issues will leap off the page, and a second opinion can be invaluable on your resume.

2. Being Vague

When listing your experience, you want to show both what you’ve done and what you’ve achieved. Not everyone has a shelf full of awards, and most hiring managers don’t expect them. However, if you’ve helped create value, reduced inefficiency, cut costs, or increased the bottom line, be sure to say so.

Some people may counsel you to phrase all your duties as accomplishments, but we recommend a more natural mix of what you’ve done and how you’ve helped your previous employers. When in doubt, keep it simple and be specific by using data and metrics.

3. Too Many Needless Details

Knowing which details to cut can be tough. Start by removing any information that is irrelevant to the job description. Extraneous information includes professional and educational experiences that don’t apply to the position. This “padding” won’t help you secure the job, and it can obscure your relevant experience and credentials.

Again, customize your resume each time you apply for a position. Look at the job ad and include the skills and experience it calls for prominently. Doing so will require a few minutes of editing each resume, but the extra time will pay off. A tailored resume shows initiative.

4. Lack of Focus

Employers screen your resume in as few as six seconds, so make sure your professional summary sums up your abilities in a few sentences. Include a short description below your header – one or two sentences is ideal – that draws in the reader and showcases your abilities and talents.

5. Too Long or Too Short

Too often, job seekers with a decade or more of professional experience will cram all that experience into a one-page resume. On the flip side, jobseekers with less — or even zero — relevant professional experience will try to find a way to fill multiple pages. A rule of thumb is to have one resume page per decade of work experience.

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Signs You Aced The Job Interview…Or You Didn’t Ace It

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You just wrapped up a job interview for a role you’re excited about. You think it went well. But wait, did it?

Now that you’ve had some time to take a breath and reflect on that conversation, the confusion and self-doubt have kicked in. You’re chewing your nails and overanalyzing every answer, offhand remark, and facial expression, searching for clues about whether or not you can expect a second interview. Were you the candidate who stood out the most from the interviews?

You aren’t alone—we all do it. The job search is filled with a lot of uncertainty, and there’s no surefire way to get inside your interviewer’s head. Fortunately, there are a few signs you aced the job interview (and conversely, there are some clues you can pick up on if it didn’t go so well).

Signs You Aced the Job Interview

Before we jump in, a friendly disclaimer: When it comes to the interview process, there’s really no such thing as foolproof signs. While the things we’re about to discuss are generally positive, they aren’t a guarantee. Similarly, if these things didn’t happen in your interview, that doesn’t mean it was a disaster. There are always exceptions.

Got it? Good. Now, let’s talk about some signs that you likely hooked that interviewer and are one step closer to landing that job.

Your Interview Ran Longer Than Scheduled

Your interview was scheduled for half an hour, but it was closer to 45 minutes or an hour before your conversation wrapped up. Chances are, your interviewer is interested in you and was highly engaged in the information you were providing.

Your Conversation Flowed Naturally

While this is easy to forget when your nerves are running high, interviews really are human-to-human conversations. Kaplan explains that if your interaction flowed more like a natural discussion and less like an interrogation, that’s a positive. Polite small talk and some friendly back-and-forth indicate that the interviewer was not only interested in you, but also felt a certain level of comfort.

Just be aware that some companies conduct very structured interviews with set lists of questions asked in a certain order to satisfy diversity and inclusion criteria or abide by other company policies, so don’t get discouraged if your interviewer seemed to stick to the script.

Your Follow-Up Email Got a Quick Response

You know the importance of sending a thank you note after your interview, and you took that advice and wrote a friendly, personalized email. That message received a response almost immediately to thank you for your time and to tell you that they’ll be in touch soon.

A quick reply is confirmation that you’re top of mind and they want to keep you engaged in the hiring process. Even better than that? There was an email about next steps in your inbox before you even had a chance to press “send” on your own thank you note.

Signs Your Interview Didn’t Go So Well

Now let’s talk about the flipside: You have this sinking feeling that maybe your interview didn’t go as well as you hoped. If you noticed some of the following signs, they could mean that you need to continue your search and prepare to nail future interviews with other employers.

Keep in mind that nothing is a guarantee, and the only way you’ll know for sure is when you get either a polite rejection email or hear that the company wants to invite you to do a second interview, an interview assignment, or another next step.

Your Interviewer Wasn’t Paying Attention

If your interviewer appears to be somewhere else mentally or you notice them looking at another screen during your video interview, Kaplan says, they might be disinterested or disengaged from your conversation.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they were taking a quick look at your resume or their list of interview questions. So don’t place too much weight into a brief distraction or break in eye contact. That’s way different from a lack of commitment to your entire conversation.

You Didn’t Have an Opportunity to Ask Questions

If you were given the opportunity to ask questions but your interviewer provided really curt or vague answers, that’s also not a great sign for your candidacy or for that employer’s commitment to respectful and transparent communication.

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