Preparing For the Interview: The Sweet Smell of Excess?

My mother’s perfume

I love perfume. So did my mom. It must be genetic.

As a child, my merchant seaman father would come home with gifts of fragrance from around the world and I used to love rummaging through mom’s dressing table testing for treasures of scent. There in that alchemist’s collection of  mysterious bottles  lived the captured souls of romance  with names like “My Sin”, “Tabu” and my favorite, “Shalimar“. To this day whenever I can find it, I enjoy daubing on a little of the classic Avon fragrances. Perfume is the most affordable of luxuries and the essence of womanliness.

Most times, job loss  means shedding things to save money, so there is a sad, gradual loss or downgrade of items like hairdresser appointments, salon shampoo, new clothes, new shoes,  makeup, and finally perfume. If I am rendering the research correctly, the human sense of smell is the most powerfully evocative of  all the senses. One whiff of warm granny apples with cinnamon and suddenly there is a desire to run up the front steps of the “old house” two at a time. Caught downwind from “Old Spice“, tears well up as it conjures warm memories because that was “his” scent.

On an emotional level, I get it. One never knows what dreams or nightmares will be called forth in an interviewer by an applicant’s wearing a certain scent. Know, however, that scent is part of  image strategy. Beware. The choice of scent must be contemporary, tasteful, complementary to business wear/hairstyles and light. Wearing some scents that were popular a generation ago actually say, “frumpy and old-timer-ish”;carries peppermints in the bottom of her hand bag. Scent could give your age away in that case.

Dangerous drink, intoxicating perfume?

Then again, interviews  held in tiny, ventless inner  rooms dictate that neither recruiter nor applicant wear highly scented cosmetic products to avoid triggering allergies or the gag reflex. I have stopped thinking that the often given advice against wearing my incense woods-heavy signature  fragrance in interviews as another shameful loss of freedom in the USA and started thinking of it as a courtesy; like graciously not sharing  information too intimate for that venue. It might just be best to keep this emotionally loaded potion bottled up on the dresser until the ink on the new-hire papers is dry.

Gleanings on wearing scent in an interview or at work

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/recipe-for-conflict-perfume-v-bo-20120501-1xwv8.html

http://www.volt.com/Blog/Should_you_wear_perfume_or_cologne_to_an_interview_.aspx

http://www.examiner.com/article/is-wearing-perfume-or-cologne-on-a-job-interview-a-bad-decision

Related articles

• What’s Your Signature Scent? (bryonysbrain.wordpress.com)
• Definition: Drydown (bellasugar.com)

Interview Red Flags

The Interview (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Danger, Will Robinson! This could be a bad employee!

It’s time to hop back into the discussion about the interview. It is a given that the seeker is at the place where candidates are in process of being chosen to compete in the great arena–the interview(s) and the seeker is one of the chosen.  After all, this is what all the hub-bub is about, bub: being one of those too big to pass through the “coarse sieves” of the “first cattle call selections” . Now the finer sieves come out.

Company and independent  recruiters give the thumbs down on the following  ”red flag” parade of behaviors–things that make a candidate look like a potential bad hire–in interviews. This list is a compilation of all the red flag behaviors I have learned to avoid. This wisdom is  collected from seminars, recruiters, online articles and many job searches. Of course, lack of contact information on the resume or an email address like, “honeylocust.com” reduces the chances of being called into the arena to zero!

Applicant States of Being

Did I really say THAT

• currently unemployed
• Mature worker
• Worker of different gender, race, color or weight than expected
• arriving for interview late
• disorganized
•  inappropriate attire
• out-of date appearance
• smoke/alcohol on breath
• perfume/cologne
• Lack of preparation
• nervousness
• over confidence/over familiarity
• desperation
•  negative attitude
• low energy

From a Quick Look At the Resume

• Out of date resume
• Mature candidate
• Pure functional resume
• long gaps between jobs termination(s)
• unstable job history -  “job hopping”
• social media reputation
• overqualified (setting your bar too low)

hauling emotional baggage into the interview

Don’t Ask, Don’t Reveal?

• Prison terms
• mental illness hospitalization
• “Monk”-isms
• conditions and health issues
• Child/Adult care issues

Yes, it might take a few posts to get through all of these, but I feel it well worth the time.

Related articles

• Do You Really Want To Know What My Real Weaknesses Are? (victoree.wordpress.com)
• 7 Steps to Finding & Hiring the Best Employees for Your Company (grasshopper.com)
• Not Being Offered a Job is Not a Personal Rejection (hiringlibrarians.com)
• Recruiters Look at Resumes for 6 Seconds; Here’s How to Impress Them (bostinno.com)
• The Horror of the Resume (jamkib.wordpress.com)

Notes From A Bad Teacher About Education Careers

Education Calculator on Notebook (Photo credit: nniknak)

Some people seriously consider going into education as their “encore career“.

Let me whisper something in your ear: fuggedabowdit.

Ask me what prompts that venomous phrase. I want to do my part in strengthening education by preventing one more idealistic, romantic  person with the wrong personality configuration from becoming one of the 50% of educators who leave the profession in the first five years of practice (and head off some chocolate OD’s and soggy-pillow-at-3am moments).

Yes, truly monstrous people continue to slip through the cracks and end up in education  judging from some of the  lurid stories in the news these days about abusive teachers. However, this is not that kind of discussion. This is intended  to influence people who ought not teach lower school grades to put the cap back on the pen before the application gets filed to any system anywhere. This is about the “rightness of fit” issue in the job search. I am lifting the example of early education because it is what I know, but the lessons can be widely applied to jobs anywhere:

when you don’t belong somewhere, you don’t belong. Move on.

In earlier posts this year there is a discussion about discovering the most appropriate place of employment. I collected the discussion in the section of the blog, “Victoree’s Shape-Shifting Job Gypsy Card Game”. Click on the tab  to review.

While re-doing my MBTI assessment with a professional counselor it finally dawned on me why I had so little success as an early educator. Education systems, like many other companies, slide up and down the scale of being candid about  fully disclosing why an employee “didn’t work out”. It seems companies rather go to great lengths to couch  bad comments on the “final report card” in vague terms, probably to deflect a possible wrongful termination/discrimination lawsuit.

The truth surfaced for me in cross referencing the results and finding several of the same traits  surfacing across several assessments, including the MBTI, skills, and strengthfinder2.0.  I came to the conclusion that I am basically unsuited for the lower school classroom. No shame.

The release of that shame felt like finally being able to wear a pair of jeans one size smaller. Releasing the shame might even make my dream of shopping in that lower-sized section come true! (You know stress makes you fat, don’t you?) I made a cowardly decision to look for “job security” and “normalcy” early in the job search and ended up in a place where I did not belong.

Wherever the ”ah ha” breaks through,early or late in the job search, give yourself a gift and let the revelation “work you”.

Related articles

• Relationship Between MBTI Type and Religious Preference (drdianehamilton.wordpress.com)
• Indeed increases job search traffic lead (indeed.com)
• How to Become a Teacher (answers.com)
• CAPT Training Programs Approved for Continuing Education in Professional Licensing, Qualification, and Certification (prweb.com)

Just Being Me: “Default Activity”

a featured illustration from Shay's Word Garden on Blogspot

Some people actually cannot imagine themselves alive on earth having nowhere to go every day that promises a monetary reward at the end of a week. It was from graduation to first job. No space between. It is simply mind-boggling for some folk to consider there could possibly be other places to be during the day and none of them involve parking on the living room sofa watching daytime TV.  ”Being me” happens in the spaces not filled up by “the job”. Satisfying the need for a more meaningful life while having a low-paid, boring job causes this space.”Disassociation” from a former job will open more of this space too.

When I'm not working, I'm at...

Let’s play a game.Pretend suddenly you flew off to your favorite place to be; the place that could be called your “second address”…a place where if anybody goes there, they would find you. Are you there? Answer me honestly from where you are hiding. MARCO!

Who said, “POLO!”?

Found you. I know where you are. After the initial drama of joblessness, what might begin to happen is a rediscovery of joyful activity engaged in before there was any thought about paid employment. I call that “default activity”. For some, this kind of activity is laced up tightly into weekends and often called, “hobbies”. For others, it is what one naturally turns to when the day is over. It is what people do to “decompress” or “unwind”. Another word for it is “pastime activity”. Some people take chunks of time to do special projects like teaching kids to read in another country. Still others are gaming, treasure hunting, cooking, painting, sitting in front of the fridge inhaling more than the fragrance or on the dock of the bay “watching the tide roll away”. Default activity. It comforts; it relaxes; it probably started in childhood and it is organic to the personality. After the six-month anniversary of joblessness, default activity might be just the ticket to realign the soul with  authentic purpose. Who knows where a default activity might lead? A business, ministry and yes, a new career, may suggest itself that way.

Off-Road Travel: Going Job Free

Your response?

Some of us are “4-wheel-drive” job seekers. Not really job seekers at all,  but “third alternative” folk. Here is what I am talking about–

What is the Third Alternative?

There is–

1. joining a larger interest to help them advance their collective purpose – otherwise called, “employee“
2. forming one of several configurations of  the corporation where an entrepreneur business owner becomes an employer, achieving the collective mission in concert with a group of (hopefully) like-minded folk.
3. becoming a one-person service provider – otherwise called, “independent contractor” promoting each client’s mission with select services.  This is “third alternative”.

Don’t quote me, but it seems that the farther beyond age 50 a worker is, the less likely a large business will take that worker on as a full-time new hire. Mature workers are often advised to apply for employee roles at smaller companies and to take temporary or part-time work. Others strike out on their own through franchising– “buying” themselves jobs, or establish small businesses outright–creating themselves jobs (and sometimes jobs for several more).

There are temporary independent contractors, people who write “self-employed” on Linked In profiles to gracefully cover gaps between employee roles or who start freelance enterprises with the intention of keeping them only until the next employee gig shows up. Noticeably, theatre people tend not to do that because there is no guilt associated with having parallel jobs and taking temporary jobs between shows.

I take requests

Ah, then there is a certain hardcore people called, “solopreneurs”–independent contractors who operate like bees in a clover field going  from corporation to corporation. They are there for keeps, not just until the next employee gig. These are the people who live the third alternative lifestyle.  Having no secret longing to be an employee, these are the gypsies of the economic world, and worthy of ballads.

Pardon my romantic rant. The truth is, a job is not the only way to make a living. People can and do make other choices.

Native Guides In the Job Free Wilderness Journey

http://www.barbarawinter.com (Joyfully Jobless)

http://www.startupnation.com (Start-up Nation)

http://www.marykay.com/company/companyfounder/default.aspx (founder, Mary Kay Ash)

http://www.avoncompany.com/aboutavon/history/mcconnell.html (David McConnell, founder Avon)

Mature Workers and The New Workplace

http://www.cio.com/article/30212/IT_Staffing_The_High_Price_of_Age_Discrimination?page=1&taxonomyId=3154

Related articles

• It’s A Thin Line…Employee vs (sherrihenley.wordpress.com)
• Two in Five Firms Use More Independent Contractors (prweb.com)
• temporary Help Wanted: Managing Contractors (forbes.com)
• Price of Reclassifying Workers (online.wsj.com)

A Consideration For Older Workers

Good question

Does it make sense for a non-employed worker 5 years away from retirement to prepare for a new occupation knowing that there is:

• no guarantee of a job after training is complete
• no  experience in the new occupation to display
• prejudice against older workers

Few sorrows in life beat being an employee in such an alienating job that she ends up in the hospital preferring death because of the stress. There are valid reasons to aspire to meaningful work where natural talents and passions will be applied to do the world, the company and the worker some good. However, a challenge presents itself to the worker who decides in the autumn of life, closer to traditional retirement, ”not to take it anymore” after years of  ”settling” or “scooting along the bottom” or waiting to be fired–again–. There remains the matter of proving possession of the requisite 3-5 years of experience.

This looks very much like the new graduate’s dilemma: how to get a job that requires you already have the experience when you must have had the job to get the experience? For students there are internships and apprenticeships to cover that “no experience” gap. Midlife job changers are now tapping into internships and experience building programs.

Few recruiters will ever touch that question.

Recruiters do not love dealing with the risk of career changers. After all, a recruiter cannot present a candidate who does not have the skill/experience package the company he represents asks for. Except for the “mavericks” in the field recruiters will be more comfortable with people who have non-messy histories in the same field/job as the potential new position.

Related articles

• Older workers / Productivity : Average age-productivity profile of individual workers is increasing until age 65 (skillsinfo.wordpress.com)
• ‘Employers are recruiting retired workers and finding that their work is exceptional’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Generational issues ‘important for business insurance holders’ (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
• 9 Workplace Benefits That Need Improvement (money.usnews.com)