Episode 53 – Graduate Job Podcast – Greatest Hits Part 2

December 29, 2016 Podcast

Episode 53 of the Graduate Job Podcast is part 2 of a 2 part retrospective where I include some of my favourite short clips from my previous 50 episodes. Every episode is of course brilliant and chock-a-block full of great insights to help you get your dream graduate job, but in these 2 specials I wanted to pick out some short clips which I enjoy that you might not have come across before. We explore how fear could be holding you back from getting your dream job, we cover superb advice on how to make sure you stand out in a job application, and top tips for acing a graduate job interview. We also delve into why getting a job is like dating, and share some secrets behind impressing at a graduate assessment centre. No matter where you are in your jobsearch, this is an episode which you are not going to want to miss. As always, all links to everything we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/greatesthits2. Right, let get straight to the good stuff, and part 2 of my greatest hits.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • The secrets behind impressing at a graduate assessment centre
  • Top tips for acing a graduate job interview
  • The key mistake not to make when using the STAR methodology from competency answers
  • Why getting a job is like dating
  • Why targeting smaller companies could be the key to getting a graduate job
  • The fears that could be holding you back in your job search
  • How to negotiate your salary to earn you thousands extra

IF YOU LIKED THE CLIPS CHECK OUT THE FULL EPISODES

Transcript – Episode 53 – Graduate Job Podcast – Greatest Hits Part 2

James: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

And this week on the Graduate Job Podcast we have episode 53, which is the second part of my two part special looking at some of my favourite clips from the previous 50 episodes. I delve into the archives and extract 11brialliant shorts clips from 9 very special guests. In these clips today we cover amazing tips for how to succeed in job interviews, the secrets of how to impress at an assessment centre, why fear might be holding you back in your jobsearch, through to how to handle the dreaded salary question. See it as a job seekers pick and mix where I’ve chosen some of my tastiest sweetest clips and served them up for your listening pleasure. No matter where you are on your jobsearch, I promise there is going to be something here today which is going to help you get that job. Final thing before we start, all links to everything we discuss, each episode and a full transcript can be found at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/greatesthits2.

James:  So, let’s make a start, and let’s first start with a small word, a tiny word, it is only has 4 letters, but it might be holding you back from applying to that dream graduate job, stopping you from getting ahead and doing what you want to do. It is of course F E A R, over to my interview with BAFTA award winning author Geoff Thompson.

Geoff Thompson:  So, it’s all possible, even if it’s not probable. And when I say that, that’s not a negative thing. It’s saying that it’s possible for anybody that has the courage to stand in front of the things they’re afraid to look at, which is the old limiting belief, and they call this deliberate suffering, we deliberately stand in front of the things that make us feel afraid.  And it might just be that our background is that, we’ve grown up in an environment where, you know like a tabloid environment, where people kind of say, “Don’t go above your station. Don’t forget where you come from. Who do you think you are? Don’t get above yourself. Don’t ask for too much money because, what do you think we are? Do you think we’re the Rothschild’s? You know, money doesn’t grow on trees. You know, be grateful with what you’ve got, and if you’re pretentious, don’t dare be pretentious because if you’re pretentious and you think you’re worth more than that, we’ll attack ya.” I was with a lad the other day, he said he’s just doing his degree and he got a one, he got a first on his degree. The first tests he got 100% on, three of his tests, and he posted it online to say, “I’m really happy.” And he got loads of reviews from people saying to him, “Who do you think you are? You know, you big head you bragger. Don’t get above yourself,” It’s like, “Don’t be excellent.” My wife said to him, “Don’t ever let anybody talk you out of being excellent. You are excellent, be excellent.” So, this guy, was deliberately holding himself back from his studies, because he didn’t want to stand out too much. I went to do a talk for a university as well, James, once. And there was about 200 people in the room, and the lecturer said to the group, “Okay, put your hand up if you think you’re exceptional.” And, bearing in mind that this university was an exceptional university, you couldn’t get into it unless you were exceptional, unless you had done the work.  I think one person put his hand up and he was hesitant. And he said, “Okay. Put your hand up if you’re ordinary,” and nearly 200 hands went up in the room. 200 people that thought they were ordinary, and they didn’t think they were ordinary, they knew they weren’t ordinary. They were too afraid to stand out, they were too afraid of what people might think about them. One guy actually put his hand up and said, “I think I’m below ordinary.” People are afraid to say, “Yes I’m good at this,” “Yes I have got this potential” or “Yes I can do this,” because if they do it, they feel like they might be attacked. But I’ve experienced the soul, I’ve experienced the authentic self, and it’s vast. It’s vast. There is nothing that will contain it, there’s no limitations. If we want to exercise that authentic self in the world, we need full expression. People are afraid to fully express themselves in case they get shot down. And this starts with, of course, what they call the greater jihad. The eternal wrestle. When we go on, we’re going to do this, and then this voice goes, “Well who do you think you are? You’re not anybody. You’re no good. You can’t do that. You’re nothing.” And we believe that, because we never challenge it. But that’s just an old chatter , that’s an old belief. So, our first job is to admit that we’re afraid and then to challenge those fears, not just to challenge them, but to recognise that fear is food. When we confront those fears, when we intercourse with those fears, literally when we embrace them, when we sit in the feelings, we can transform that energy, in that we can liberate the fear, we can get rid of the fear, and the energy that is locked into the fear, we can gobble up. We can use it as a protein, and that will expand our authentic self. And each time we do that we become more powerful.  This is what the Mexican Shamans did, they would go out into the night and they would hunt down their fears, because they said that the power was in the fear. The power was in the trauma. Rooney called it night traveling. We go out into the night and we’d hunt down their fears, because the doorway to potential is through that. So it’s kind of trying to get people to change their perceptions on their fear and just say, “Don’t believe anything. Don’t believe anything people don’t tell you. Don’t believe what it says on the television. Don’t believe what it says, you know, in the newspapers. It’s hugely subjective. Challenge it. Find out for yourself.  Don’t just repeat what other people have told you. If you have a perception that’s not possible, challenge that perception.”

James:  Starting deep there with a clip from episode 34 with Geoff Thompson where we explored Fear in job search and how it might be holding you back. I loved the story of the students in the lecture theatre. Would you have put your hands up to say your extraordinary? Ordinary? Below ordinary? As Geoff said, there is no limit to your potential, if you can dream it, you can make it happen. If someone else somewhere around the world can do a job then you can too. Take that positive attitude with you as you look for jobs, change your perception about what you can do, set your sights high and go for it. If it is not scary, then you’re probably not pushing yourself.

Let’s stay on self-perception as we move to clip 2 and head over to the west coast of the states as I speak to Karen Kelsky, star of episode 29. Karen is a university professor who teaches PHD students how to get tenured university jobs, and in this clip she shares insights into why looking for work is like dating.

James:   Without wanting to depress people, I mean, how challenging then is it to stand out? It’s a silly question really but you know, if you’re one in a thousand applying for an English tenured job you’re really going to have to be struggling there.

Karen Kelsky:    Yes, it’s very difficult and what happens is candidates feel desperate and their desperation leads them to approach it from a place of emotion.  And so they write job applications that are highly, what I call hyper emotionalized.  They think that they stand out by pitching their case on a basis of feelings and those feelings would be, I’m passionate about English literature.  I’m passionate about Jane Austin, you know.  I love to teach undergraduates.  I’m eager to work at your institution.  It would be a privilege and an honour to teach alongside you.  And that’s exactly the opposite of what you should do.  So that’s the primary mistake I see people making.  And what I work with them to do is switch over to focus on their substantive actionable evidence of their records and leave all the emotionalism and the rhetoric out.

James:  Excellent, and what are the characteristics you would say then of a competitive candidate?  So, taking aside the hyper emotional side, what aspects should they be bringing out in their applications?

Karen Kelsky:    It’s a pretty clear cut set of qualities that a competitive applicant will have.  They will have peer reviewed publications, ideally in high ranking journals; they’ll have major grants, typically national or international level grants; they will have attended, spoken at and led panels at major national and international conferences; they will have recommenders who are important in the field and well known and who write good and up to date letters; and finally, they will have job application documents as well as interviewing skills that showcase their actual accomplishments, as I was just saying earlier, rather than a kind of desperate neediness to be employed because in a way, I often say this, the academic job market is a little bit like dating.  If you come across as too desperate and needy, you’re not going to make them love you and so in a way you have to look a little bit like hard to get.  You have to look like, wow.  You have to make them feel like, wow, we really wish we could get that candidate but she’s going to be really hard to land because obviously she’s in great demand.  And if you can deliver that feel with a solid record in your application you’re going to do better.

James:  I love that analogy and whether it’s dating or job applications in the academic or non-academic world, you can smell desperation a mile off.

Karen Kelsky:    Yes, you can.

James: And it’s not attractive.

Karen Kelsky:    In the book I use the metaphor of the prom.  I say it’s like the prom but I’m not sure that the prom translates to a UK audience.  Do you guys have proms?

James:  They’re slowly starting to creep in as the Americanization of the education system.  But we have them, yeah.  They’re appearing, though.

I love the chapter in the book called, Why yourself is the Last Person You Should Be.  Why is this the case for Ph.D. students?

Karen Kelsky:    Because graduate school is a very long process.  If you’ve done a Ph.D., typically it’s a minimum of five years and in many fields it may be 10 or even longer.  A field like History is often a decade long to complete the Ph.D. and what happens is you are socialized to behave in a certain way which is very, very deferential and in some cases almost obsequious.  Because of your position as a graduate student, a lowly graduate student, vis-a-vis the faculty and it isn’t that the faculty explicitly demand this of you.  It’s just — or that the faculty are, you know, egomaniacs typically who insist on this kind of behaviour.  It’s just the way graduate school is structured.  And so I write in the book, the better a grad student you are the worst job candidate you make because you have internalized the subject position of a supplicant for your professor’s time and attention and you have to overcome that subject position entirely when you go out on the job market.  You have to comport yourself like a peer, like a professional, like a fellow faculty member yourself and nobody has given you any training whatsoever in how to do that, or even told you that you need to do that.   And that’s where the gap comes in and that’s what I try to remedy in all of my writing on the blog and in the book.

James:  A good few years ago back in my single days I read the book The Game by Neil Straus, men tend to enjoy it, women maybe less so but it talks a lot about the social dynamics of dating, and a phrase that stuck with me from the book was DHV, display higher value. The gist of this is that you can smell desperation a mile off, and whether it’s in dating or getting a job, it’s not attractive. So act like a peer and a professional, and linking back to Geoff Thompson, believe that you are exceptional and be confident and project that forward.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Let’s move on to the next clip which comes from property guru and podcasting legend Rob Bence star of episode 36 on how to get a job in property. Now Rob runs several companies and as such sees a lot of job applications, so he knows a thing or two about how to stand out. Let’s head over to my chat with Rob.

James:  You talked about standing out.  We’ve got a special coming out in a few weeks on creative applications.  Were there any specific creative ones that you can remember that really made you think, “Wow!” when you came across them?

Rob: I think with an application or a CV, your first paragraph is going to make or break it for you.  That’s really going to help people decide whether to–you think about it, we get hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants.  So it’s those first few lines that are going to make a difference.  I can tell you what I used to do, if that helps.  I think my last job, I wrote something on the lines of, and this is not word for word, something on the lines of, “I’ve run marathons, I’ve climbed some of the highest mountains in the world, I read ferociously,” blah, blah, blah.  I put loads of achievement stuff outside of a work environment.  And then I said, “And I apply exactly this same work ethic and sense of adventure in the workplace.”  Something on those lines.

I cannot remember never being called back for the next stage when I was applying for my final role at the time.  And I got the job I wanted, my dream job.  It’s looking to stand out, show the people that you’re trying to work with that you’re an achiever.  Show them that you’ve done stuff that’s above the norm.  You don’t have to go out and start climbing the highest mountains in the world or run marathons to do that.

I remember one of the best team members I’ve got talked about how she worked within a charity and organized an event over Christmas for homeless people.  It was really, really impressive.  But she went into detail as well.  She didn’t just say what she did.  She went into detail how she coordinated it and the difference she made.  The fact that she spends part of her Christmas doing that, giving her free time to make that happen, was super impressive.  So you don’t have to go crazy, but do something to show that you’re an achiever, that you’re an A player, that you do a bit more than the normal person.

If you’re passionate about learning, make sure you show that.  Demonstrate it by telling them that you listen to podcasts.  The fact that you’re listening to this today shows that you probably are a cut above the average applicant, because you’re trying to be better.  Tell them that you listen to podcasts, the type of podcasts you listen to, especially if they’re industry-relevant.  Tell them the books that you’ve read that you think will make you a better applicant.  Show them that you’re just not run-of-the-mill.  Show them that you’re an achiever.

James: I love that opening statement, Rob, and I guess that in the future, you might be getting a few people that when they applied to you have copied it and are playing it back to you.

Rob: If it’s word for word, I might be suspicious.

James: Quality advice there from Rob, you don’t get long to grab the attention on a CV, so putting a powerful first paragraph can make all the difference. Let’s move on now to the more transactional nuts and bolts of applying to companies with clip 4, a shorter clip from Simon Reichwald guest on episode 26, as we discuss an area that many graduates are missing.

James:  I’ve often found that students tend to focus too much attention on the big companies in the Milkround instead of looking, as you mentioned, the fast growing smaller SMEs where they can get really great experience and probably, maybe progress quicker than with some of the bigger firms.

Simon Reichwald:  Yeah, you’re completely right, James, and look, you know, my experience is, is that for some grads a big company is the right place to start your career.  Other grads a small to medium size company is a great place to start your career.  They both will offer fantastic opportunities but it’s about fit and what kind of environment is going to suit you best.  So I’d absolutely agree with that you said, James.

And I think the other really important point to make students aware of is that the biggest 500 graduate recruiters in the UK take about 10 percent of the total graduate market every year, which means 90 percent of graduates end up in companies that they’ve probably not heard of before they started their job hunting.  So the big companies offer fantastic opportunities.  Clearly they offer only a limited number in terms of volumes of graduates that come out of university every single year.

James:  Wow, that’s a big — I didn’t realize the ratio was split like that.  That’s a big differential.

Simon Reichwald:  Yeah.  Well, we produce some many.  We produce, you know, we produce 350,000 fresh graduates every single year of which two-thirds get a 2/1 or a First; such vast numbers and it’s just no way, you know, the biggest graduate recruiters can absorb all those people.  It’s just not possible; but across all companies in the UK, no problem at all.  Absolutely those opportunities are there and you can see that with low levels of graduate unemployment.  There’s opportunities there.  But to come back to your original point, James, I think if I was doing my time again, going through university, I’d look at the big companies, absolutely, but I’d also really look at small to medium size companies while I was job hunting.

James:   I know that my focus after university was firmly set on the big milk-round schemes to the detriment of smaller firms where I could probably have developed and progressed quicker. I’m not saying one is right or better, the takeaway for me, is that you should keep your mind and options open and explore both.

So you’re confident in how exceptional you are. You’ve got your eye on both large and smaller firms which fit the bill, and you’re ready to start applying?…….good. But not before two additional pieces of advice. Back to Rob Bence.

James:  And finally, Rob, what one tip would you give our listeners that they can implement today on their job hunt?

Rob Bence: Don’t carpet bomb applications.  So many people do this.  90% or, probably, higher do this, where they’ll do the minimum through an application process at the beginning and hope they get through.  Think about it.  If an employer is going to move you forward after minimum effort and a carpet-bombed CV that is generic and not tailored at all to the job you’re going to, if they’re taking you through, what type of role and what type of company is that?  Yes, the roles I’m talking about in the companies I represent are hard to get.  But think about the quality of people we’ve got in there already, because everyone else has gone through that process.  So that should excite you that it’s difficult to get through.

If it’s easy, and, with minimal effort, you find yourself going through the process, that’s an alarm bell to me.  So what I would do is, I would pick ten jobs, maybe fewer, that you really, really like the look of, and go all out.  Create that profile of the ideal candidate they’re looking for.  Show that you’re above the norm by demonstrating that in your personal life, you’ve been an achiever.  Go to that extra effort.  Show them that you can do that, and really put a lot of effort into a small number of applications than just hammer hundreds and thousands of jobs. That’s what I would do.

James:  You can just recognize so quickly and easily when someone is, as you said, carpet bombing applications.  Sometimes, they don’t even remember to change the name of the company that they’re applying to on the application.  It just is so easy to see when they’ve just cut and pasted one application to another.  Those applications just go straight in the bin.  Make sure you’re not doing that, listeners.

James: I love that advice, and sadly it’s one that people don’t follow. The mentality of the majority of people in their applications is to just fire off as many as possible and hope that some the proverbial sticks to the wall. That is not route to success dear listeners, because when you do that, it is not possible to be specific. Specific, why is that important? Good question, let’s move on to the next clip from episode 19, Secrets of a graduate recruiter with Matt Hearnden.

James:  What would you be looking for, initially, when an online application came across your path?

Matt Hearnden:  Yes, for me I would – So, I think it’s very easy to apply to loads of graduate schemes and be quite generic about them.  So, let’s take the supermarket retailers, as an example.  So, you know, you’ve got Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s and the little one, Aldi.  To be honest a lot of the applications I would see would be very generic.  So, let’s say, oh, I want to work for a big retailer, or like an international retailer because I know I could learn a lot and I could grow and I could do this like — It’s just boring, like you know, so I’m here to tell you the truth that it’s just boring and more importantly, whether you care or not, that tells the employer that you don’t really care about working there because you’re just being generic.  So, if you want to be, so for me the ones that stood out were the ones that were very specific.  Because the first question is often, why this company? Whatever company it is, why do you want to work here?   Or, tell us about this company.  It’s the same question essentially.  I just see so many generic answers and I just think, well, they don’t really want to work here.  They probably fired off a hundred different applications and I think — and I guess what frustrated me is it’s very easy to be specific.  And when I say that, you have to put the effort into researching the company but that’s all you have to do.  So, for example, if you just go into Google and go into the “news” tab and type in a company, you know, whatever company it is, but there’s going to be loads of articles about that company and there’s going to be loads of article about what’s going on currently, you know, what’s happened previously.

So, let’s take Tesco as an example. They’ve been in the news a lot lately for not perhaps all the best reasons but there’s all sorts you can pick out there.  So, if someone is going to say to me, oh, I want to work at Tesco because they’re a big retailer and they’re international and you know, they’ve got 3,000 stores in the UK and the scale and all that stuff, like anyone can find that out in about 10 seconds and everyone probably knows that anyway because Tesco is such a big brand.  So, find out about the other stuff. So, find out about the fact, you know, why did they pilot the new CFO in early.  You know the 263 whatever it was, million pounds accountant scandal.  The now 6.4 million  loss and it’s all publicized but then let’s talk about that but then also talk about what opportunity that gives you.  So yes, all of that stuff but then what does that actually mean?  So, you could say, well, because all this stuff happens, what that means for me is I’m a graduate who loves a challenge and I can see that actually help to turn around one of the biggest businesses in the world, if not the, maybe, biggest businesses in the UK, that excites me.  And then you’re being specific about it.  And that is exactly the kind of answer that I’d look for.

So yes, you have to put some effort into researching it, but that’s essentially all you have to do and it just—to be honest, it baffles me how little I saw that.  It was a lot of, a lot of them are very generic.  So that’s why, you know, the more you can research, the more you can be specific, you will stand out.  You will absolutely stand out and the only point of the application is to just get to the next stage and if people see that as the first thing they see, that primes them if nothing else to think, oh, this person is good and this person puts extra effort in and they care.  They actually want to join this company.  They don’t want to join another retailer.  They want to join Tesco, or they want to join Asda or Morrison’s.  So I think, yeah, if you’re specific you will stand out.

James:  Thank you to former graduate recruiter Matt Hearnden, he’s been on the show twice now, so check him out in episodes 19 and episode 39. Focussing down is the key, for the initial online application, and also interview and assessment centre stages you need to be able to show that you have really done research into a company, know about it and the graduate scheme, and can demonstrate why you want to work there. That isn’t possible to do well if you are applying to 10 places at the same time. Focus down, pick the companies you really want to work for and go from there.  Speaking of interviews, let’s go there next, as we go to a favourite clip from episode 1 with career coach Jon Gregory  as we discuss the spotlight process to succeeding in interviews.

James: You mentioned the Spotlight process. Can you go into more detail about what it is and the steps you take to follow that through?

Jon Gregory: Yeah, I can.   So your starting point, really, is to imagine the types of questions that you might be asked relative to the role that you’re looking at. And I think the key to that is doing the front-end analysis and background research. We can kind of talk about that in a minute, if you want to. Having done all that, that will enable you to dream up the questions that you might get asked. With the Spotlight process what I recommend people do is to sit down and then for each of those questions to actually handwrite out for themselves an answer to that question. Do it in the way that they might speak, rather than thinking about being grammatically correct and getting all the punctuation in the right place and getting all the format correct and getting the order correct. Literally do it almost as a stream of consciousness to answer the question and they work through all the questions in the same way.

Now, the end of it, what people are able to do is to then stand up, read out the question and then read out the answer that they’ve written and what they should find is that they’re dealing with something that’s a lot more natural than simply constructing an answer and then readying that out. So, firstly, already, it’s going to be a lot more natural.

The second step then is to put the notes down and then to work through the questions and answers and speak them out loud one by one. Speak out the answers one by one and what people should find is that by writing previously, handwriting for reference, they’ve internalized the information and they’ve internalized the way that they’ll delivery it. And what comes out is your subconscious delivering answers to the questions that come up. Now, okay, let’s assume that the exact questions come up and okay, that’s going to be a fairly easy process. On the plus side your answers are going to be not at all stilted. They’re going to be quite natural because you’ve originally generated them in a way that you would naturally speak them. Let’s assume that the questions don’t come up in the exact way that you expected. Then what you’ll find is that if you’ve been fairly thorough with your rehearsals, your mind – because you’ve already internalized a lot of this information – will be able to cherry pick from that the sections that you most need when you need them. So that when that spotlight does turn on to you and suddenly you’re asked a question, rather than your brain freezing, your subconscious is already digging through and dredging up the relevant sections that you are going to need to need to deliver. You can then crack on delivering those almost automatically but in a very natural way and your brain is, in fact, your conscious brain is still free then to be thinking about how you’re presenting yourself, what might be coming up next, looking for feedback signals from the interviewer and so on. So that’s a broad outline of the Spotlight process and it’s to do with that internalization.

James: I love this approach and when I was reading it through and thinking back to the times I’ve been successful in interviews, it was a realization that I’d broadly followed the same thing as having the knowledge so that you’re not just regurgitating it by rote and you’re also able to adapt it to the different nuances that the each different company will put on certain competency and enable you to answer the different questions put to you as opposed to the question you want to answer.

Jon Gregory: Yeah. Certainly the more natural that you can sound with it and obviously the more confident, the more you’re going to be able to relate to the interviewer opposite you and the more you’re going to sound as though you’re a good fit for the role. It can make a very, very significant difference.

James:  Thanks to Jon Gregory. I love the spotlight process, if you use this approach for how you tackle interviews then you will be in a great position come the graduate job interviews. It’s all about having a collection of answers to competency questions that you can tweak to the specifics of each question, and using the spotlight process will help you with this.

Sticking with interviews and specifically competency questions. A common approach to tackling them is to use the STAR methodology. This involves structuring the answer with respect to S – Situation, what was the situation you were faced with. T – Task, what goal were you working towards,  A – action, what action did you take to address the situation (remember the emphasis there is on you, not what the team did), and finally R – result, what was the outcome of your actions? A tried and tested approach which will serve you well if you utilise it. However, let’s go to Brian Sinclair from the graduate recruitment team at Ernst and Young, my guest in episode 18 who shares some great advice into using the STAR approach.

James: And finally, what one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today on their job hunt?

Brian: People often talk about in interviews about the star technique: situation, task, action and result. Having done many, many, many interviews, particularly student interviews, please, please, please, make your STAR interesting, particularly the S. Try and find a slightly different situation that not every one of the 400,000 odd students have been through, that team working exercise on assignment where somebody didn’t pull their weight or on the football pitch and we’re losing in the first half and did that classic pep talk. Just try to find something a little bit more interesting with a slight spin on it. It doesn’t have to be, you know, I had a year out and I was building an orphanage in Borneo. It doesn’t have to be that extreme, but just try to make the S of your STAR in your interview just that little more interesting. It just helps engage the interviewer who has heard similar examples, maybe, hundreds of times before. So, as a seasoned interviewer, I still like to hear similar kind of answers but when the S in the STAR is very interesting, the candidate’s chances rapidly increase in my eyes.

James: That’s brilliant advice. Yeah, you do find a lot of the, like you said identikit CV, you find almost an identikit application form where people are just repeating the same. I was doing some course work and one person wasn’t taking, pulling their weight. So then we had to work together to come to a conclusion.

Brian: It’s a good exercise. People have to learn to work as a team. I know you’ve all done it. Try to find a different spin on that. Having said that, I did interview once a candidate who was the candidate not pulling his weight and he recognized that. So, I was, oh, it’s you. That was one of many, many hundreds I’ve done.

So interviews, ticked off. Let’s move next on to the assessment centre, and to help with this we have James Darley, from the award winning graduate scheme Teach First, who was my guest back in episode 27. In this clip James shares some great advice on how you can stand out in a graduate assessment centre, let’s have a listen.

James: And sorry, just going back to the assessment centre, what is the biggest way you think that people tend to let themselves down?

James Darley:    Not throwing themselves in.  You know, if you’ve taken the time to apply, you’ve taken the time to come and visit the assessment centre, I think that the saddest thing is then when we don’t see your character because you know, the whole point of the way we’ve done our assessment centre is that there’s one bit on your own — and nearly everyone shines when they’re on their own — there’s one bit where you have to interact with others that you don’t know very well. Yes, you might have met them in the assessment centre, candidates suite that we have where you get to kind of chat to everyone else but you don’t really know kind of how they’re going to react, and are  they going to suddenly want to be timekeeper when you wanted to, and whatever it may be.  So we purposely have done things.  But you’re on your own, you’re with others and then you’re also having to kind of read the room in the sample teaching lesson.  So I think, you know, the biggest thing that I think is always sad is if there’s a student who comes down and then doesn’t just get involved.  And don’t try and be someone you’re not.  Just be yourself, enjoy it.  Be inquisitive.  You know, this is your chance to shine and TeachFirst, like I think nearly every other graduate employer, is not trying to trip you up.  If all 30 of you that come on a day are brilliant, all 30 of you are going to get a role.  If all 30 of you are not very good, none of you are going to get a role.  So you’re not in competition and I think I sometimes see people being either very disengaged and not really enjoying themselves and/or they think they’re competing against everyone else when that is not the case.

Great advice from James there, and for more on how to get into Teach First, check out episode 27. Again, for all the link and a full transcript of today go to www.graduatejobpodcast.com/greatesthits2. The key thing to remember at the assessment centre stage is that here they are looking for an opportunity to say yes. Up to this, each stage has been an opportunity to say no, and to weed you out, here it is all about trying to get you in.

So we’ve covered the applications themselves, interviews, assessment centres, and if you’ve followed these tips I’m sure that you’ve been offered the actual job. So now it’s time to start talking about stacking that paper, getting yourself a nice wedge, the old wonga, mullah or whatever you want to call it. Now of course money isn’t the be all and end all, but as one wag said, ‘money doesn’t buy happiness, but I’d rather cry sat in a Mercedes than sat on a bus’. Let’s head to Josh Doody, expert salary negotiation coach from episode 47.

Josh: Sure. So, there are lots of steps, and the so the negotiation process, really the first step to negotiating is before what I kind of formally call, “the negotiation process,” and that is usually when you’re in the interview process, you’ll be asked what your current or desired salary is. And I call that the dreaded salary question because it is kind of a sneaky question that will surprise you. And so the first step in salary negotiation is to not disclose those numbers if you can, if you’re able to avoid disclosing your current salary or desired salary, I recommend that you do that. You usually can get away with it, although sometimes you’ll bump into a company that simply refuses to continue talking if you don’t tell them, but that’s very rare. I see it happen occasionally, but it’s, you know, maybe five percent or less of the time that that will happen. So, the first step is to not disclose those numbers, and the reason that you don’t want to disclose your current salary or desired salary is that you want to focus on the opportunity in front of you, and you want to give yourself and the company that you’re interviewing with an opportunity to get to know each other, and to determine what your value is to that company. And so there’s a lot of learning to be done after that part of the interview process, and I think it’s better to postpone salary discussions until both of you have more information about the value that you’ll bring to that specific company. So, that’s the first step is don’t disclose your current or desired salary when you’re asked for it in the interview process.

James: Just jumping in there Josh, is there any, what way would you recommend stonewalling that question? Because it can be, as you said, if you’re put on the spot with, you know, “So, what your expectations?” It’s easy to get rabbit in headlights and a bit flummoxed. Is there any way that you’d recommend to divert it without just blocking it straightaway?

Josh: Yes. So, there are there are two parts to that question. The first part is, “What’s your current salary?” and I think a good way to approach that is just the to be honest and to say, “I’m not comfortable discussing that. I’d rather focus on this opportunity that’s in front of me and not on what I’m currently making or what I made at my previous job.” And so, you know, I think some people are inclined to, you know, maybe lie or inflate their current salary, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think instead –

James: I think I’ve done that one a few times, Josh.

Josh: It’ll, it can get you in trouble, right?

James: Yeah.

Josh: So, I think lying is not, not wise. Instead, just be honest and say, “I’m not comfortable. I’d rather not discuss it.” If they keep pushing, one answer I’ve been coaching people lately to say is, you know, “I work for that company. I have information about how they pay people, and out of respect for the company that I work for I’d rather not tell you what their salary structures look like, in the same way that you probably wouldn’t want your employees to tell other companies what your salary structures look like in your company.

James: I like that one.

Josh: So, it’s a good one. You know, I like the first one to say, “I’m not comfortable with that let’s move on and talk about the opportunity in front of me,” but you can also, you know I think that’s a good answer, because I think it’s very honest and it tells them, you know, “Look I’m a loyal employee to my current company, and I’ll be a loyal employee for your company, and so let’s, let’s just move on right,” is the idea.

James: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And yeah, as you said, it makes you look, loyal and that’s something that they’re going to looking for in their candidates.

Josh: That’s right. And then the second part of the question is, “What’s your desired salary? So if you get through the interview process, if we make you an offer, you know what, what salary do you want to be paid?” And for that one, I recommend that you say something like, “I’d rather focus on the value that I can add to this company. I’m excited for this opportunity and I want it to be a big step forward for me in terms of responsibility and compensation.” So again you’re telling them, “I’m interested in talking to you about the opportunity that’s in front of me,” but you’re also signaling to them that what you want to do is take on more work than you’re doing now and you want your compensation to increase, so without telling them your desired salary, you’re indicating to them that you want to be paid more than you’re currently paid and you want to do more for their company than you’re currently doing for your, at current job. And that’s just a subtle signal to let them know that when they make you an offer that you’re hoping for a strong offer and that you’re indicating to them, “I’m expecting a strong offer,” and so you aren’t disclosing that information, but you’re also giving them an opportunity to know that you’re serious about the opportunity and that you think you’re a viable candidate and you hope their offer eventually reflects that.

James: Yeah, and again that’s brilliant advice and a really good way just to subtly plant in their mind about the type of forward thrusting candidate who wants to take on things and do things and get things done. So, that’s a really good way of putting it.

Josh: Right, and I think, you know, so I know that a lot of your listeners are maybe going for their first job, like you said, right? And so another reason not to disclose that desired salary is that early in your career, you really don’t know what you want to make or what the value of your skill set and experience are, especially not at a new company that you’re talking to. And so you’re basically guessing. You’re just taking a guess if you say, “My desired salary is $50,000.” What you’re really saying is, “I guess you might pay me $50,000?” with a question mark at the end of it. And it’s just not wise to make guesses like that when it could cost you a lot of money, and so, you know, especially for people earlier in their careers with less experience and sort of fewer data points to work from, you really are just taking a guess. And so, rather than taking that guess, just let them know that you’d rather not discuss it, you want to add value to their company and, you know, let’s move on, let me continue impressing me, impressing you in the interview process rather than talking about salaries.

Great advice from Josh. If you find yourself in that situation don’t be afraid to try it, they aren’t going to rip up the offer just because you asked about the salary. For the full interview, check out episode 47. So there you go, we’ve been through 10 very different clips, from 9 equally brilliant guests. See which ones resonated with you and check out the episodes in more detail. See the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/greatesthits2 for the full transcript and links to each episode and guest. Now if you’ve found this episode or any of the other 52 useful I have one request, head to www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey and complete my very quick and simple survey. It helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so head there and fill it in, it will take you just 2 minutes to do, I promise and I will be massively appreciative. To close out the show today we head back to James Darley, Graduate Recruitment Director at Teach First with his final tip. Enjoy.

James:  And finally, James, what one tip would you give our listeners that they can implement today?

James Darley:    I think it would be confidence.  I see too many students that look incredible on paper and when I see them you don’t get a handshake, the head is bowed down; already you see a defeated person.  So, you know, please, have confidence.  You’ve applied because you’re interested.  You applied because you’re special and you want to make a difference whether it’s to TeachFirst or to any other graduate employer.  Believe in yourself, have that confidence and just go and enjoy yourself.  It is nerve racking because you’ve never done it before quite often but if you can have confidence you will perform to your best and then the right decision will be made.

James:  That’s great advice.  As they say, if you think you can, you think you can’t, you’re right.

James Darley:    Exactly.