As many of you know, Phoenix Group International is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Today we celebrate Arizona's Centennial!
Here is a brief history of Arizona for you. The Arizona Territory became the State of Arizona on February 14, 1912. Arizona was the 48th state, and was sparsely populated with only 200,000 residents at the time it became a state. 100 years later, Arizona is now home to 6.5 million people and Phoenix is now one of America's ten largest cities.
Arizona's beauty and diversity lies in the geography, from what everyone is familiar with - the Grand Canyon - to the beauty of the Sonoran desert, mountain ranges, saguaros, and natural wildlife. But Arizona also has a legacy diverse with culture from the Native American, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo influences beginning with Hohokam, Anasazi and Mogollon civilizations that go back at least 10,000 years. It was only in the 1500’s that the territory attracted Anglo explorers. For a while, the land that is now Arizona was under Spanish rule and then Mexican rule, until finally becoming a United States territory with New Mexico in 1848.
On Valentine's Day, 1912, President Taft signed the proclamation of statehood, and that is what we are celebrating today! 100 years later, we continue to celebrate the state of Arizona. There have been a number of factors that have contributed to the Grand Canyon State's growth in the last hundred years including raising cattle, the climate for crops that were hard to grow elsewhere, and the railroads necessary for commerce. What you are probably most familiar with is the dry climate that is also often associated with Arizona. Arizona's reputation has continued to grow under what are commonly referred to as the 5 C’s: climate, copper, cattle, cotton and citrus.
Join us in celebrating Arizona’s Centennial!
Learn more about the events surrounding Arizona's Centennial. Learn more about Phoenix Group International.
This short article is a great reminder of some key positive approaches you need to prepare for before you start the actual interview process. While you will likely have a few negative reasons associated with why you are looking for another job - only you can paint a positive picture of your current and prior jobs and how they have prepared you for your next position. Don't dwell on the negative.
Also, you need to make your experience real to the interviewer. Always be prepared with real examples that will make your background come alive. This also ensures that the interviewer understands your background they way you want them to understand it. This is not the time for any ambiguity or misinterpretation. If you are working with a recruiter, have them go through some quick mock interviews with you so you feel comfortable when entering your actual interview.
If you're in the job market, pay attention to these critical issues and you'll improve your chances a hundred-fold.
Trim your resume. If your resume is more than two (printed, dead-tree) pages long, it's too long. Your accomplishments should be tightly edited blasts of information, not verbose or rambling paragraphs. The rise of online resumes doesn't give you permission to waste HR and the hiring manager's time, and the rule of thumb that no one looks at your resume for more than about 30 seconds still holds true.
Know why you like your current job. You should be able to clearly articulate what it is about your current role (or your last position) that really excited and motivated you. You should understand what drives you, and be able to talk passionately and articulately about that. If it seems like you don't care, have no passion, or are just looking for another paycheck, the hiring manager will pass. He or she needs someone who loves what they do and will thrive on helping the company succeed.
Have real-life anecdotes. You'll get questions about how you handled particular situations in the interview. Know yourself and your own job history well enough that you can recount examples from your own work experience. If all you can talk about is what you would do in the future, it won't instill much confidence.
Have the skills listed in the job description. Or at least be honest that you are trying to change roles and are willing to take a more junior position to learn and grow. Bottom line: Don't mislead the interviewer about skills you don't really have or experience you haven't yet accrued. And arrive prepared to do some hands-on work, just in case you're asked to work through a problem, project or situation that is representative of the role you're interviewing for.
To view the rest of the article, click here.
We wish you the best of luck in your job search! Please feel free to share any comments or advice below as well.
I would like to share an observation that I have found regarding recruiting and social media websites. I recently signed up as a candidate on several recruiting websites and have been tracking their results 'matching' my background to the "New Jobs Posted This Week" - which were supposed to match to my background. We do this to stay current with all emerging and established forms of electronic recruiting available today.
While these sites are touted to replace traditional recruitment, and their pitch does sound like the "Holy Grail" of job search, the results they produce are oftentimes suspect. While there may be an occasional job that might be in the general ballpark, I have not yet seen a job posted that would be a direct match.
One needs to keep in mind that electronic job boards are only as good as their programming. They search for key words that link jobs with resumes. The problem: while the words may link, the context does not. Therefore, a flood of irrelevant connections are made. For example, beware if you have the word 'strategic' in your resume. You will be flooded with every job in the universe that has the word strategic in the job description.
As a candidate, you may want to post you resume on these job boards. However, I would still strongly recommend that you also work with professional recruiters - who have a real pulse on our industry. The professional recruiter will know what the job descriptions really mean and know their candidates and industry deeply enough to understand where the real job matches are made.
Over the past few months, we have been inundated with every version of internet recruiting possibility. If we have been experiencing this type of email marketing, we can only assume that you are, as well. So here are our thoughts on the matter.
At Phoenix Group International, we research and test every type of “new age” recruitment and sourcing opportunity that is sent to us. This is to keep abreast of the state of recruiting currently, and to see if any of these sources are viable for this industry.
While at first glance these sources appear to provide alternative methods of recruiting for very low cost, we firmly believe the following
Just Doesn’t Apply to this Industry
Very few of these sources – if any – actually fit our industry. In fact, if you try to choose from their menus for industry and job categories – they don’t even have our categories to choose from. If you do put in key words for our industry – you consistently come up with ‘0 matches’. So while there are many recruiting sources out there, they work for the more generic jobs categories outside our industry.
Internal Resources Required
The time it takes to work and update these sources requires a battalion of staff to effectively manage this process. And then one needs to question, does the time and personnel involved equal the candidates identified.
We work in a niche industry with very specialized talent. Because of this, together with the need for the best candidate, not just the candidates looking for positions, there is still a specific need for traditional recruitment. As recruiters specializing in this marketplace, we have the depth of candidates who continually work with us based on our professionalism and integrity