One of the keys to nailing an interview is to have a good variety of stories prepared ahead of time. And one thing we really love about our jobs is that we get to hear some truly amazing stories. But a story is only effective if the interviewer has a good appreciation for the significance […]
Interviewing
Our 10 Favorite Resume Words
Not long ago, we posted a list of problematic words that are often misused on resumes. We thought it would be a good idea to follow it up with a list of those words that we love to see used on resumes. To make our list more focused, we decided to only consider action verbs. […]
Eyes Right!
Today our topic is about the importance of eye contact. Think about a time when you were having a serious conversation with another person, perhaps a junior member of your team, and that person had difficulty making eye contact with you. Do you remember what you were thinking at the time? Could it be that […]
Telephonic Interview Advice
Today’s tip is pretty simple and straightforward. It deals with one small but important detail related to telephonic interviews. It’s very relevant for us at Alliance because we do thousands of telephonic interviews (both real and practice) with our candidates. You may have never thought of it, but telephonic interviews are actually the most common […]
White Space
Today our topic covers a simple yet important point related to resumes: White Space. Your resume serves a pretty simple purpose: to convince a hiring authority that you are worth interviewing. Generally, that means your resume needs to provide a hiring manager a clear sense of your education, work experience, and accomplishments. But just because someone sees your […]
Three Resume Dilemmas and How to Deal with Them
We’ve got resumes on our minds here at Alliance since we are deep into providing resume feedback to candidates slated to attend our November hiring conference. After having coached thousands of military candidates over the years, we thought it would be a good idea to mention three common dilemmas that many have asked us about, […]
What vs. Why
As you ponder future job interviews, you may be thinking about all of the stories that you could be telling. Most interviewers tend to rely heavily on behavioral-type interviewing questions which are ripe for story-telling. These questions call upon you to describe how you behaved in various situations. Some common examples include: The common feature […]
Why You Lost the Interview You Thought You Won
Perhaps the worst part of competing for a job is to come out of an interview believing that you nailed it, only to find out that you didn’t make the cut. If this should ever happen to you, you might think “How could they not have liked me? I had a great answer to all of their […]
How to win an interview but lose the job
How to win an interview but lose the job When writing an article to help people achieve a more successful transition, I prefer to focus on positive items. Yet, here’s a case where I want to address some negative topics that could kill your job opportunity, even if you’ve got a stellar resume and provide […]
Focus on the Job at Hand
There is a chance that one day you find yourself interviewing for a very large company – the type of company that, when you go to their website, overwhelms you with the amount and diversity of their various business units. Perhaps the classic example of such a company is General Electric. Though maybe a fraction […]