Chris Goumas’ Post

Recruiters and front-end HR managers spend just seconds reviewing resumes, so we write them with content that's verifiable and concise. The same goes in an interview. When I ask my interview coaching clients to tell me about a big professional win, most start in the middle: “I built a dashboard in Tableau to report campaign ROI in real-time!” Sounds great, but so what? Why? Was it hard to do? What impact has it had on the business? Enter the STAR principle: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Here’s how it works using an administrative task that's hard to quantify: SITUATION: Describe the context surrounding the assignment, simply. “I have to enter hundreds of customer account records into our database every day.” TASK: Explain what you needed to do, at a high level. “Data has to be organized and entered quickly and accurately. Two-thirds of the records come to me, so I needed a system to get it right and stay on track.” ACTION: Briefly outline the steps you took to get the job done, which might include forming and leading a team. “I created an Excel document in Google Sheets to automate the manual. I identified ways to refine the new system to stay organized and work more quickly and accurately.” RESULT: Explain the outcomes. “The automated system saved time and money and was accessible across management levels. I was commended in my performance review and the system was rolled out department wide as a best practice.” Using the STAR structure shows a hiring manager that you understand and can convey the big picture concisely. Senior leadership will especially appreciate this approach. Try to limit your explanation to ~2 minutes. Don’t worry if you’re not able to share every detail. Focus on the unique challenges and tactics and let the interviewer ask questions to learn more. Use this principle to replace task-based descriptions of your job on your resume and in interviews. If you’re customer-facing, what’s your retention rate? Have you helped grow MRR or diversify your employer’s portfolio? Supply chain managers: Have you negotiated cost savings with vendor contracts or improved efficiency with new SOPs? As a supervisor, have you coached or mentored team members for promotion? If you can’t assign definitive numbers to your outcomes, you can still explain the before-and-after of what you’ve done. A 70-something retiree I know worked ~40 years for the local utility, primarily in data entry and bookkeeping, but staffing customer calls during power outages and other emergencies. Her experience speaks reams about her transferable skills in change and data management and ability (and willingness) to adapt on the spot. Every employee and job have value. What may feel like a mundane task to you has an outcome. You may have to drill down or brainstorm with a trusted colleague to discover it, but it’s there! #STAR #interviewing #interviewcoach #KISS #YouveGotThis Job Market Solutions | GetResumeHelp.com tinyurl.com/CoachBetsy 

As a job seeker these are the things I hate that a company does. If a company wants quality candidates, and HIGHER quality candidates, they need to streamline the process and make it better and easier for those candidates. - Requires a username and password to apply. I have lost track of all 160 million workday accounts that I have, along with other website logins. A password manager in this case does not help, as it overwrites previous workday information. - Typing tests. This job requires you to type more than X amount of words per minute. If you have been on the internet longer than 5 years, most people now a days can type around 40-50 words per minute. - Video Interview. I have to record myself talking about why I want this job, my strengths and weaknesses. Someone somewhere has to watch this video. Recording this video takes about the same amount of time as it does to do an interview. - Personality tests. These do not work, and fail more than they succeed. I read an article where a company required a personality test. Person A failed, got hired at a different company, and became a SVP after 5 years, and was a top performer. Person B passed, and once hired, embezzled and nearly ran that company into the ground. -Language assessment tests. I can understand this if I spoke more than one language. But if your native tongue is for example English why do I have to take this assessment on my native language? - Uploading my resume, and then re-entering my job history in again. Why? - ATS. I have heard from recruiters and hiring managers that every resume uploaded is reviewed by a human. This is not true, and if it was, some jobs that get a thousand applicants, all the recruiter would do is spend all night pouring over resumes. ATS are designed to automatically filter out applicants. - Re-entering in of the same information. One job I applied for, wanted me to re-enter in my Ethnicity, Gender, Veteran status, and Disability 3-5 times. Maybe someone can explain to me why. I can understand if this was a government job, but not when it is a private company. - Uploading the resume should be first. I entered in all my information manually, Address, phone, email etc.. then at the bottom of the form, it asked to upload my resume. After doing that, everything got wiped out. And I had to re-enter everything in again, as uploading the resume did not auto-populate the fields.

Struggling to capture compelling examples of your impact on your #resume? Feel like you ramble in #interviews when asked what you accomplished in your previous roles? The #STAR format, outlined and explained here by Coach Betsy, can help you organize your thoughts and convey your achievements clearly, succinctly, and powerfully.

📍THE ONLY WORKDAY POST YOU NEED TO SEE TODAY CHECK OUT THIS POST FOR YOUR WORKDAY INTERVIEW PREP👇 

⭐ 5 Hiring Rules From Our Founder NEWHR recruiting agency founder, Kira Kuzmenko, shares five principles of her hiring approach that stand out from conventional market practices: «These are the methods I apply across all of my projects (NEWHR, Hello New Job!). I spend between 1 day to 2 weeks on hiring and achieve a 100% probation period pass rate. 1️⃣ Tasks, Not Requirements In the job description, I talk as much as possible about the company and the tasks, and almost nothing about my requirements for the candidate. My goal is to sell the job and attract candidates, not to filter them out at this stage. I’ll do the filtering in the following phases. 2️⃣ Publicity Aids Hiring At NEWHR and Hello New Job! , we strive to offer more than a standard service. We publish a large amount of useful materials, guides, and research, keeping us in the public eye. Therefore, we often attract top candidates to our pool. It allows us to fill positions in 1-2 weeks, sometimes even in a day. 3️⃣ Resumes Are Never Enough Few can effectively showcase their results and achievements in a resume. Hence, I always request something that demonstrates work outcomes: examples of texts, project documentation, or code samples. Essentially, any artifacts that are common in this profession. 4️⃣ I Don’t Ask Questions; I Answer Them Instead of the standard interview format of «tell me about yourself and answer my questions, “ I do the opposite. At the beginning, I thoroughly describe the job. Then I ask the candidate to ask me any questions they have. Based on these questions, their number, and depth, I can easily gauge the candidate’s interest in the job/company, their understanding of the task, and their ability to solve it. 5️⃣ A Real Task Instead of a Test It’s crucial for me to understand how well I will work with someone and whether they can handle real work tasks. Therefore, I often assign a real task in the form of paid project work instead of a test. Pros and Cons of Paid Tests: ✅ I get a tangible result that I can use. ✅ It helps me evaluate how a person interacts with me during the task assignment and the work process: whether they ask additional questions or proceed without clarifying details, resulting in an unaligned outcome. ✅ It’s immediately clear how a person plans their work and their attitude towards deadlines they themselves have stated. ❌ Yes, I have to pay for this. It’s an additional expense. ✅ The need to pay motivates me to select the final candidates better. Typically, I choose 3-4 finalists to whom I offer a paid test. ✅ The candidate can assess whether they are comfortable working with me. P. S. This approach is more suitable for hiring key team members and won’t work for mass hiring. I hope you find my personal experience valuable. Exploring others' hiring strategies inspires me to refine my own. I’m eager to learn about your methods and insights, especially unconventional, atypical ones 🙂 Please share in the comments how you hire!»

Now in English…

I'm just a recruiter .... 💲 I don't choose the salary range. It is given to me, but I will always share market insights, bring back what the candidates are saying, compare to other organizations, and advocate for a different range as it is needed. ✅ I don't write the checklist of job requirements, duties and responsibilities. They are given to me, but I will ALWAYS give recommendations to the Hiring Manager on removing fluff, trimming it down and ways to really hone in on the true needs for the role. 🖨️ I don't choose the location and if it is remote, hybrid or onsite. It is given to me, but I will advocate when possible for a different arrangement and go to bat for my candidates. Truth be told, there's minimal chance this can be changed based on company policy, etc. ⏰ I don't decide how much vacation time a candidate will get or what other benefits the offer will include. It is given to me and built into company's benefits policies, but I will advocate for more whenever I can to make it an amazing offer. 👀 I don't decide who gets an interview and who moves forward. Those decisions are given to me, but I will always advocate for candidates I truly believe in and keep your name at the top of the pile and keep pushing for feedback. 🏆 I don't make the final decision on who is hired. That decision is given to me, but I will excitedly work with the candidate to get them the best offer possible and make the onboarding process as easy as possible. I'm just a recruiter and I don't make any of these decisions. But, every single day me and all my amazing recruiter colleagues across the world are ripped apart and publicly shamed like we are the masterminds behind the curtain. Like we are making these decisions. It isn't us. We are the messengers, the organizers, the advocates, the searchers, and the resume readers! We don't make these decisions, but we still absolutely love what we do! We are proud for the role we play in the recruitment process because we can help managers see candidates or a job in a different way. We love playing a key role in getting great people great jobs, and connecting the right people together. We are passionate about making the job search process easier because we know what jobseekers are frustrated about. We are not JUST recruiters! We ARE recruiters!!! #recruitment #jobsearch #recruiterlife #jobseeker

Food for thought for your Friday: Too accurate not to share!! I'm just a recruiter .... 💲 I don't choose the salary range. It is given to me, but I will always share market insights, bring back what the candidates are saying, compare to other organizations, and advocate for a different range as it is needed. ✅ I don't write the checklist of job requirements, duties and responsibilities. They are given to me, but I will ALWAYS give recommendations to the Hiring Manager on removing fluff, trimming it down and ways to really hone in on the true needs for the role. 🖨️ I don't choose the location and if it is remote, hybrid or onsite. It is given to me, but I will advocate when possible for a different arrangement and go to bat for my candidates. Truth be told, there's minimal chance this can be changed based on company policy, etc. ⏰ I don't decide how much vacation time a candidate will get or what other benefits the offer will include. It is given to me and built into company's benefits policies, but I will advocate for more whenever I can to make it an amazing offer. 👀 I don't decide who gets an interview and who moves forward. Those decisions are given to me, but I will always advocate for candidates I truly believe in and keep your name at the top of the pile and keep pushing for feedback. 🏆 I don't make the final decision on who is hired. That decision is given to me, but I will excitedly work with the candidate to get them the best offer possible and make the onboarding process as easy as possible. I'm just a recruiter and I don't make any of these decisions. But, every single day me and all my amazing recruiter colleagues across the world are ripped apart and publicly shamed like we are the masterminds behind the curtain. Like we are making these decisions. It isn't us. We are the messengers, the organizers, the advocates, the searchers, and the resume readers! We don't make these decisions, but we still absolutely love what we do! We are proud for the role we play in the recruitment process because we can help managers see candidates or a job in a different way. We love playing a key role in getting great people great jobs, and connecting the right people together. We are passionate about making the job search process easier because we know what jobseekers are frustrated about. We are not JUST recruiters! We ARE recruiters!!!

I'm just a recruiter .... 💲 I don't choose the salary range. It is given to me, but I will always share market insights, bring back what the candidates are saying, compare to other organizations, and advocate for a different range as it is needed. ✅ I don't write the checklist of job requirements, duties and responsibilities. They are given to me, but I will ALWAYS give recommendations to the Hiring Manager on removing fluff, trimming it down and ways to really hone in on the true needs for the role. 🖨️ I don't choose the location and if it is remote, hybrid or onsite. It is given to me, but I will advocate when possible for a different arrangement and go to bat for my candidates. Truth be told, there's minimal chance this can be changed based on company policy, etc. ⏰ I don't decide how much vacation time a candidate will get or what other benefits the offer will include. It is given to me and built into company's benefits policies, but I will advocate for more whenever I can to make it an amazing offer. 👀 I don't decide who gets an interview and who moves forward. Those decisions are given to me, but I will always advocate for candidates I truly believe in and keep your name at the top of the pile and keep pushing for feedback. 🏆 I don't make the final decision on who is hired. That decision is given to me, but I will excitedly work with the candidate to get them the best offer possible and make the onboarding process as easy as possible. I'm just a recruiter and I don't make any of these decisions. But, every single day me and all my amazing recruiter colleagues across the world are ripped apart and publicly shamed like we are the masterminds behind the curtain. Like we are making these decisions. It isn't us. We are the messengers, the organizers, the advocates, the searchers, and the resume readers! We don't make these decisions, but we still absolutely love what we do! We are proud for the role we play in the recruitment process because we can help managers see candidates or a job in a different way. We love playing a key role in getting great people great jobs, and connecting the right people together. We are passionate about making the job search process easier because we know what jobseekers are frustrated about. We are not JUST recruiters! We ARE recruiters!!! #recruitment #jobsearch #recruiterlife #jobseekers #JobSearch #OpenToWork #CareerOpportunities #JobHunt #NewJob #JobOpening #Networking #JobSeeker #CareerChange #Employment #JobAlert #NowHiring #Resume #JobTips #JobMarket #CareerGoals #JobOpening #WorkWithMe #Hiring #CareerAdvice #LinkedInJobs #JobOpportunity #JobSearchTips #ProfessionalNetwork #JobLeads #JobSeekers #CareerDevelopment #JobOpportunities #CareerGrowth #JobNetworking #HR #HR_Manager #Hiring

Good Morning HR Tribe 🌞☕️🍞 HR Word of the Day APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEM (ATS) An ATS is a type of software application that handles the recruitment process, namely by sorting through thousands of resumes, to determine which ones are the best fit for the positions for which they were submitted. Applicant tracking systems do not process your resume so differently from recruiters glancing at your resume, as both are looking for certain criteria for inclusion. Whereas human recruiters are often looking for grounds for automatic rejection, such as spelling errors or lack of relevant skills, applicant tracking systems operate by searching for resume keywords.- HR Manager , Accountant ,etc Applicant tracking systems help employers save time and paper and help them stay organized. With applicant tracking systems, there is no risk of an employer accidentally deleting the email containing the resume of the applicant the company wants to hire or misplacing a file. An ATS also makes it easy for employers to keep tabs on the hiring process and to communicate with applicants directly. Applicant tracking systems were first used by large corporations that receive thousands of applications, but smaller businesses are now using them just as frequently. Just as companies use software applications to keep track of relevant information on their customers, using similar software to organize information on prospective employees makes sense for employers. Have a Motivated Meaningful Monday Songspiration: Ariana Grande- Thank you Next 🚶🏽♂️🎶🚶🏽♂️🎶🚶🏽♂️🎶🚶🏽♂️🚶🏽♂️🎶🚶🏽♂️🎶