A Job You Love

As a best of for this summer, I gathered all the most controversial and most commented articles of this blog…

People can be harsh but some comments are really interesting!

Recruiters are not creative (15 comments)

People don’t care about you (18 comments)

Don’t put “Looking for a job” on your linkedin status (19 comments)

Recruiters don’t look for desperate people (22 comments)

I have been dumped by a recruiter (36 comments)

What do I do before meeting with new people?

I google their name, I type their name in google.

And according to the occurences on Google, I will form an idea of who they are and what they have been doing.

So now, test it for yourself, what appears on Google when you put your name in?

When I give conferences, I often google names of students…and all the time, the first link is their facebook page (with some weird pictures).

So yes, google is becoming your CV, google … Continue Reading

Sorry for my English Followers, but today the article is in…French!

Voilà, je me lance pour mon 1er article en Français sur ce Blog,  allez c’est le grand plongeon!

Il y a 2 semaines, voilà le mail que j’ai reçu:

“Bonjour Mr BROUAT Laurent,
Je suis actuellement un élève de l’école …., dans le programme International.
Je me permets de vous écrire car j’ai trouvé vos coordonnées dans le livre des anciens de…. J’ai donc vu que vous étiez Career Consultant chez SMP SOLUTIONS à Londres.

Etant étudiant en xe année de Master de … Continue Reading

I usually realize that people are in great danger when they are good at interviews.

What I mean by Good is “really good”, whatever the context and the job.

They can adapt their pitch and their presentation  to the company they are applying for. They did so many interviews that they know all the questions in advance and look like professional interviewers.

But what I am seeing in that case are people choosing the wrong jobs. They sell and even oversell themselves and end up taking a job that does not … Continue Reading

You know what? Luck is crucial in your job search and career.

To succeed you need work, talent and skills, but you also need luck.

Luck is not something that happens randomly, luck is something you can develop and work on, Luck is a skill!

And luck in job search plays a huge part…you meet with someone in the lift and this person happens to be looking for someone with your skills.

The friend of your friend you met at a party mentions to you that he is looking for a partnership … Continue Reading

Do you know that many written CVs are fake or have been changed?

On your CV is everything true?

Your on-line CV is much more accurate than your written CV. Why?

Because on Linkedin or Viadeo, you are in touch with your ex colleagues, ex bosses or ex clients…and they know your position and what you were doing. So you can’t pretend being a marketing director whereas you were working as a Marketing manager. When connecting with you, they will look at your profile.

People would spot you are cheating on your … Continue Reading

Sabrina Saccoccio created a new kind of CV, the CV-like facebook page.

And it is quite creative and powerful. I am a big fan of new kind of CVs (see my WHAT IS A CV IN 2010?).

The good things about this kind of CV:

- She shows creativity

- She creates a buzz on the internet

- She shows that she understands how to communicate

- She showcases her skills in a light manner and is able to grab the recruiter’s attention

- She has put … Continue Reading

When you look for a job, you send emails. And when you send emails, you send emails to unknown people or to HR people willing to get the ball rolling.

But do you know that these people are flooded with emails?

“A survey of 2,300 Intel employees revealed that people judge nearly onethird of the messages they receive to be unnecessary. Given that those same employees spend about two hours a day processing e-mail (employees surveyed received an average of 350 messages a week, executives up to 300 a day).”

300 emails /day!!

Everytime … Continue Reading

Is social networking the eldorado for recruitment? A lot is being said about social networking for recruiters but at the end of the day, everybody use social media to communicate but we don’t have real figures about the recruitment side of it.

What is the outcome? We all hear stories about a guy who found a job using twitter or another one using another social network but at the end of the day, it seems to be an illusion, news and media can distort reality.

These stories are still exceptions…

I read that … Continue Reading

What is a CV in 2010? (click on the link do download it!)

- You will find suprising figures

- You will find a model of CV in 2009 and a model of CV in 2010

- You will find ideas on how to develop your reputation and how to write a new CV!

Share it, criticize it, love, hate it, whatever but leave a comment on changes I should make.

For those who are doubtful about the figure “80% of companies used linkedin in 2008 as the primary source of recruitment”, here … Continue Reading

Yesterday night I was watching a show on BBC called “the Restaurant” and I have been watching it since the beginning.

It is a show where 9 couples go through tests to see if they are able to set up their own restaurant. And on their way, they are evaluated by 3 professionals of the restaurant industry.

And as a recruiter I failed.

I spotted a couple, JayJay and James, and from the outset, I found them arrogant, even cocky, and one of the guy could not cook. So to me they did … Continue Reading

When people come to me the 1st thing they ask is: “Here is my CV/Resume, what can you do? Can you change it?”

Like in a house, you don’t start building a house with a roof, but you start with the foundations.

So 1st thing 1st is to resist to the immediate expectation of the client…”no we won’t work on your CV right now”.

That’s the moment you need to explain why.

So why your CV is the roof of your house?

Because before doing anything we need to understand who you are (values, passions) … Continue Reading

I have been reading CVs lately and I am always surprised by the lack of punchy sentences at the beginning of CVs. Recruiters don’t spend more than 10-20 seconds reading your CV, so you need to grant some time to do your profile properly.

So what is a good profile?

Actually let’s start with a boring profiles on 90% of the CVs I come across.

Most of CVs have this kind of profile:

“I am a committed and rigorous person who strives to achieve the best results. I am strongly motivated by the media … Continue Reading

I have been giving career reviews at Forum 3 since yesterday and I met so many different people from young graduates to mature people.

But one case struck me more than others.

This girl is in her early twenties and holds a degree in Accounting from another country and now is following courses to have a master in Finance in the UK.

When she came to see me, she asked me what kind of job she could do.

She has been studying a couple of subjects for almost 5 years and was not … Continue Reading

My article about Why your CV is boring and ineffective brought a lot of interest and comments especially from people on Linkedin (I had more than 400 views cumulated for this article!).

After 1 of the comments on the blog, I decided to give an example of what (for me) a boring CV looks like:

2003 -2006 Marketing Manager – Cuca Cola

-        Launching a line of product for Cuca Cola

-        Coordinating a team to achieve this product in time

-        Creating a range of products after the launching of the line

-        … Continue Reading