Are you ready for the #1 question you are likely to be asked?

OK here it is…

??? Tell Me About Yourself ???

The #1 question is not easy to answer UNLESS you are prepared so PRACTICE in front of the mirror over and over until your answer lasts about 20 – 30 seconds at the most, you sound natural and confident. PRACTICE.

??? Tell Me About Yourself ???

YOU

>>>> You need to give up some personal information. Something about YOU. If you don’t, the interviewer will think you can’t fit into the company, or that you are cold, secretive or not someone they want to have around. We suggest you share basic info. that is already on your resume such as (1) where you live now and (2) where you are from originally which is easy to figure out by looking at your high school location and finally (3) something personal related to family (spouse, children, parents, siblings. If you resist this question and say something dumb like “You’re not supposed to ask me that question”, the interview is most likely over. You do want to fit in right? But the strategy is to move on very quickly, without a beat. Don’t engage the Interviewer in follow-up personal answers. Move on to…

YOUR PASSION

>>>> Are you passionate about what you do AT WORK Yes? Great. No… hmmm maybe consider a new career. Get excited about your career, the things you have done that are connected to WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU. Let the Interviewer start to see that you’re passionate about what you do AT WORK and it is right on target to what they need. Don’t talk about hobbies, trips, your favourite music etc. ONLY AT WORK PASSION. That’s why you are there. Now just as quick move on to…

the OPPORTUNITY

>>>> “and, I am very excited about the opportunity to _ _ _ here”

This final part should be EXACTLY AS QUOTED ABOVE. It brings back the answer to why you are sitting there. The most likely follow up question in the interview will be about the opportunity, the job and hopefully your passion for it!

You have showed that YOU are going to fit in, and that you are a good trustworthy person by sharing a bit about yourself. You talked with PASSION about your work and then you expressed interest and excitement in the OPPORTUNITY. Don’t worry if you think it will sound prepared – it won’t. It will sound professional and poised; much better than stumbling for words, or going on and on about things the interviewer isn’t interested in.

Haven’t got the interview yet? resume style and content does make a difference!

One of the most frustrating parts of a job search is dealing with all the advice you get about resumes. The best approach is a resume that gets you the interview, and helps you get the job! If we have one piece of advice it would be… Don’t make the person reading your resume, work hard to figure you out.

If you have a (numeric) results-oriented, functional style resume you are showcasing… WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU and not just everything that you have done.

Don’t make the person reviewing your resume work hard to figure you out.

So now you have a great resume and you got the interview AND you are ready for the #1 Job Interview Question!

How do we make sure they will work well in the organization, matching the management and operational style of the Client company?

Candidates use (numeric) results-oriented functional style resumes that showcase “What They Can Do for You”. We remove soft language and showcase their transferable skills and experience.  This makes your evaluation of Candidates easier, as you don’t have to work hard to figure the Candidate out, and each resume looks similar in structure.

The interview process begins with the very first contact and includes motivation, compliance, attitude and a host of other factors that contribute to peak performance. In addition, the interview coaching we do, carries expectations and standards that we expect for interactions with our Clients; smart Candidates learn from this and apply it in their career management.

Our testing and assessment is based on the science of axiology, and was selected as the best system to determine integrity, trust and workplace peak performance. Each role has a benchmark score that helps us determine if the Candidate will be low risk, or not. The zeroriskHR assessment also identifies if a Candidate will likely be great in the job, but may not be the best at selling themselves in the initial interview. This is how the testing helps the Candidate even though they don’t see the results.

Find out how the zenPeak system can save you a lot of money on recruiting costs (as low as 10%) and help you build a better organization with peak performers.  Call the CEO Frank Abrams at 416 733-3001

Hiring low paid offshore workers is short-sighted as the people these telephone marketers are calling, may be sitting at home grumbling about not having a job, because some offshore worker took it.

Also, having zero knowledge about the local marketplace (weather, geography, politics etc.) but being ready to HARD SELL is a strategy from 20 years ago and  before the era of Do Not Call lists. Recent News In Canada, Consumers and Customers usually have a deep history, or call it baggage,  with the major telcos who are the major users of telemarketers. Its no surprise that these offshore workers lose their cool after hearing hours of complaints and pushback every day.

———————————–

zenPeak Telephone Marketing is for mainstream Canadian business to business only.

Our Telephone Marketing approach to business to business telephone marketing is simple. Have a compelling reason for the call and present it to a business prospect with respect. Learn about the offer and the company you are representing, before calling a business prospect,  and let the Client connect with an interested business prospect to go into details. This approach works in Canada, when the call originates in Canada and is made from a well-trained, confident, local person.

To reduce turnover, we pay marketers well, and on salary not commission, and only let them work a few hours a day so they are fresh and able to easily cope with the natural resistance and disinterest of some prospects. Coaching & training marketers on a daily basis helps them feel at ease and become better at what they do.

… with training new marketing and search associates, working on some great new job opportunities, working on the oppcourse to Get Working NOW!, planning the new “Marketing Services by zenPeak Recruiters”, plus plus plus!

Personally its been a very good year. The business is growing the way I want it to. I faced up to some challenges and made decisions that I am comfortable with.  I have added more staff and am still looking for a Search Associate, a Marketing Associate both well-paid part-time, work from home positions.

I’ve been learning like crazy this year both personally & professionally – and when you are well into your 50s I think this is a good thing. Finally I know this isn’t a good thing to share to job seekers, but I made a personal decision to never work for anyone else again in my life, and to turn down all offers outside my own business interests. I have a lot to accomplish and its all about the journey!

Sadly, one of my oldest friends, Jack Goldhar passed away suddenly at the end of October. He was single and had devoted 30 years of his life to caring for his severely ill Mom Helen (died 2 years ago), and in the past 2 years his Dad Sam (died in 2010) . Within 6 months of his Dad’s passing, Jack dropped dead. I always say “We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their quirks”  We loved Jack and yes, he was plenty quirky. I still can’t believe he is gone.

I made some new friends at the dog park this year… Wayne, Linda, Charlie, MaryAnn. They often get some of my fresh homemade munchies; bagels, blueberry buns or muffins, and they are usually very happy. My trip to the dog park is my daily midday break for an hour. Many Clients and Candidates have gotten use to hearing a bark in the background if they call me. I do business 24/7 so I always take calls

and…I’m looking forward to 2011! How about you?

Please have a look at the position description here and let us know if you know someone who is a good fit!

http://zenpeak.com/sales-manager-opportunity-health-company/

Its a role for an Inside Mortgage Salesperson; a licensed position at a great company that has a steady flow of quality leads and potential business. Yes, you have to work hard and generate your own business too but almost everyone need a mortgage!  and imagine being given the support, training AND qualified potential business leads ready to be serviced. Another great aspect of this opportunity is the office environment; professional and low-pressure. Not licensed? The company will help you quickly get trained and government licensed.

details if you are interested: Inside Mortgage Salesperson – full-time.

This position is ideal for a person looking to earn between $50,000 and $80,000 in their first year, at one of Ontario’s largest financial companies. Location is near Steeles and Woodbine.This opportunity is unique. It is suited to a person who is driven to succeed, and wants to work in an office environment at a great company and get a steady flow of potential business, along with support and training to be a licensed mortgage salesperson.

Next step is to send us your resume, and request to arrange a short telephone interview to determine your potential fit to the opportunity. These telephone interviews are conducted 7 days a week every morning. zenPeak employee recruitment has a system to recruit peak performers for our Clients. Save all your questions for the telephone interview. We will discuss this position and any other jobs that we have to fill that make sense for you. Even if you are unsure of this particular opportunity, we have other positions.

Interested? Know someone who may be?  call me 416 733-3001 Frank Abrams

Dreier used investors’ money to subsidize the money-losing firm, to pay off some of the victims of the scam and to buy luxuries for himself, including a 121- foot yacht, vacation homes in the Hamptons on New York’s Long Island and a $39 million contemporary-art collection. The judge said he was surprised that Dreier’s letter showed an “understanding” of his crimes. Letters that victims wrote to the judge depicted Dreier as “arrogant, condescending and cruel” – Bloomberg

If he had taken the zeroriskHR profile, I wonder what his scores would have been on empathy towards others and adherence to rules.

We know that statistically, a good fit to a benchmark score, will contribute to peak performance.

Coming out of this economic collapse, many Internet business processes and business models for small and mid-size business will take shape and REPLACE past efforts – In other words, bye-bye printed Yellow Pages AND bye-bye online Yellow Page type portals.

Proximity marketing (geo-marketing, location-based marketing) is going to be big as new applications using GPS or cellular location technologies empower mobile devices and PCs. This means that an SME operator, even with just one location, can spend her money reaching, engaging and transacting with her target market, without buying a yellow pages ad.

It’s basic stuff, and it will drive the need for more talented people who can create and execute Search Marketing campaigns.

If you are looking for a great career path this is one of the best!

WordCamp Toronto 2009 convinced me I have a lot to learn about using  WordPress as an authoring platform for a website.

I am committed to being hands-on as much as I can when it comes to technology; although I will admit WordCamp was a sobering event! To begin with, WordPress is complicated. It is not a self-contained program but a platform that absorbs external visual themes, plugins, widgets, and user tweaks. Hopefully what I learned will become apparent when the zenPeak website delivers a better experience to more and more client technology companies, and job candidates in Toronto, Ontario and throughout Canada.

Lorelle VanFossen showcased woopra which is a great real-time analytics tool for WordPress websites. While Lorelle VanFossen set me up with a beta woopra account,  she told me at least 2 dozen things that needed urgent repair on the zenPeak website – ouch! First step was buying her book!

I enjoyed the talk Rob Campbell gave on Internet Marketing from SMOJOE as well as the keynote talk from Nick La on custom fields and conditional tags etc…..  Not that I could absorb it all that fast!

Met some interesting people along the way too. Overall I’d give the WordCamp Toronto 2009 experience a 7.5 with marks off for the temperature = COLD, the chronic late start times, the choppy Wi-Fi connectivity, and the lack of explanation in advance of what each session was about. But its a lot of work to put on an event like this (as volunteers!), and the content was good, so it was a worthwhile weekend and appreciated!

One failure at MF Global was not having order entry systems to prevent the buildup of large unauthorized positions, by locking out the broker, or requiring approval by management.  What if the problem was fat fingers or a computer glitch, or even a stuck computer key on a keyboard?!

But just as importantly, in an industry where orders are given by voice, and even hand signal,  knowing WHO you empower in your company to transact those trades is paramount. In such a high risk and high-trust environment, like in a hospital surgical theater or in a nuclear missile silo, banks and brokerages need to have a complete toolkit to mitigate these catastrophic risks.

The solution is a combination of internal watchdog systems that use trading patterns, fuzzy logic and neural networks to instantly detect problems in real-time, along with a program of independent testing and assessment to evaluate whether or not the firm’s current or prospective employees, are potentially the next front-page news rogue trader.

I was an employee at MF Global at the time of this incident, and could chronicle the significant damage this event, and the operational reaction, did to the company’s brokers ability to carry on normal business. I won’t get into it because my interest is not in the blame game. My interest is in testing and assessing people to ensure peak work performance in high-risk and high-trust jobs.