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Newest Articles at Career Choice Guide

Resume Key Words
Resume key words become particularly important when your resume will be scanned. Various forms of e-resumes will be scanned by a computer for resume key words, and it's crucial to ensure you've included effective and complete key words on your resume to ensure it is not missed.

Myers Briggs Personality Test
The Myers Briggs personality test (formally known as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI for short) is a personality assessment which aims to give you insight into how you perceive the world and make decisions.

Strong Interest Inventory
The Strong Interest Inventory (sometimes referred to as the Strong or the SII) is a well researched and extensively validated career interest inventory which is used frequently by career counselors. It can help you determine jobs that are likely to be a good fit with your interests.

Business Name Ideas
Your thesaurus can be the best tools you'll find for brainstorming catchy business name ideas. This step by step guide will give you tips on getting the most out of this useful tool.

Newest Articles on the Career Choice Guide Blog

Your Experiences and Tips

Feature Article

The Questions Interviewers Don't Ask Out Loud

Recently I was struck by the profound importance of a comment made by a reader, Catherine. You can read Catherine's full post here: http://www.careerchoiceguide.com/the-questions-we-dont-ask.html, but the root of her comment was that interviewers have a whole set of questions and concerns that they are trying to assess during an interview that go unspoken. During an interview, employers are typically wondering:

Is this person going to be pleasant to work with every day?
Are they respectful and courteous?
Do they follow instructions?
How long can I really expect this person to work here?

The conclusions interviewers draw about these types of unspoken questions are crucial. Once an employer determines you have the basic skills to do the job, what they really want to know is whether you are the type of person they and their customers or clients would want to work with on a day to day basis. Employers can train their staff to use new software or understand a new policy or procedure, but they can't change their employees' personalities, so in the minds of employers, it is absolutely crucial to hire someone whose personality is a good fit for the organization and the job.

How do employers draw conclusions about these questions? They do it by asking other questions. Following are the unspoken questions behind some common interview questions:

The interview questions:
Why do you want to work for this company?
Where do you plan to be five years from now?
and
What are your salary expectations?

help the employer answer the unspoken question, "How long can I really expect you to work here?" Hiring and training new staff is time consuming and expensive, so employers want to know that new staff intend to stay at the company for a reasonable time period. To reassure interviewers that you intend to stay at the company over the long term consider the following when you answer these questions:

Why do you want to work for this company?
Do your company research and provide a specific reason why that company is a great fit for your skills and long term goals. Avoid being vague when you answer this question, or employers will feel you don't have a real, specific interest in their company, and therefore, may leave as soon as the next opportunity comes along.

Where do you plan to be five years from now?
If your answer is completely unrelated to the job you are interviewing for, employers will assume you will leave and they will be stuck going through the interview process all over again.

What are your salary expectations?
If your salary expectations are significantly above what the employer can offer, he or she will assume you will not be happy at the job and will leave at the first opportunity.

The interview questions:
Tell me something you didn't like about your last employer.
and
Describe a time when you worked with a difficult co-worker.

help the employer to answer the unspoken questions, "Is this person going to be pleasant to work with every day?" "Are they respectful and courteous?" and "Do they follow instructions?". If you respond to any of the above questions by bad mouthing your former employer or talking about a person or situation that makes you feel angry and was never resolved, the interviewer will be concerned that you will not be a pleasant person to work with.

Remember, there are plenty of unspoken questions behind the actual questions that are asked in a job interview. Understanding the unspoken questions behind the actual questions will help you to make a great impression at your next job interview.