CHAPTER EXERCISES

Chapter 15 (Page 516): Apply your knowledge

1. How can you “think like an employer” if you have no professional business experience?

• A great way to get inside the heads of corporate recruiter is to “evesdrop” on their professional conversation by reading periodicals such as Workforce Management and blogs such as Fistful of Talent, and The HR Capitalist.

2.  If you were a team leader at a summer camp for children with special needs, should you include this in your employment history if you are applying for work that is unrelated? Explain your answer.

• Yes, because you should mention relevant experience and education you gained, such as volunteer or community work. This shows that you are good at leadership, teamwork, communication skills, technical aptitude, or other valuable attributes.

3. Can you use a qualifications summary if you don’t yet have extensive professional experience in your desired career? Why or why not? 

• Yes, because the goal of the qualifications summary is to let a reader know within a few seconds what you can deliver. If you haven’t been working long but your college education has given you a dominant professional “theme”, you can craft a qualifications summary that highlights your educational preparedness.

4.  Some people don’t have a clear career path when they enter the job market. If you’re in this situation, how would your uncertainty affect the way your write your résumé? 

• The uncertainty affects a resume in many ways, it gives a wrong first impression to a future manager or boss, because the uncertainty you give by not know what your what in your future can cause low enthusiasm in the work space and many employers search for people that know what they want in their career paths and the also seek for personnel with motivational strength. 

5. Between your sophomore and junior years, you quit school for a year to earn the money to finish college. You worked as a loan-processing assistant in a finance company, checking references on loan applications, typing, and filing. Your manager made a lot of the fact that he had never attended college. He seemed to resent you for pursuing your education, but he never criticized your work, so you thought you were doing okay. After you’d been working there for six months, he fired you, saying that you’d failed to be thorough enough in your credit checks. You were actually glad to leave, and you found another job right away at a bank, doing similar duties. Now that you’ve graduated from college, you’re writing your résumé. Will you include the finance company job in your work history? Explain. 

•   Yes I would include the finance company in the work history on my resume, although i wasn't thorough enough in my credit check, you need to be honest in your resume. The importance thing is that i have the ability to do what the last job require, I have the skill and knowledge to do so, and that why I would include it.

Chapter 16 (Page 549): Apply your knowledge

1. How can you distinguish yourself from other candidates in a screening interview and still keep your responses short and to the point? Explain.  

• During these interviews, show keen interest in the job, relate your skills and experience to the organization’s needs, listen attentively, and ask insightful questions that show you’ve done your research. During g the selection stage, continue to show how your skills and attributes can help the company. During the final stage the interviewer may try to sell you on working for the firm.

2. How can you prepare for a situational or behavioral interview if you have no experience with the job for which you are interviewing?

• To prepare for a behavioral interview, review your work or college experiences to recall several instances in which you demonstrated an important job-related attribute or dealt with a challenge such as uncooperative team members or heavy workloads. Get ready with responses that quickly summarize the situation, the actions you took, and the outcome of those actions. In the situational interview, the situations will likely relate to the job you’re applying for, so the more you know about the position, the better prepared you’ll be.

3. If you lack one important qualification for a job but have made it past the initial screening stage, how should you prepare to handle this issue during the next round of interviews? Explain your answer

•  In the last round of interviews, if i don't have one of the important qualifications I would tell that i am capable of learning such quality for the sake of my professional position. Since I have passed the initial screening interview, the interviewer know my potential of learning and motivational interest in this position.

4. What is an interviewer likely to conclude about you if you don’t have any questions to ask during the interview?

• Interviewers expect you to ask questions and tend to look negatively on candidates who don’t have any questions to ask.

5. Why is it important to distinguish unethical or illegal interview questions from acceptable questions? Explain.

• The importance of knowing which question is unethical and ethical gives you the power and upper knowledge to answer in a proper way these unethical questions. Because ethical questions are mainly easy and you are supposed to be prepare for them. By knowing the difference between these two types of questions it shows that you well study the position that you are applying to and it also shows that you know a good code of conduct.