Use Your Interview to Assess the Employer

When it comes to preparing for interview, it is usual to spend all your time thinking up responses to potential questions and ways to show that you are the person they want for the job. It is a little too easy to get caught up in this scenario, especially when we might feel we desperately need that new job, and we can forget the other important functions that the interview situation can present. Needing to get a new job and just taking any new job that presents itself are not the same thing. If you are looking for a new job because you are not happy in your existing employment, then you need to be very specific about why you might choose to accept the next job you are offered. A new job always looks better than where you might be at the time. No employer is going to promote their vacancies as dreadful jobs no one would want. Then there is the honeymoon period that comes with every new job, where you feel happy about your new situation but possibly fail to recognise that the feeling is generated simply by the ‘new’ and not by the job itself. If you rush into a role without properly assessing if it is right for you, you will find out eventually but it will have cost you a lot of time and effort. It could bring you back to square one as you inevitably have to return to job hunting again. Use your interview opportunities to assess if the role is right for you. You will want to impress in your interview, but the company should also want to impress you. Prepare some good questions to help you find out how the company really operates and how it values or invests in its staff or anything that relates to what you find important in your employment. Don’t make any snap decisions in an interview. If you are asked if you would accept the job if you were offered it, you can simply respond that depending on the nature of the offer you would like to take some time to consider your options. Give yourself some breathing space to decide if this job and company are right for you. Assess whether you liked the offices you visited. If you are going to have to work there, you want to know it is a good environment. Did you like the people who interviewed you? Would one of them end up being your line manager? Did the role sound as good as it did in the advertisement? Are there any career progression routes within the company? You can find out more about roles and employers when you are job searching through sales recruitment agencies in Staffordshire. Because they have a vested interest in getting the right person for the job, sales recruitment agencies in Staffordshire will be able to help match you to a role and company that will suit you. They will not want the people they place with their employer clients leaving after a short time, and many would have to find a replacement without fee so it is in their interest to find the perfect matches.

Are Your Sales Professionals Involved with Your Online Sales?

It is quite normal to find that the development of systems and processes for online sales is the preserve of the online marketing and web development teams within most companies. While this is indeed where most of the work will take place, companies could be missing a trick by not involving their sales force in the development and testing stages. Aside from the technical and functional aspects, one of the major elements of the development of online sales platforms to get right is the user journey. This is where your sales teams should step in. Sales professionals deal day in and day out with customers, so become very familiar with their behaviours and learn to recognise their motivations for purchasing. This knowledge can be invaluable when determining the content on your web pages, which take a customer from landing on a site to progressing through to a sales transaction. Your sales expertise will know what information is required to clinch a sale, so this needs to be reflected in your site. Sales staff can help you map out the ideal customer journey and flag up anything that may present itself as a barrier to buying. While some of this can be determined at development stage, the sales professionals can really add value when it comes to rolling out the site and testing it. Sales staff should be asked to use the website to complete sales transactions when they are in face-to-face meetings with customers. They should ideally ask the customer to carry out the online transaction for themselves while they record any issues or blockers that the customer encounters. Getting immediate feedback from a real customer is a great way to ensure your site is meeting the expectations of your target audience. The same can be done for testing signing up to membership schemes or registering to receive newsletters and updates. The sales industry demands a range of skills and abilities from its professionals, and it's not all about hard negotiating and not taking no for an answer. A quick review of vacancies being advertised by sales recruitment agencies in Worcestershire will show you the variety of sales roles on offer. If you are good at listening to customers and finding solutions to problems to ease processes, then there are any number of opportunities you could take advantage of. Talk to sales recruitment agencies in Worcestershire to find out which roles might best suit your skills.

Social Media in the Interview Room?

Many applicants who have been through recruitment processes in recent years will have become very familiar with the rise in competency-based questioning and psychometric testing. Aptitude and personality tests have not only become increasingly popular with hiring managers, but they are being tweaked and tailored to meet the increasingly high demands of company recruiters. However, if you are looking for your next career progression step, then you might start to find new challenges in the interview room. Just when you thought you had the recruitment process under control, it is time to jump back on to the learning curve to prepare again. It is becoming more and more common for hiring managers to enquire about a candidate’s online and social media activity. They might even undertake their own online research prior to the interview and could possibly make assessments on what they find. You may think that social media is just something you do in your personal life, but with it being such an important communication vehicle for business, they have a vested interest in understanding how effectively you use it or in the worse-case scenario how you might fail to understand its impact and potentially misuse it. It is no longer a surprise to find yourself being quizzed about your social media activity and how you manage your reputation online. With so many of us now communicating our lives online, it is not surprising to find that this is a point of interest for our future employers. If you are going to be the next new representative of a company, you can be sure that your bosses will want to know how you manage your profile online, as so much of what we communicate is now linked with our jobs. While it might not be the first thought going through your mind when using social media, it’s not a bad idea to keep a sense check on how you are using it and what you are saying. By using the measure, ‘what would a prospective employer think of this?’ you could save yourself a lot of trouble and maintain a respectable profile and online reputation if you aren’t already confident that that’s what you have. If all this seems as if companies are going to extremes to get to know the individuals they are interviewing, then get ready for the next new trend from America. There have been reports of companies using computer games to assess a number of skills or personal traits such as a candidate’s learning abilities, how they empathise in given situations and even to what degree they are a risk taker. The games have been specifically designed for the purpose and track each candidate’s movements and which parts of the screen they touch and will even record how long a candidate hesitates. For all the latest news on how employers are recruiting and what techniques they may be deploying, it is worth speaking to marketing recruitment agencies in Wolverhampton. If you are looking for a new job and can’t decide which of the marketing recruitment agencies in Wolverhampton to register with, then why not check out their online profile and social media activity to see which might suit your needs best?

Membership Matters

Communications are crucial when it comes to membership matters. Organisations which depend on membership subscriptions to operate can be in danger of turning away their basic income by overlooking the value of member communications. Taking members for granted is a recipe for disaster. If a member is ever left wondering what value there is to be derived from their membership, then you have a problem. Sales and marketing departments can often, understandably, be focused on winning new business. However, if the balance between that and keeping good relationships with exiting customer isn’t maintained, then they could risk alienating existing customers and find themselves in a never-ending cycling replenishing membership numbers rather than building on them. There is an art to member communications, as it can be a fine balancing act of keeping your members informed of what is available to them without becoming an overbearing nuisance whose contacts and calls become an irritation. The key to managing the right levels of communications with your members is to establish the preferred forms and frequency of communications when a member is first signed up. Also, at sign-up stage your sales and account management staff need to be absolutely sure that the new member is aware of all of the benefits which their membership brings and how to access them if they are not automatically delivered. When signing businesses up as members, you may find that the person who registers for the membership is not always the best person for future communications to go to. There may be a number of interested parties within an organisation, so make sure get the contact details of all the right people and their preferred forms of contact. Getting your communications right means putting the right efforts into getting to know your customers. Communication requirements won’t be the same for each member, so you need to be prepared to tailor your activities accordingly. Your communications team should be as skilled in listening to their customers as they are at communicating to them. When communications are all one way, engagement will quickly die away. If you are a skilled communications professional and relish the challenge of building the perfect communications strategy, look out for that next career step in vacancies being advertised by marketing recruitment agencies in Shropshire. If you are keen to work in a membership-based organisation, then ask marketing recruitment agencies in Shropshire if they already work with such companies and look for an introduction, even if only speculatively.

Marathon Marketing Efforts

When employees go beyond the letter of their job descriptions and do whatever it is that needs doing to get the job done, we often describe such efforts as going the extra mile. Whether it's in the spirit of awareness raising, charitable fund-raising or simple marketing activity, many charities and organisations will be benefiting from the efforts of swathes of runners going the extra 26.2 miles as they take on the challenge of a marathon. With several marathons taking place at the weekend, literally thousands of enthusiastic runners took to the streets of cities across the country to achieve personal goals. Many were also raising money for charity. Later in the month, Warwickshire will play host to two marathons. Along with the thousands of participants, the streets are equally crowded with thousands of supporters, so it is easy to see why these big events are such a draw for advertisers. The opportunities for promotion at marathon events are many and varied. From having a presence at the race village to proving goodies in the race bag at the end for all the finishers, there are many places to get your products seen. Advertising spaces are available on websites and in race booklets and advertising hoards along some of the routes. For those with larger budgets, the sponsorship opportunities abound. These are obvious draws for companies with runners as a target market, whether it is a sports brand for footwear and training gear or a producer of energy drinks and supplements. But marketing companies do well to look for connections which aren’t immediately obvious but have logical links, such as producers of deodorants, plasters, lip balm or sun screen. As well as the obvious advertising and promotion opportunities which marathons present, they can also provide great opportunities for employee engagement. With some marathons now offering relay challenges, this can be a great way to get a company team together. This gives the company a team to be proud of and support as well as raising the awareness of the company amongst the local community. Alternatively, you can encourage a running group that wants to run a marathon together. Of course, on the day your team can run in company-branded running vests. As a boost to your Corporate Social Responsibilities, you can use such efforts to raise money for a local charity. Many companies already support schemes where they match funds raised by employees when they are raising money for charity, and marathons are a popular vehicle for such personal efforts. Remember that when you are recruiting you want to attract the very best in talent, so make sure that the marketing recruitment agencies in Staffordshire which are supporting your recruitment know how to promote your employee engagement activities. Offering a great all-round experience for employees so that they really feel they belong and that they are part of a team can be extremely important. Your prospective candidates don’t have to be runners to appreciate the efforts an organisation will go to in supporting worthwhile and challenging employee-engagement opportunities. Likewise, if you want to work for an organisation which values employee-engagement activities, then speak to marketing recruitment agencies in Staffordshire for more information.

How much to ‘Make Up’ at Interview

First impressions last, and however much we would rather they did not, appearances can make a difference regarding how people will perceive and judge you. So when it comes to dressing for that all-important interview, the classic conundrum of what to wear raises its head. For ladies the scenario is further complicated by the issue of how much or what type of make-up to wear or whether it should be worn at all. Deciding what to wear for interview is never easy so it is always better to play it safe. Some candidates find out what the general company dress code is before their interview so that they can dress in a similar fashion, but even this can be a mistake. Remember, you don’t work there yet so you still need to use your attire to help convey the right image about you. The same might be said about make-up too. While make-up can be a confidence booster for some women, it can also be a factor by which they are judged. As with your clothing, make-up should be conservative and subtle. You are not entering a beauty contest and nor are you preparing for a night out on the town. However much you might think that bold, bright make-up is simply a reflection of your strong personality, try to tone it down for interview. You want to look smart and professional and show that you have made an effort to be well presented. If you don’t normally wear make-up, then stick to that approach. Trying to get to grips with what works as make-up for you can take a long time, so there is a good chance that you won’t get it right and could end up feeling uncomfortable if you are worried about how it is looking. This would be an extra thing to worry about before your interview which you don’t need. When looking for your next job, there are many good reasons why you should consider registering as a candidate with marketing recruitment agencies in Worcestershire. As well as having the direct access to employers with vacancies, marketing recruitment agencies in Worcestershire can also help you sharpen up your application approach and help you fine-tune how you present yourself during a recruitment process. When you sign up with marketing recruitment agencies in Worcestershire, you will go through their own candidate vetting process, which is a great way to test your overall performance in a recruitment scenario and get constructive feedback from the experts.