This is a dilemma that almost all employers face, it does not matter if your office is in Ireland and situated in Dublin, Dundalk, Louth, Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Drogheda or Galway. There is always competition present in the job market when it comes to employees or whether we are talking about employers. The press to attract employees with goodies will always be there.

A matter of fact is if you consider large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify or any other renown company you almost always have a dedicated budget for personal development i.e. a budget tied to the skill development of each employee. This employee might be a desk worker or a field worker and ranging from a new hire to a senior manager. So why is that important? These multi-billion companies have loads of cash and can surely spend some bucks on keeping the skillset of their employees up to date. But how can a small or even medium company do this? How can budgets be tied or allocated for skill development for every employee? If you have ever wondered about this or tired to figure out the answer but have not found the answer you have come to the right place. Let us give you some free advice worth a lot of money. These advices might even be considered as saved money that you did not have to spend on skill development and skill maintenance of your employees, but still managed to get/keep them up to date. 

Previously we have published a blog post for employees, describing and enlisting the most generic IT skills required for a worker in this digital age. If you have not read this blog post you have some catching up to do. You can read the blog post here:  http://jobprospect.ie/mastering-office-products-for-fulfilling-job-requirements/ 

As we stated in that blog post referenced, there are a lot of free resources available online, just waiting to be used. The least and employer can do is to require a certain level of competence within each tool from a specific job position. Keeping the legal things in mind, you certainly cannot impose employees spending their off duty time on learning these skills but you certainly can impose setting off some time each day for a period to learn a new skill or brush up old ones to the latest technology. Back to the phrase or example from social media, do you really want to sit around with a workforce which gradually is getting outdated? In today’s competitive market this is not an option, and before you know it you get caught up by your competitors who leverage and try to capitalize your every weakness and use it to their benefit. We do realize that there are some certain aspects that need to be considered, the genitor might not gain benefit by becoming a racer in a specific tool or technology, but by learning let’s say more about building management and automation systems he might be able to gain valuable knowledge that might prove useful in the effective operation of your office building.  

Every business, being an employer, should have an overall policy for all managers. This includes manager at executive level as well as in the middle level and lower level managers. Each level should be responsible for creating a 3-5 year’s plan for people/employee skill maintenance and development plan. This can be as generic as describing the goals or as detailed as describing the goals along with a detailed execution plan. Whatever the detail level is, a plan should be made available and executed.  

Having up to date skills makes the employees more valuable for the business/company. The older the knowledge or technology the more the experience counts, but the newer the technology the more the new skills counts towards a successful execution of a plan or project. Companies that have a plan aiming towards a clear goal in the horizon tend to be more inspiring for employees as well being more robust and adaptive to change as compared to the ones who choose or stick to just traditional values and tools.

Consider a hiring process where a candidate or potential employee asks about carrier development and investment in the future of people, what will be your answer? We do not have the budgets as the fortune 500 companies or would you rather want to gladly describe how you invest in people within the budget you have to make them even a more valuable asset for you company? We know for a fact that the later choice explanation would encourage the right candidate while the other choice may result in a hire that really is not so much into investing in the future themselves. Some companies operate with bonuses for employees while other do not afford to have this kind of luxuries available.

In either case, if you educate your employees and make sure that they understand that you being the employer value them the most will make them invest more effort in makes them even better and not to mention the amount of effort they will be willing to put in to do their job. If you have your development plan and strategy ready you might even would have started to crouching numbers.

For example, if being an employer you provide each employee 40 hours for skill and personal skills development and you have 50 employees you are spending 40 x 50 (200) hours for non-productive work per annuum. However, if you think about how much these 40 hours are in terms of time spent each year divided by month you will roughly end up under 3 hours per month per employee. If you further break down this to weeks the number becomes even less than an hour. Then again, if you have done your homework and these hours are spent correctly and meaningfully you would be investing this exact amount of effort in the future of your business.  

If you have any questions related to the content presented here please feel free to make contact as we can guide you and even hook you up with the right resources to guide you to create the right level of policy for your business.  

The post Investing in Your True Asset by Investing in Employee’s Skills appeared first on Job Prospect.

Which tools are these tools that will not be covered during onboarding process? Well, are you given training on how to use a computer? What about how to surf the internet? What about using emails and other office products? It is almost expected and compulsory for you being an employee to know how to operate these tools. What was previously done on a typewriter and on paper is currently being done electronically on computers and emails. Furthermore, more advanced tools are being utilized. In this article we will focus on which necessary tools you need to master, as Microsoft tools are by far the most common tools being used in the market along with Google application we will be focusing on these tools. However, the same principle applies also to other products, these do also include open office. 

Moving forward with Microsoft tools as an example we have  

Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, SharePoint, Teams, Word, Visio. 

Access: 

This is a database type of a tool mainly used to store data. Being an average office worker you are not expected to have a working knowledge of this product, however, if you work within accounts you might end up working with Access. The good news is that in look and feels the tool resembles much on Excel spreadsheets which are the next item on our list.
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/access  

Excel: 

 Excel is heavily used by departments that work with numbers. This also applies to managers who work with budgets etc.  Excel offers a large number of functions that are prebuilt into the product. Furthermore, you have the option and capability to create Makro and formulas. By utilizing these and similar function, several tedious tasks can be automated when you only punch in numbers, while Excel does the magic for you. These can be simple tasks as bookkeeping or more complex tasks as calculating taxes and salaries. Depending on your role and your job title, your employer will be expecting you being an employee to know how to use Excel or similar products to assist you in your job and becoming more efficient. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/excel

OneDrive: 

Onedrive or Gmails G-drive are the tools which are some of the most popular tools used for sharing files and content. Dropbox is also one of the heavyweights who has made its place within the leading cloud-based storage services. You should at least be comfortable with using these and similar products. You should also be able to share the files both with restricted and unrestricted access, as during a successful carrier with a known employer will require most if not all it employees to be able to share files. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage
Link: https://www.google.com/drive/

Outlook: 

The outlook is the world’s second most used mail client, only second to Google’s Gmail. Knowing how to use an email client is definitely one thing that is expected from an employee. Most of the communication between employees or even employer and employee occur through digitals means as email. You should at a bare minimum be able to send an email, create contact and be able to send emails to specific people in a specific manner. By that I mean, you should know about and how to use cc and bcc field I.e. carbon copy and blind carbon copy field. How you can forward and email or part of an email to other people. You should also be able to withstand phishing attacks I.e. identify fraud ant emails where someone poses to be someone from within your circle of trust. Being an employee, you represent your company to clients and customers, you must be professional enough to at least fill these bare minimum standards of using an email client. You should also be able to add Out of office message, I.e. emails that are sent to the sender who sends you emails while you are out of the office on vacations or just sick and unable to be at work. 
Link: https://outlook.live.com/owa/

PowerPoint 

To make impressive presentations, PowerPoint is the tool of choice. An employer expects from all its employees to be able to make professional presentations. As the tools similar to PowerPoint have been around for almost 20 years if not more, being able to use PowerPoint or similar products can be the difference that lets you get the promotion or fellow employee/colleague who makes stunning presentations all the time. If you are one of those who still are caught behind the stream, get busy learning PowerPoint, as it is as easy as drag and drop. In the newest version of the tool, it makes it even easier to make presentations by suggesting presentation templates based on content. 
Link: https://office.live.com/start/powerpoint.aspx

Project 

Microsoft project is another tool which is mostly used by project managers. If you are a project manager or aiming to become one, you should try to familiarize yourself with this product as it makes your life much easier. Besides that, a lot of employers tend to use Microsoft Project as is integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products. Remember that learning tools that will make project planning easier is as important as Prince2 certification. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/project/project-management-software

SharePoint 

SharePoint is a product which enables collaboration between team members. An employer will certainly expect you being capable of browsing some sites and sharing documents by using SharePoint og similar products. Luckily, SharePoint is mostly a browser-based product, this makes it almost as a website. However, the main difference lies in the collaboration capabilities. You can share files, documents and much more using SharePoint and these can be shared internally within an organization or with people outside of your organization. Again, make yourself familiar with SharePoint. The is nothing better than a CV enlisting a lot of tools that are largely used within an organization. This makes your CV and you as a potential employee much more attractive. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/sharepoint/collaboration

Teams 

As its sister product SharePoint, Teams offers a lot of similar functionality with some additional functionality like allowing to chat with your teams or your contacts. In addition, you can use this tool to arrange and attend meetings. During the Covid19 pandemic, Teams was one of the most broadly used meeting tools, right up there with Zoom and Cisco Webex. Most employers encourage the use of Teams as it helps reduce travel-expenses and increases productivity but allowing you to focus on work rather than travelling from one location to another to attend the meeting.
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Word 

If you can use a computer the chances are that you will be able to use Word. It is broadly used within organizations. Try to learn the more advanced feature of Words, so that it can be used more professionally. A team manager at an employer will surely be interested in hiring someone is capable of producing almost as professional documents as a press or newspaper publisher. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/word

Visio 

If you’re an engineer, or work with processes or have any job that requires you to draw, remember the name Visio. It is a great tool with a lot of stencils available which can be used in diagrams. Anything from a flowchart to a detailed blueprint can be made/drawn in Visio. It might not be the tool that your employer would require you to master, but if you are familiar with the product or are an advanced user your employer will definitely include you in the circle of valued and skilful employees possessing digital expertise to copy with any challenge.  
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/visio/flowchart-software

During this post we talked through the most broadly used digital office tools. If you are unfamiliar with most of these, you should seriously consider spending some time learning these tools. Most vendors like Microsoft and Google provide free online training that will take you from a zero to hero within a very short period of time. Make sure to invest 15 minutes each day, and become a digital office tools ninja in no time.   

The post Mastering Office Products for Fulfilling Job Requirements in 2020 appeared first on Job Prospect.

A wise professor of mine used to say, it is not important to know how thing is done in technology, the most important thing to know is what is possible. If you are a programmer, you can solve a task a million different ways using different programming languages. Same applies for an IT pro, who daily work with IT systems and keep our society working. So what are these 5 skills that every employee or potential employee should possess that an employer would love to hire?  

1) Know The Basics  

It sounds too simple that it might even sound stupid, but however, this still remains to be a fact, if you do not know the basics you never will be able to fully grasp or comprehend the technology. As we are talking in general terms, let’s apply this to a programmer first. If you do not know what datatypes are supported within a programming language you would surely use the wrong datatypes causing a miserable design and even a worse application. Applying the same example on an IT pro, if you do not know how a computer works, how can you optimize a system or how can you make a system stable?

2) It is all Logic 

A lot of information technology is logic/logical. There is no room for emotions or thoughts. Make sure to make logical choices especially when it comes to computers. It can be a simple task as writing a program or a complex task as programming a spaceship landing for NASA. In either of the cases, the solution will follow or should follow certain mathematical algorithms in order to make decisions rather than guesstimates. 

3) Become a Jack of all Trades 

Unless you really want to become a senior technician or an expert within a limited area, you should be trying to gain and gather a lot of knowledge of more products. I am not saying that you should not master one or two fields, and I am rather saying or advising you to master some fields but do not make that the only thing you know. If you have forgotten it already, you can scroll up and read about the example of Nokia and their descent from being the largest mobile phones vendors to becoming a company who barely produces mobile phone.  If you can, you should rather focus on point (1), so that your concepts are as clear as possible. When a point (1) is in place, you are well set to start using different tools. As we have been using programmers as examples, let continue to use this analogy. Having the foundation in place, you as a programmer would be able to program in any programming language as it only would be a question of semantics. However, if you only focused on a specific feature of one specific programming language, you would have had a hard time to adjust and to adopt a new programming language.  

4) Embrace Change 

Whenever change arrives it can be seen as a new opportunity or it can be considered or perceived as a burden. The way you perceive change will impact how you function both with regards to productivity as well as well-being. 

5) Continuous Development 

Curiosity killed the cat, but it does not kill the technical guys and gals. Normally the more curious you are the more successful you are as a technical person. Keep on learning new stuff and try to stay up to date. Attending seminars and courses is a great way to keep on developing your skills and keeping yourself up to date.  Another good practice is to keep on taking certifications. This makes sure that you are up to date with regards to technology and that you are attractive for employers.   

Here are some of the companies hiring in Ireland right now!

1- Amazon
2- Google
3- PayPal
4- Stripe
5- Facebook
6- Salesforce
7- Microsoft
8- Intel
9- Dropbox
10- Apple

I hope that you can follow these simple advice and tips and become more successful in your job. If you are a technical person, I would really like to get feedback regarding your thoughts on the material provided within this blog article. From a level of 1 to 5, how much do you think these things apply to you? Looking forward to hearing from you.

The post Top 5 Skills for Technology Jobs in Ireland appeared first on Job Prospect.

I will not be able to list all but I will try to list a few good options to get you started. It will give you an idea where you should concentrate your efforts. You can choose to be in a Accountancy/Audit Practice or join directly the likes of Commerce/Industry or may be join Specialised Advisory like Taxation or Fraud Investigation. These three options broadly fit nicely in the main branches of accounting like Financial Accounting, Cost/Management Accounting and Forensic/Tax Accounting, respectively. 

Practice (Accountancy/Audit) 

By far the most popular choice and in my opinion, a really good one as well. 
 
If you choose Practice to be your first step in your career, like most people you will immediately think of the Big 4. If you are reading this article, you already know what I mean by that. Yes, the Big 4 is a good choice and it opens up a lot of options for you later in your career. The companies are now very large practices who specialise in all kinds of fields. You name a service, they will provide it. For new joiners, they have comprehensive training programs that are well defined. Those programs have been evolving with the ever-changing business practices. The Big 4 have large clients from all business fields. You will have teams with lots of responsibility being allocated to you. I have met many professionals who trained and worked with these big practices. But you should also know that the Big 4 are not the only option. Over the years and based on the feedback that I receive directly in the market, I have observed that most of the successful people currently working for the Big 4 are not the ones who have been trained in the Big 4. They actually come from a very small but important firms, referred to as Small Practices. 

Small practices or Firms have always played a very important role in the wider economy and specially for the Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). If you are a part of such a practice, you will be dealing with clients from all sorts of business sectors. Usually, the number of employees in such practices is small. This gives all staff the opportunity to not only deal directly with the clients, but also enables them to understand the countless number of problems a business faces on a regular basis. Such an exposure is not only good for your Curriculum Vitae (CV) but will also prove to be invaluable experience for you in the long run as you progress through you career. Usually such firms have very small number of employees so it means there is always an opportunity to earn those management positions fairly quickly. It is easier to gain insight into big projects as you are always working very closely with the senior partners. If your long-term plan is to get a practicing certificate and setup your own Practice, you will always learn more about sales by working for small practices as job titles in such businesses can easily overlap. 

Nowadays many newcomers or graduates who are joining this sector for the first time have been influenced by the dress code culture of big IT Companies. Well, in small practices, the dress code culture is a bit more relaxed so that is an added benefit. So, there are a lot of benefits of being part of a smaller setup but in the end, it all depends on your personal preference and goals.

Commerce / Industry 

If you plan to work for industry, I assume that you are already well aware of the sheer number of options and roles available to you. Obviously, there are all kinds of industrial organisations that are involved in different sectors. The options are almost unlimited. If you check Job boards or websites that advertise jobs and search through some of the roles that are available, you might feel a little overwhelmed by the job titles, job descriptions and job responsibilities however if you spend some time and summarise the data, you will see that most of the roles are actually the same. Nowadays Human Resource departments are creating all kinds of fancy Job Titles, but the jobs actually involve more of the same. I have seen far too many times that Newly Qualified accountants who have trained in Practice, jump ship once they feel that it is time to settle down. They then progress their career either within the organisation or the sector. In most cases, this has been a successful model. 

If you are just starting up your career in the accountancy field, depending on your long term plans, you might prefer going for a specialised but entry level role when joining industry but in my opinion your goal should be to just get in. Once you are in, after gaining some experience and knowing the organisation systems and culture, you can move to your preferred role as soon as an opportunity become available. This can be in Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable or some other part of the Accounts department. Make the right connections, prove your skills and you are all setup.

Specialised Advisory 
 
As the name implies, these organisations involve a very specific role with a specific purpose. Examples are Tax Consultants and Forensic Accountants such as qualified ACFE. In most cases, I have not seen people becoming a part of Specialised Advisory in the early days of their careers. Organisations in this sector usually prefer to hire candidates who have previous experience in Accountancy field. They then polish these employees and train them. Accountancy Professionals who are enthusiasts and have a keen interest in specialised field of accountancy are also the ones who are keenly interested in being a part of such organisations. 
 
Based on my experience, I would suggest not to choose this career path when you are in the early days of your career. However if you do want to start here, your best bet for Forensics is to join one of the Big 4 as they have graduate programs that will train you. These programs usually open once or twice a year and are mostly linked to the academic years. If you are interested in Tax, what better place to join than the taxation authority itself. (IRS, HMRC, Revenue). In Ireland, Revenue takes on Executive Officers (EO) and the hiring process involves an open competition. If successful, you will be added to a panel. These panels are kept live for around a year. After that, a new panel is formed. For Executive Officers, Revenue has partnered with local universities so you will be required to complete / graduate. Revenue’s internal resources are like a gold mine. These resources are updated on a regular basis and if you consider yourself to be on the nerdy side, you will be amazed at how much information is available for you to learn from. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  

The content of this blog has been written by Rehan Khan. The author has been part of many successful multinational companies where he learned and excelled. He has worked in IT, Finance, Accounting and Advisory sectors. Currently, the author is not only running his own successful businesses but also acting as an advisor for a number of previous employers on a regular basis. In case you need to contact the author, use the comments section below. 

The post A Guide for Newly / Part Qualified Accountants appeared first on Job Prospect.

Recruitment process 
I am not going to focus too much on the interview process, if you are interested in reading my opinion you might want to consider reading other blog posts that we have available. However, I still have to include some basic principles of recruiting for the purpose to show the change and the challenges caused by Covid19 pandemic.  

During the recruitment process at either the first or second phase, you end up talking to a person from HR. Normally the first conversation is made on a phone while the second tends to be in person. During this process both the recruiter and the one being recruited (a potential employee) get the chance the evaluate the other partner I.e. the employer evaluates and gets the first impression of applicant and vice versa. As 70-80% of communication is non-verbal and mainly body language the social interaction becomes quite important. This element is quite important if you ask both the participating parties, also considering how to evaluate someone who you really do not know boils down to the first meeting. You might have heard or read the saying; The first impression is the last impression! 

Covid 19 – Lockdown 
So along now comes Covid19 and social distancing along with complete lockdowns. Every business is trying to minimize the impact of this new disease and is trying to do so by following advice and recommendations made by health authorities. One of the most common advice made from several health authorities in Europe has been to avoid having gatherings, and rather use internet-based conferencing. So almost everyone who can, in spite of they being technically capable or not is trying to follow the recommendation. The result though is very different for everyone trying. To be honest, the chances are, if you are a normal worker with an average non-technical job you would not know that much about online conferencing. I see that you disagree with me, yelling at me how ignorant I must be making such a claim, when Skype has been around for ages, Facetime, and not to mention Facebook messenger, and what about Signal, WhatsApp, Viber etc the list just keeps ongoing. Well, I understand your frustration, but please bear with me as I try to make my case. As you might have noticed and guessed, most of these products are target on private use and probably are not even for the business market. Those products which are or at least are worth mentioning a very least is Lync! Now back to the problem description, as you use a product to talk to your family, friends or someone else with whom you have a personal relationship is NOT the same as talking to someone whom you have a business relationship with or might end up getting a business relationship with, do you now see the difference? Let’s use a quick and short example, you might want to have a facetime, or video session with your girlfriend, boyfriend, family member etc. Will such a session force you to be well prepared? What I mean to say, you shall most probably have some general discussion or topic that are important and/or relevant to you. But there is not formalness with it.  

Now consider the scenario where you are trying to land your dream job, which is a position in a big company. Will you just make a call without being properly prepared? And if your answer is yes, you might end up not getting that job. Based on this justification, we can at least agree on the fact that using a tool privately is not the same as using it in a professional context.  

Remote interview 
The saviour for businesses being in need of new resources in the form of recruits and employees, is something called a remote interview, especially during this Covid19 pandemic. This is the better option as compared to interview in person, or is it? Let’s explore some of the key elements of a remote/online interview, both with regards to being an employer and being an applicant 

Being host or organizer  
This definitely can introduce some challenges for the employer if online interviewing and the online meeting has not been a part of the company’s history. There are number of things that need to be considered both before conducting the interview as well as during and after the interview. As previously stated in this post, the applicant who will be interviewed will also form his picture of the potential employer. Hence being the representant of company/business you must be professional and make a professional impression. There are some best practices for online meetings that can and to be honest should be followed. Let’s enlist these in random order and describe each element briefly 

1) Internet Connection Speed 
Being the host or guest participating in the online interview, internet speed does matter. If you have bad WIFI coverage or in general a lot of bandwidth consumption chances are that the quality of your online meeting will suffer. And when this happens, you might say sorry a couple of times, but after that, you are starting to make an impression, which will be quite long-lasting. Representing the business, you might give the idea that the company has or uses sluggish, outdated or malfunctioning systems. Being on the other side of the table you might give the idea that you might not have properly prepared for such an important event namely the interview. This too does not score well with the recruiter. 

2) Background Environment 
Please make sure that you sit in an office, room or a cabin without background noise. Have you ever had a phone call where the seller is trying to sell you something, you are interested in buying but you just can understand half of the conversation due to the background noise. Or you are describing relevant job experience, but in the background you dog is barking, kids are listening to nursery rimes or watching cartoons.  As people do have a lenient approach and might understand your position, this might still weaken your position and give the impression you not being professional enough! 

3) Presentation 
The presentation is also one of the most important things during and online interview. This applies to the presentation of the participants I.e. being in presentable condition as well as the presentation that might be used as material for the meeting. Having a good structure is pivotal to keep you audience engaged and keep on having their attention. Use of monotone speech, choice of a bad theme, or simple choice of colors that might not be easily visible on the screen all are part of the presentation. 

4) Being human 
Even though the interview is being conducted online, remember that we are humans and need to stretch out our legs, visit the toilet or have a need to fetch a glass of water, tea or coffee. But please also bear in mind that even though dirking beverages is permissible eating is strictly off-limits. Imagine have a meeting with someone who already has their mouthful while trying to talk to you. 

5) Correct Equipment 
Use of camera makes sure that all the participants are engaged. However, it is sometimes difficult to remember or easy to forget that you are being watched. Always make sure that your background is presentable while using the camera. Using the camera in the mobile might seem to be a good idea, but if you attending to be the host, remember that you would be using the same pair of hands to take down notes. A camera attached to the computer gives a much more professional image rather that you holding your mobile camera with your arm extended out to provide a good enough picture.

6)  Media Files and Sensitive Data 
Often if not always, a presentation includes information that is considered confidential, I.e. the information is meant to be available for the general public. This information can be a part of the presentation that you present for a candidate who meets you in person, as the person will not be taking the contents with them. While when the same content is presented during an online interview, the guest might take screenshots or pictures. Rather be safe and careful than being sorry. 

7) Presentation Skills 
It is a good idea to have gone through the presentation and interview theme in advance. You do not want to start using functions during the interview, which you are not comfortable using. For example, if you are asked a question about benefits the company offers to employees, and you do not remember and you start searching on your intranet site. During the entire process you expose information unintentionally, or in the other scenario where you have files opened on your computer while you are sharing your screen.  

8) Wrapping it up 
Make sure to have a summary at the end of the interview, as you would in person and answer any questions. Agree upon how you will provide feedback on points, concerns or questions raised during the interview.  

9) General Tips 
For online meetings, it is generally a good practice to make people wait in the lobby before you let them in the meeting room. This has several benefits like for example you have control over who is participating and entering the interview. Besides that, if you have any technical issues these can be resolved before you start people enter the room/meeting. It is also a good practice to test the meeting room and equipment before the meeting starts. If there are several people attending/conducting the interview it would be a good idea to put everyone on mute and allow one person to talk at a time.

Online meeting tools have functions as raising the hand for questions, or chat-based communication. It could also to be wise to inform about the data collection and retention especially with regards to GDPR.  

The post Practical Tips to Conduct Productive Remote Interviews During Lockdown appeared first on Job Prospect.

But before we get to the hiring process, tips and tricks I just want to point your attention on one point, have you ever wondered why a certain person have worked in more than 1 fortune 500 companies? What is the reason that the same person worked in company X, and then move to company Y and then after a few years that same person is observed in company Z. Have this point in the back of your mind, as we will be getting back to this point. 

For the sake of this conversation, let us say you wanted to work for Microsoft, what will you be willing to offer them? You might prefer Google or Amazon? What about SAP and Apple? If you are more of the social networking kind maybe Facebook is the employer for you? But the question remains the same! 

The Process Filtering Process 

The filtering process starts early based on your CV and application. The application must be compelling as well as a rich CV content. The more experience and interpersonal skills you possess the better chances you have moving forward in the process. Normally a recruiting company is hired to perform the initial filtering and shortlisting of actual candidates. The big companies also use their regional main offices to conduct this initial process. For example, Dublin is often used as the hub to handle candidates from Europe. One of the main benefits of using Dublin is also that most of main offices of fortune 500 countries have a presence in form of a regional office. If you make it through the initial process you move to the next phase.     

Technical Skill Set Evaluation 

If you are dreaming of landing a job with one of the tech giants, you better have some technical skills worth hiring. Normally this can be a niche field of specialization or jack of all trades, depending on the role in question. When you have passed the initial process, during the technical interview you are probably going to meet a VERY technical person normally situated in Italy, Spain, UK or Ireland. Whatever the case, the technical person most probably is a senior technical person who knows his and your field very well. You will feel that you have good control when the easy questions are being answered, but you start feeling the heat when the most technical topics are being explored and discussed. There are some important things to consider during the technical interview 

• The person conducting the technical interview probably knows more than you. There is a reason that he is interviewing you and not the other way around. 
•  You will at some point not know the answer or at least not know the correct answer, at this point be honest. Do not try to fool them by trying to provide answers that are incorrect.  
• Acknowledge the fact that you understand that there are more knowledgeable people around you and how you can utilize their competence in order to best serve your customers. 
• Be humble in all situations, however, do not be uncertain about things you are sure about. If you are 100% sure in a specific field be ready to pick a fight for your case. 

Negotiating with the Experts 

You probably will be expecting a handsome salary and a bunch of benefits from a tech giant offering you a job, however, this is not the case at least not initially. You can expect to get paid average salary, maybe even better than the average salary for the position and you will for sure get a lot of benefits related to the technical products the company is offering to their customers. This will surely apply for Google, Microsoft, Amazon and to some extent other companies as well. You might get offered annual shares too. But remember what is the most important thing for you, is it a lucrative salary or is the prestigious of working for a great company? If it is the latter, which I suspect it to be then you must pursue your dream. Accept the work and show what you are worth and what value you can add to the company. Remember the question we asked you at the beginning of this blog post, what value do you or can you add to an already successful company and business. 

You might have been the best in your field prior to joining this tech giant, but now you are one among the average employees.  Please do not misunderstand the message, you and all your efforts will be rewarding, but this needs to be seen as a long-term investment. The more efforts you put in during the initial phase the more chances there are for you to prosper. 

The other point that you were advised to keep in mind was why same person gets hired of different leading tech companies. The reason is quite simple actually, most of the companies are looking for certain attributes in the personality of a person. These same attributes are required by all big and successful companies. You might be aware of personality types and the ideal combination of teams. Depending on the goal of a team, certain type of people are put together in teams, these teams are semi-autonomous and do not need managers to guide them towards their goals. 

Following these simple advice’s, tips and tricks you can avoid the most common pitfalls that hinder you from getting your dream job with our time’s tech giants. Make sure you also read through our other related blog post. 

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