why i was not hired

Kwabena Okyire Appianing

Business, Career

About the author

Kwabena Okyire Appianing

Considered the #1 authority on engineering profitable customer acquisition campaigns, Kwabena is the marketing expert other experts go to when they need help

These 5 Drawbacks Could be The Reasons Why You Are Not Hired

Statistics regarding unemployment worldwide is staggering. According to the Office for National Statistics UK, there were 1.42 million unemployed people (people not in work but seeking and available to work), 59,000 fewer than for April to June 2017 and 182,000 fewer than for a year earlier.

The shocking aspect is that there are lots of ‘qualified’ personnel out there who can fill the few vacancies available but due to a few errors, they always left frustrated.

I have outlined five reasons other than your qualifications why employers won’t hire you.

You Smell Bad

Recently there was an uproar in Ghana concerning a woman who died during a an interview session. Reports suggest the woman was extremely nervous and was sweating profusely throughout the interview process. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take the ‘heat’ and subsequently passed out.

Interviews can cause a lot of anxiety. It’s a bad idea to smoke in a bid to calm your nerves prior to a job interview. This can be a recipe for disaster. If you walk into the interview right after having that smoke, chances are that you are going to reek of smoke. That can be a turn off for many people.

The last thing you want to do in a job interview is give the employer a reason not to like you. The same goes for heavy cologne or perfume use. You never know who has allergies, sensitivities or simple distaste for the scent. Play it safe, go in clean and fresh. I always advise my candidates to go in smelling normal, Normal here, i mean smelling their usual self , avoiding the use of an expensive perfume or “Low class perfume”.. you can’t really tell which will give you away.

I have had candidates telling me how their expensive smelling perfume was the same the CEO was wearing and that sparked a connection right on the go, same scenario caused another candidate her Job, her future boss wasn’t ready to smell the same with with her Personal assistant. To avoid all these go in as you are , the smell from your body cream and bathing soap should be just fine.

But hey , it’s not really a big deal if you really technically qualify for the role, serious employers wont pay attention to that but rather help you become a better person if they smell something bad on you

Your Social Media Attitude

Social media is like a double-edged sword-it’s both useful and dangerous. Things that you publish has the potential to be broadcast to unforeseen audiences. Even if you have strict privacy settings, it is possible for someone inside your network to copy and share photos or posts.

Picture job searching as a two-way mirror. On one side, there’s you: a hopeful job seeker Googling everything and anything you can find out about your dream employer. And on the other side is your potential employer who can now look in every nook and cranny online to learn all about you.

You may be thinking: “Will companies really take the time to look at my social media accounts?” The answer? Absolutely. A recent study by the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 84% of employers recruit via social media, and 43% of employers screen job candidates through social networks and search engines.

Employers will Google you and look you up on social media sites. We always do that , the first place i look for prospective candidate is Linkedin and then Google Search and Facebook.

On Linkedin I am interested in your Career Experience, your connections, Responsilibilties you played or is playing and then i look at the your recommendations from other Linkedin memeber. On Goolge search i am propbably looking to see your face, which is not really factor but i need to psych myself before our first meeting, so having a pictorial view of you set my mind at peace. I also look our for any links that has you mentioned in there, it could a bad press on you or a good one, all these will help me prepare well enough for our meeting. At times, i follow up links to see which sites it can be found, because i do more of digital media head hunting , most of the candidate i met have their own websites, blogs etc

Then i move on to facebook to check your social interactions, this really matters a lot to most clients and it is because modern companies are looking for team players, community builders, brand cheerleaders, influencers who can advocate for the brand they work with. How you interact with others on Facebook says a lot about you , The kind of comments you leave under people’s post and vice versa, the sort of media and   pages  you are interested in informs me a great deal of who are.

There have several instances where i had to print out a post a prospective social media candidate made just to discuss with him because i found it to very political and that was the same type of candidate the client wasn’t interested in. Eventually i couldn’t proceed to the stage stage with him due to the reason he gave me inferring from the post he did two years before our meeting .

In this era of slay queens and rogue display on social media, it’s paramount to ‘behave decently’ so you don’t mess up your chances of securing your dream job in the future.

You Don’t Do Any Research

You should have full knowledge about what your prospective company does. Employers want to hire candidates who know about their industry and its challenges, and who have thought about ways that they can contributed to the company’s success.

Imagine the interviewer asking you, “So, how can you solve some of our logistics problems?’ and you have no idea what the company even does, I’m not sure you would be called.

It’s always good to go the extra mile to know what the company does, and if you have any chance of knowing who your interviewer will be , the better . I have a personal experience where i researched on  a company before hand. I assumed the HR Manager, the CEO and the COO might be in the interview so i looked their names and profiles up on linkedin.

That gave me a deeper understanding of their experiences and possible expectations from me, the CEO was more interested in figures because he had an MBA in finance on his Linkedin profile and from his looks i assumed he would be in his early 50s and i was right- so i printed some of my past achievements showing clearly the metrics in bold ink – That is , the pageviews , facebook likes and enagements , then leads i have achieved in my current role – The COO  appeared more pragmatic to me so i knew i had to do alot of talking and scenarios to get my way through. This worked out very well for me and i ended  up avoiding the usual boring interview questions.

You’re Sloppy

Being sloppy goes a long way to reveal your personality.You have to proofread your resume and cover letter carefully.

Check for misused words, spelling mistakes and typos before submission otherwise you’ll appear as someone who doesn’t pay attention to detail, or you just don’t care that much. Any of those can keep you from being hired.

Mostly Candidate often think employers dont pay attention to resumes or don’t spend much time looking for some of these things. The thing is any employer who doesnt pay attention to details is sloppy and you will do just fine with him if you are sloppy yourself.

Recruitmrnts and Selection a serious business, take time to rework your resume for each role i mostly advise my candidates- avoid common typos

You’re Desperate

Yeah, I know you are desperate and want this job badly-but please maintain your composure. While it’s good to be enthusiastic about the role, employers are turned off by candidates who seem simply desperate for a job. It’s a fine line: you have to play it cool, but not too cool. Display confidence without being cocky.

 

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