Why it is never ok to lie on your C.V.

Why it is never ok to lie on your C.V.

It's not a surprise to see that many people attempt to lie on their CV to net their dream job. It would be fair to say that this practice has been in place for a number of years and while it might be tempting, we’ll now have a look at reasons why it’s probably not the most advisable course of action.

How would you lie on your C.V.?

Firstly, it’s worth investigating just how some people lie on their C.V. Undoubtedly, the biggest lie comes from an educational viewpoint, with applicants pencilling in a degree that either doesn’t exist, or exists in the form of a much lower grade. This is turning out to be especially true for graduates, who generally always need to possess a 2:1 grade in order to even be considered for a vacancy Sliding Sash Windows Surrey.

On a similar note, a lot of people are starting to lie about their previous work experience. It’s no secret that many employers are looking for experience in a lot of positions and this means that some people are being rather creative in relation to their past.

Why you should never lie on your C.V.

Even though it is very tempting to pad out your C.V. with several inaccurate facts, you should avoid this approach at any opportunity and merely state what is true. Due to the competitive employment market, employers are turning more and more stringent in their checks and this means that many could check every detail on your C.V. to make sure that it is accurate. This is particularly common for highly-paid jobs, where companies are desperate to land the best candidate.

Of course, the main reason why you should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on your documents is just in case you are successful with your application. Even if you have secured a long-term contract with your employer, they may still have the right to terminate your employment should they find out that you lied during the application process. This fear alone should be enough to deter you from telling any lies, as the last thing you want is to be constantly looking over your shoulder in your new occupation.

The high-profile cases

As with anything, there are many high-profile cases that suggest that lying on your C.V. is one of the worst things you can do. Perhaps the biggest in recent history surrounds the chief executive of Yahoo, Scott Thomson. It came to light that this individual exaggerated his degree and even though he had been employed in his new, $1m per year job for just four months, the company wasted no time in showing him his marching orders. Therefore, if there ever was a case of C.V. lies catching up with absolutely anyone, this is undoubtedly it.

However, it’s not only celebrities that have been dealt a hard hand in this regard, and even the most reputable professionals can suffer. Take Dr David Clark for example, a man who claimed he was the author of some several significant journals. Unfortunately for this individual, he didn’t just lose his job, but also the right to practice for one year.

A conclusion on lying on your C.V.

In summary, it’s clear to see that lying on your C.V. is simply not the right way to go. In most cases, your employer will find out your indiscretions and this could even hamper your future career prospects. Bearing this in mind, tell the truth on your C.V., and avoid all the worrying that is associated with going down the immoral path.




Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

How to Make the Hiring Process Work for You

How to Make the Hiring Process Work for You

Knowledge can be a powerful, but applied knowledge is insurmountably more effective. So for job seekers looking for their next career opportunity, it's not just about understanding what happens during the job application process. Rather, it is about understanding the "why" and the "how" of background screening and assessment tools to use these procedures to maximize the possibility of a favorable outcome.

The first step is to understand the differences between background screening and pre-employment assessments because, surprise, they’re not the same thing!

Pre-employment assessments typically occur early on in the hiring process to act as filters for candidates who clearly would not function well in the available position or within the overall company culture.  Studies have shown that a multi-dimensional view of a candidate is most effective for appropriately predicting candidate success.  As such, pre-employment assessments seek a variety of information including whether or not the candidate has the necessary skills, if their personality and behavior indicates that they will actually do the job, and how successful they have been in the past. For example when looking for social media marketing jobs London competition can be fierce.

Consequently, the most important candidate act during the hiring process is to be honest and truthful.  Candidates can be sure that any skeletons in their closet will make their way out. But prospective employers are much more receptive to hearing a candidate’s side of the story if they haven’t had to find out about such circumstances on their own. Being open and candid from the get go is the best way to ensure a successful outcome for both parties.Remember that these tools are smart. Do not try to “game” the system by providing answers that only seem like what the company wants to hear.  Modern pre-employment assessment tests have been scientifically developed to detect such falsities and, consequently, doing so will often hurt the candidate more than if they’d answered honestly.

Background screening, on the other hand, refers to background and reference checking and is usually found near the end of the selection process – often as contingencies to an employment offer. Both tools are used to determine the validity of the information candidates have supplied about themselves.  Likewise, employers want to be certain that they aren’t just hiring productive candidates, but individuals who comply with ethical and moral standards.

Similarly, the references that a candidate supplies should be carefully considered.  If a reference fails to acknowledge any candidate shortcomings or areas for future development, employers will likely disregarded the reference altogether. Unfortunately, this can reflect poorly on the candidate.

Finally, don’t forget that the hiring process should act as a two-way street! The candidate is not the only one being interviewed. Candidates should use the screening process to determine if the firm is an appropriate fit for them.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

What Employers REALLY Want to Hear from Interviewees

What Employers REALLY Want to Hear from Interviewees

There are thousands of guides out there that claim to have all the secret interviewing techniques that will net any job. But these are rarely, if ever, written be employers. That’s why this guide is here to give a snapshot of just some of the interview techniques that can woo employers and make them think twice about choosing somebody else.

Research

If there’s anything that angers an employer it’s an interviewee who doesn’t know anything about the company they are joining. They won’t ask them to rattle off anything about the company, but they are expecting to see a demonstration that they already know something about the company. This doesn’t necessarily have to be reciting previously-learned facts and figures; it can be a simple query. If, for example, the employer asks whether the individual has any questions then they would ask about what the company is doing next after the major contact signing with XXX. It shows initiative and enthusiasm.

Stupidity is not a Virtue

There are just some things that some never be asked about or enquired into during an interview. Ask or talk about any of the following things and that’s pretty much the end of any job prospects. However, if the interviewer happens to bring them up first then its fine to speak about them, but don’t make them a sticking point.

“How much do I get paid?”
“What are the bonuses like in your company?”
“How much holiday time do I get each year?”
“When can I take my holiday?”
“Which desk will I be getting?”

They show a selfish side of the applicant and this is a first-class ticket out of any company for the foreseeable future.

Dress Well

This shouldn’t have to be said, but the amount of people who turn up in casual clothing to an interview is quite frankly alarming. Always wield smart business dress to any interview, even if it will never have to be worn again. It shows the applicant has made an effort and really wants the job. And always make sure that shoes are polished and are not trainers. Even in a nice suit the wrong shoes can completely ruin the look.

Employers Don’t Care About You

Employers don’t care about the applicant. It’s true. They are not looking for how they can help them; they are looking at how they can help the company. Ok, the employer is not stupid and they know that things like pay are important to the applicant, but it’s an unsaid subject. When entering an interview it’s important to gear as much as possible towards bringing something to the company. If the individual can’t bring anything new to the company then they don’t have a point, in the eyes of the employer.

Never Lie

Those who lie always get found out eventually. Exaggeration is encouraged and it’s foolish to do anything else, but blatant lies are the perfect way to get fired. And they get caught even if it happens to be years later.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

The Perfect Corporate Event: 3 Tips for Success

How to Arrange the Ideal Corporate Event?

Corporate events remain big business in 2018, as leading brands and independent businesses throughout the world compete to retain their staff and inspire a motivated work force. Despite their growing popularity in the commercial world, however, organizers face a difficult challenge to create a customized team building event that generates interest and genuine participation among its attendees.

With this in mind, it is clear that planning a successful team building event is something of an art form, and an exercise that requires a great deal of research, preparation and genuinely creative thinking. Without taking the time to consider the aim of the event and the individual team in question, it is impossible to create an experience that satisfies all parties involved.

So how should you approach conceiving and developing your team building idea?

3 Tips for Success:

1. Empower Your Staff With Responsibility for the Event

Regardless of whether you ultimate aim is to create a greater team unity or inspire improved individual performances, every attendee must feel as though they are participating in something genuinely unique and worthwhile. The best way to achieve this is by empowering them as a key part of the decision making and brain storming processes, so that the team themselves have input in determining the destination of the event and the activities that define it.

2. Develop a Clear Goal and Purpose for Your Team Building Event

Team building events are not like an office party or Christmas night out, as they must be created with a specific purpose and goal in mind. Without this, any corporate bonding exercise will be entirely without structure, and runs the risk of leaving your attendees feeling uninspired and disappointed.  It is also crucial not to let your event overtake its core purpose, as this can detract from what you are attempting to achieve.

3. Offer a Reward for All Who Participate

We live in an age where the consumer is king, and this means that individuals within society are far more demanding in terms of what they expect from leading brands and employers. Any corporate team building event that you propose must offer a tangible reward for all of your staff who participate, whether this is evident through the experience itself or the offering of specific awards and prizes. Introducing an air of competition can be a great way to facilitate physical prize giving, and also engage participants on a far greater level.

The Bottom Line

These tips can help you to create and define your corporate team building event, and ensure that it engages all participants and achieves an overall aim. Without adopting a dedicated and structured approach to your preparation, it is impossible to satisfy either your own ambitions or those of your staff, and any event that results from disorganization is likely to achieve little more than a financial loss for your firm. So whether you go it alone or employ the services of an event’s management, invest time as well as money when planning your event, and empower staff members as valued and contributing participants.

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

5 Tips for Building the Best Sales Team

5 Tips for Building the Best Sales Team

The sales team is at the front line of any business – approaching prospective customers, managing the accounts of existing customers and trying to resign customers who have left. For this reason they’re not only integral to developing new business but also to refining the product you deliver and the way in which you deliver it. Your sales team then is highly important to the future of your company and needs to be assembled with care.

Whether you’re assembling a new sales team for the first time or adding members to a new team, the sales recruitment process has several vital ingredients to ensure that the resulting team is motivated, efficient and effective.

1.    Advertise intelligently

You want to recruit salespeople who are suited to your particular industry and who, ideally, will have experience of dealing with the kind of customers who make up your target audience. It therefore makes sense to advertise your positions with websites, publications and agencies which specialise in your sector (as well as on your own website). This will help cut down the number of irrelevant applications you. Another tip is to incentivise referrals from your staff – by offering a cash bonus to anyone who introduces a salesperson who ends up in your employment you maximise the chances of finding someone who’s appropriate for the role and who’ll fit in (but this method probably won’t get you a deluge of applicants so should be used in addition to other advertising methods.

2.    Be ruthless with applicants

A salesperson has to be proficient at selling your product or service – and what better way to demonstrate this aptitude than by selling themselves on paper or in an interview situation?

An applicant for a sales position should demonstrate:

Knowledge – they should have undertaken thorough research of your organisation before turning up to interview and demonstrate an understanding of who they’re trying to sell (themselves) to;
A competitive nature – they should demonstrate the desire to excel at what they do;
A cooperative nature – they’ll be part of a team and will have to get on and work with others;
Persuasion – they should be able to bring others around to their point of view;
Assertiveness – they should make their point firmly but without aggression;
Resilience – they should bounce back from rejections and be able to surmount obstacles;
Self-motivation – they should demonstrate a tendency to take the initiative when ambition demands it.
Look for evidence of all of the above qualities in written applications and interviews – all of them are essential in a good salesperson.

3.    Set practical challenges

A well rehearsed set of answers in an interview can provide a lot of information on your prospective salesperson but not the ability to think on their feet – another essential quality in a good sales executive. Try to think up some sales related problems for your candidates that they won’t have encountered before e.g. pitching a randomly selected piece of office furniture to the interview panel, calling your secretary on a made up pretext and getting her to transfer the call.

4.    Incentivise and gamify

The type of applicant the position attracts will depend heavily on the advertised salary and bonuses, which means getting the combination right is vital to assembling the best possible team. You’ll want to think carefully about this – whether the targets you set for your salespeople are based solely on revenue or broken down further into separate targets for new business, renewals and recovered customers. The calculation should also take into account the value of an average sale and the expected conversion rate (i.e. the number of appointments/calls you’d expect to make for a single sale). You should also set activity targets for your sales staff – the number of calls made, prospects generated etc. These can be used to foster competition among your sales staff and be used to decide recipients of additional awards and benefits. This kind of gamification can greatly enhance productivity and build the kind of team spirit that attracts good sales staff.

5.    Demonstrate a willingness to invest in staff

The best candidates for your sales roles don’t want to feel like they’re applying for a dead end job. In order to attract, recruit and retain the best people you need to show a willingness to invest in the development of your personnel. As well as the kind of award and benefit mentioned above you should also conduct frequent reviews, track the development of each staff member and offer the opportunity to develop key skills through training courses and mentoring. Not only will schemes like these help you get the best possible people on the bus but they’ll also make sure that those people are giving their all during the ride.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

7 Reasons To Quit Your Job Now!

Seven Reasons To Quit Your Job

A recent poll illustrated that a third of all Americans and Europeans hate their jobs. Should you find yourself a member of this group, daydreams of handing in your notice are probably something that you indulge in pretty regularly. But should you do it?
The primary problem with quitting is obviously that those useful pay checks stop coming your way. Then there’s the small matter of finding another job. That’s never exactly been a fun activity but these days it can be downright torturous.

If you’re going to quit your job, you should therefore make sure that you have a damn good reason. In case you’re looking for inspiration, any of the following seven should do quite nicely – get your keys its time to get job hunting.

You Despise Your Co Workers

Every office has one or two less than pleasant individuals but if you literally cannot stand the majority of the people that you work with, it might be time to pack your bags. Common complaints include back stabbing, idea stealing, and those helpful co workers that leave everything until the last minute.

You Don’t Do Anything

Nobody likes being rushed off their feet but if you find yourself gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of YouTube cat videos, you might be better off working somewhere a little more challenging. Too much free time leads to clock watching and clock watching is simply not a very satisfying way to spend your day.

You Can’t Sleep

It might come as a surprise to some people but not being able to sleep because of your job isn’t actually normal. A little bit of work related stress comes with just about every job but there is a line. And when you find yourself unable to sleep, that line has generally been crossed.

You’re Going Nowhere Fast

How long have you been waiting for a promotion? Though it might be nice to imagine otherwise, some jobs are simply dead ends. And if you find yourself in such a job, quitting might be the only logical thing to do. The other option is likely to involve you still being in the same position five years from now.

You’re Not Learning Anything

Doing the same thing every day isn’t just mind numbing, it’s bad for your career. Though you can’t expect to learn something new every day, as the years pass, your skill set should be increasing. If it’s not, neither is your value on the job market and this can cause serious problems in terms of career advancement.

You Work Sixty Hours a Week

When you start hitting sixty hours per week at work, you can easily end up with a life that is pretty much defined by your job. Should you find yourself working such hours, you’d really want to be getting something fantastic in return. If you’re not, you might have just found a fantastic reason to start looking for work elsewhere.

You Dread Mondays

Finally, very few people wake up with a smile on Monday morning, but most people don’t dread going into work. If you find yourself getting depressed on Sunday afternoons because of the week of misery that awaits, it might be time to hand in your notice. Money isn’t everything and it isn’t really anything if you’re too miserable to spend it.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

4 Recruiting Tips for Startups

4 Recruiting Tips for Startups

Starting a company and raising it to the levels where it can be recognized by others and compete effectively with similar companies is not an easy task. However,applying the right recruiting tips and hiring the right staff makes this easier to achieve.If you have a startup company, then the four 4 cool recruiting tips listed below will help you get the right staff for your new company.

1. Schedule the Interview Yourself

If you have a job vacancy in your startup company, many candidates are likely to show interest by applying for the post, either directly or through a recruiter. However, receiving a message or resume directly from the candidate or from a recruiter (for an interested candidate) is not a guarantee that they are going to follow-up. Instead, you have to take up the follow-up initiative.Schedule time to have a conversation with the candidate. When you are scheduling for this meeting, ensure that the time you select is appropriate for both you and the candidate, and, of course,inform the candidate of the scheduled time.This will help the candidate prepare effectively.

2. Pay Attention to Substance

Social media is one of the best ways you can get the right candidate for your company. For your company or business to grow, you need to increase its network, and social media networks have become effective tools in achieving this. However, Getting a candidate’s resume through social media networking alone is not enough. Take the time to see how the candidate is involved in the media and how active he/she is. Analyze the kind of discussions the candidate has and whether they are likely to be of great importance to your startup company. Remember that the social media tools alone are not valuable to your company; it is how these tools can be used to build and grow your company that matter most.

3. Choose the Best People First and Train Later

Startup businesses do not recruit people whom they are going to train;they prefer candidates who have the skills necessary to work for the company right away.It is therefore better to select ready-to-work candidates so that they can start delivering their services once they are employed. You can then train them later based on the specific requirements of your company.

4. Remember to Follow-up

Be sure to follow-up with a candidate once communication between you has started. You should never say anything that you do not mean. When you promise a candidate that you will get back to him/her in a week’s time, be sure to do so even if there is no advancement on the issue you discussed. Explain the situation as it is to the candidate so that he/she can decide what to do. Manage expectations; do not promise anything that is not feasible.

Hiring for a startup can be difficult. You donÕt have the luxury of picking bad candidates because your budget typically will not allow for waste. Use the above tips, be picky, and ensure your success.Do not keep the candidate expecting too much yet there is nothing being waited.



Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness