Why do you opt for this job or why do want this career option? or Why do you want this job.
Many a time, job interviewers find a way to trick the interviewees.
One of their questions is related to your career goals and objectives.
The aim is to verify your motives.
The question can be asked in different ways – why do you want to work here? Or why do you want this job?
Another similar question could be – why are you interested in this particular job?
As a job seeker, you want to be prepared for these kinds of questions.
There are many ways to answer this question – this article suggests a
variety of answers to the interview question ‘why do you want this
job?’.
You may combine (a few response options) to formulate a brilliant answer for your next job interview.
Tips on how to answer this question
Consider the job position and your background before customizing these answers.
Keep in mind that you should try to construct an answer that will explain who you are and why you are there.
Another good idea is to add a few words about the good/positive image of the company.
Here are the answers:
1. Given the sense of importance of this ‘career field’; it has
always made me want to be – “your career” and now to be a “this job”,
because I can’t think of any other job-career that is so important to
society.
2. This position challenges me to keep up with the cutting edge of technologies.
3. I would like to develop my EFG skills to acquire in-depth experience in my profession for the benefit of this organization.
4. This job in such a stable company offers long-term career development and this is what I am looking for.
5. I see this company not only as a positive work environment, but
also as a good opportunity to have my skills and qualifications make a
difference.
6. I would like to gain experience in this line of work because I feel that it will perfectly suit my ABC skills.
7. I feel I should have direct hands-on knowledge/experience in this position/at this stage of my career.
8. I believe that this job will help me assume another level of responsibility in my career.
level of responsibility
Have you ever wondered what you can do to speed up your path to a
promotion at work? One very effective way is to take on additional
responsibilities.
Your salary and title are measured by the responsibilities you have at
work. Those who have a high-level of responsibility are typically paid
better than the average employee. Their titles often reflect a senior
level as well.
Take financial jobs, for example. While a staff accountant may have
many responsibilities and a very full workday, ultimately, the Chief
Financial Officer has a role with greater responsibility, hence bigger
title and better pay.
If you aim to make your way up in any organization, you’ll have to agree to taking on more responsibility at work.
First, however, the organization will need to agree to offer it to you. How do you achieve this?
Responsibility in the Workplace
First you need to understand what responsibility in the workplace
means. Without showing responsibility in the position you hold now, you
won’t likely be granted additional responsibilities until you are able
to demonstrate the ability to do so. There are basic responsibilities
like:
• showing up for work on time and putting in expected hours
• making appropriate choices – such as how you dress and how you interact with others
• being reliable – your boss, the people you work with, and clients
should be able to rely on you on a daily basis, especially during peak
or urgent periods
In addition, to show you truly fulfill the responsibilities of your position you should be able to:
• meet deadlines (or complete work prior to deadline)
• meet or exceed each of your current job goals.
• quantify and present your successful results
Work Responsibilities that Go Above and Beyond your Current Position
If you regularly demonstrate success in all the responsibilities above, you can be assured that you will be a valued employee.
In fact, you may just be the perfect employee for your position! There’s
only one problem: you don’t want to be stuck in that position.
So, what can you do to speed up the promotion process? One sure way to
get noticed is by taking on additional responsibilities whenever
possible.
Don’t be afraid to be the one to volunteer for or agree to additional,
career-expanding responsibilities. In doing this you will most likely
have the opportunity to work with other departments or people you
haven’t interacted with before. This allows you to expand your network
and increase visibility.
When opportunities arise you increase your chances of having access
to them. Also, even though your workload will increase by taking on
additional responsibilities at work, if you are achieving positive
results, people will desire to have you continue doing that work.
Managers will often take the menial tasks of your current position away
and assign them to someone else so that you can concentrate on your
greater responsibilities. Before you know it, you’ve been promoted, or
you’ve given yourself a big permission slip to ask for that promotion.
Your employer will be hard-pressed not to grant your wish.
Prove Responsibility at Work
As you can see, taking on additional responsibilities is the best way
to show that you are capable of taking on additional responsibilities.
Providing employers with proof is better than providing them with
promise.
Lynn Mattoon is a Content Editor & Career Writer for
FinancialJobBank.com, a Beyond.com career community. You can follow her
on Twitter at BeyondCareers.
9. The job is tailored to my AFG skills and previous experience.
10. I want to be a part of a company on its way up as this company already launched several top products.
11. I believe that this entry-level job may enhance my professional experience.
12. Being part of a research and development team is a job experience I always love to have.
13. The company’s good reputation and its successful strategies and values make everyone want to work for such a company.
14. This challenging job will allow me to utilize my ABC skills.
15. This company is known as a company that rewards employees who deliver good results.
2. Why did you choose this career.
Jobs are hard to come by, and good jobs are becoming virtually
inaccessible. With the changing times, the interview process has
undergone great change. Today, the interview is a process consisting of
several questions that you never would have had to imagine a few years
ago.
Some of these job interview questions are trick questions, which are
basically asked in a bid to differentiate between good interviewees and
the best interviewees.
One such tricky question can be asked in different ways:
1. Why did you take up this profession?
2. Why did you choose this career/job?
3. Why did you specifically select this career as opposed to a myriad of others?
Here are some tips and suggestions as to how you can safely answer this question–
Basically speaking, the answer to this question depends on the profession and job that you have applied for.
Noble profession
If the job is in any noble profession such as law or medicine, you can
simply say that you wish to join the noble profession in an endeavor to
do your bit to solve the problems around you. If you are applying for a
job in the legal profession, you can always mention the fact that you
wish to help others with their legal problems.
Basic interest
Another answer that you can give to this question is that you have always had a basic interest in the core responsibility
of this career. For example, if you are asked this question during a
programmer job interview, you can simply say that you always had an
interest in computing and computers. Similarly, if you have applied for a
webmaster job interview, you can say that you were genuinely interested
in the digital medium and in computing and internet.
Growth potential
You can also point out the growth potential for anyone who joins the
said profession. All jobs have a growth potential and a growth
timeframe. The timeframe varies from profession to profession. In some
professions it may be six months to a year, while in others it may be a
year or more. Therefore, if your profession has a growth potential
time frame of six months to one year, make sure that you speak about it
as one of the reasons to enter this profession.
The scope of the profession
Another reason that you can discuss is the scope of the profession that
you have applied for. If the job that you have applied for may soon be
part and parcel of every company and industry, it is another good point
that you can make when you are asked why you have chosen this as a
career.
Your skills
This can also be one of the most difficult questions asked of a customer
care associate or a sales representative. A customer care associate
job is highly stressful and quite hectic. Therefore, asking this
question during an interview would put the interviewee in a quandary.
The best answer to this question is that you are always interested in
interaction with people and you wish to learn/know all about the day to
day happenings in a high productivity department, so that you may be
able to understand it better in the future.
A stable job
With the growing change in the global condition of jobs and finances,
people are looking for jobs in companies and professions that offer
stability and cater to many businesses. If your company offers a stable
job, make sure that you inform the interviewer that you consider a
stable job one of the reasons why you have applied for the particular
job.
Keywords in Resumes
What is a keyword?
Keyword is a specific word or a phrase which occurs in a text document.
Keyword is a term – this term is generally used to specify a single word
or a phrase. Phrase is a combination of several words, sometimes a
short sentence.
You may also stumble upon the term key-phrase (for key phrases), or key
term, but these are not in use as often as the term “keyword”.
What is a resume keyword?
Because of the vast amount of resumes that every human resources
compress in their database, most of these HR work with an electronically
tool to scan and screen these resume when they look for potential
applicants.
This tool is called
Resume Scanner Software or Recruiting Management Software.
This scanner will pick your resume up based on the keywords (or key terms) used in it.
Should you use keywords in a resume?
Certainly you should.
Needless to say, that if you want that your resume gets found, being a
good match for a position, you should write it using specific keywords.
How to find keywords for a resume?
The keywords to target are those that are used in:
• The general job description (i.e. job requirement): of
the jobs that you are interested in. You can look to any job posting,
relevant to your job hunting target, and screen out the keywords, such
as – professional expertise, technology skills, education, years of
experience/education, some action words and relevant competencies.
Secondly, look for keywords such as:
• University Certifications and the name of the educational institution
• Job Titles , professional expertise
• Product Names, Service type, Technical/Industry terms,
• Software or Hardware areas
• Job Search Engines: the
internet is full of web search engines that provide job listings. Google
these search engines and you will find combination of job titles and
professional expertise for each job that you are looking for.
Where to insert the keywords into your resume?
There are four places to aim to – resume objectives, education, professional courses and resume career summary.
These paragraphs are the most important parts of your resume.
Resume Keywords: List of Keywords for Resumes
Here is a list of keywords for resumes as an example:
• Sales, Marketing, Sales Manager, Marketing manager, Retail
• Product Manager, Project Manager, System Architect
• Account Executive, Manager, Director
• Business Intelligence, Business development
• Medical Sales, Medical Device
• Healthcare, Medical, Nurse, Physician, Therapist
• Finance, Accounting, Bank, banking, TAX, insurance
• Financial Advisor, Business Analyst
• Supervisor, Controller
• IT, CISCO, SAP, JAVA, ORACLE, ERP, BI, C++
• Ethernet & IP Networking, ATM, MPLS, IPMPLS, Carrier Ethernet, Metro Ethernet
• Wireless, VoIP, Triple play, IPTV & VOD
• Operations, Supply Chain, Logistics, Manufacturing, Packaging
• CEO, CFO, VP
• Human Resources, Recruiting
• Software, Programmer, Engineer, Specialist, Analyst, Administrator, Consultant, Architect, Development, Designer, Technicians
How Long Should a Resume Be? How Many Pages Should a Resume Be?
article gives the
Rule Of Thumb regarding the resume length.
Many a times, when constructing a resume, questions that might pop are:
- How long should my resume be?
- Is there any basic guideline to follow regarding the number of pages for a resume?
- If you have lots of information to communicate, should you extend the resume to more than one page?
Resume Length Tips – Resume Length Guidelines
The Content, Not Number of Pages
Both writing experts and employers themselves agree that the resume length itself does not matter.
What matters is that your content is relevant, honest, neatly expressed
without typos, and is impressive or at least indicative of potential.
What Employers Expect
There is no set standard for how many pages your resume should be
exactly. No attentive, discerning employer judges you by a specific, set
number of CV pages.
Instead, the employer expects to see verifiable, well-organized,
honest information, impressive achievements, and positive character
traits reflected in the content as well as the clarity and
professionalism of the writing.
Catch Attention of Employers
Employers never immediately read the entire resume. They look it over
for interesting details. If they find it, they go on reading.
So the important thing is not whether your resume is one page or two
three pages. The important mission is to catch the attention of the
employer on the first page, then present just enough relevant
information.
How long should it be – How many pages should your resume be?
How Much Is Enough
So how much is too much? That depends.
- If you have tons of it, select only the best and most relevant information.
- If you have little to no experience, try to stretch it so it still appears decent and honest, not padded out.
The # of pages is not as important as the relevancy of information and how well it is organized.
Remember that – The amount of information depends on the position you
are seeking, your work history (i.e. professional experience) and any
application guidelines the company itself might have given you in the
job description.
In the end, whatever goes in, must be well-organized, verifiable and relevant.
How long should your resume be? Think of its relevancy.
Again, for many professionals one page resume length is too short – The blanket is too short for them.
Therefore, if you have many years of professional experience, plus you
are a good fit for the position, you’re not expected to write it all in
one page.
If you have less professional experience under your belt, give
related information. Information that does not immediately appear to be
relevant to the job can often be formulated so that it does.
However, do not pad out your resume with irrelevant information just
because you think it is too short – irrelevant information is easily
noticed by experienced employers and they are not impressed by it.
An inexperienced honest applicant will always be preferred to an inexperienced applicant who pads out his/her resume.
