Message to all current and future job candidates

Dear talents and friends,

After all these years of being your partner in consulting and helping you to find the job that is the best fit for your competencies and personality, we the UpSkill Consultants have collected lots of impressions and lessons learned about the process.

We do our best to learn from these experiences and improve our methods and approach continuously, to better serve your needs and to function smoothly and efficiently as individuals and as a team.

However, sometimes situations are beyond our control and we have decided it might be useful to share some DOs and DON’Ts with you, which could help you to manage that part of the process which is within your control, smoothly and efficiently.

Here they are:

DOs	DON’Ts
Choose the HR company you can trust to walk you through changing your job carefully. Do your research. Ask friends. Read the web page and other social media evidence. Go to the office and have an initial conversation with the consultants in advance.	Once you have chosen an HR company to walk you through changing your job, don’t go with many others at the same time, for the same job. That only complicates the process for all parties involved and puts at risk its success.
When your personal consultant offers you a position which you are unsure is the best match for your competencies and personality, speak to him/her about this and share in detail your uncertainties.	Don’t disappear and stop picking up your phone or responding to e-mails. That creates lots of bad feeling and affects your ‘job candidate’ image, especially when it happens in the middle of the process and there are companies who have already received your application and have to be informed that you have disappeared.
Connect with your consultant and trust him/her. This is the second person, after yourself, who has the strongest interest in you being successful and receiving the best possible job position.	Don’t hide important information and try to present yourself as someone you are not. This creates lots of confusion and leads to failure for both of you.
If you have questions, concerns, doubts or any kind of dis-affections in the middle of the process, call or write an e-mail to your personal consultant and ask him/her for information and support.	Don’t call the company directly, especially when you wish to express concerns, doubts or disappointment. Let your personal consultant facilitate that communication for you. He/She already knows a lot about the company, the process, the concrete situation and has already established the necessary relationships which are most likely to lead to success.
If you have any uncertainty about your CV and how to do it, ask your consultant to help you make it better.	Don’t write things which could jeopardize your application by exaggerating facts or using inappropriate language, structure, pictures or any other kind of information.
At every step of the process, provide constructive feedback – positive or negative – to your consultant. Share your thoughts and feelings when you first read the job description, after the interview, after you have received an offer or have been rejected, etc.	Don’t hide your true opinion and personal impressions of the process but don’t post them as an angry comment online believing that punishing him/her for not being professional enough or caring enough will help you and the others in the future.
Discuss your true salary expectations and availability to start. Trust your consultant that he/she will negotiate the best possible option for both sides when there are big differences in your goals.	Don’t say one thing to your consultant and something completely different to the person/persons who interview you. They have already received written information about your salary expectations and availability to start.

Viara Lazarova – Managing Director at UpSkill
Learning & Development Consultant
Passionate about Education, Personality Growth and Humanisation