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370 articles by Peggy McKee · showing 50

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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Preceptorships: How Do I Get One?

Preceptorships, also known as job shadowing, are a great solution for people who want to transition into a new industry or career (and for new graduates, too). They are fantastically enriching experiences that make you a stronger candidate in the job search, plus they give you a legitimate way to include industry-specific keywords on your resume—which will get it noticed. They’re a valuable stepping-stone toward your new career. How do you get one?

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

What are the minimum requirements for a job interview?

I believe the minimum requirements for any job interview are to be well-dressed (appropriate to your industry) with shined shoes, conservative accessories, and a recent haircut; and carry some kind of portfolio that holds additional copies of your resume and a notepad and pen so you can take notes. You have to get there early, have thought-out answers to typical interview questions, and have looked through the job description and researched the company. These are the minimum things that have to happen before you will get a job offer.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Job Search Technique - Find Hiring Managers on Social Networks

Hmmm... Being unemployed stinks. Finding a job is a killer. How do I find the job? Why don't I begin by finding the hiring manager instead? If I can do that, I might be on my way to getting the position that I want. Maybe online social networks offer the key I need to unlock the doors to the job market? Could be. So the question is: Where do I start? Well... Don't go wide and thin. Finding a job requires concentration--and concentration means focusing your attention where it matters.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Fastest Way to Find a Job Series: 25 Tips for a Super-Fast Job Search

Sure-Fire Secrets to Get More Interviews and Find a Job Fast Let’s face it…job searches suck. No one likes having to put themselves out there for evaluation and judgment, and the nature of the search is that it's filled with rejection. Job searching is often a numbers game…sometimes you've got to go through a lot of "No"s before you get to a "Yes." And then there's the financial pressure. No doubt about it...if you’re in a job search, you want out of it now.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions - Q18

How do you evaluate success? I think the answer to this question has to be related directly to your work. Don’t wax philosophical about what success really is, or what a successful life is all about. If you go into a philosophical explanation, you’ll knock yourself out of a job. They don’t care that you’ll consider yourself truly successful if you have great relationships, or if you are able to retire to the beach at 60, or anything else relating to your personal life.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

6 Tips for a Successful Medical Device Sales Job Interview

Competition for jobs in medical sales can be fierce. Health care is a fascinating field, and the work environment for medical sales reps is exciting, lucrative, and rewarding for those who want to really make a difference. However, sales interviews are difficult, and interviews for jobs in medical device sales, laboratory sales, biotech sales, imaging sales, or other health care sales are demanding. That means that you're going to have to work a little harder to set yourself apart from the competition and win the job.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How Do I Use Twitter Now?

Twitter is one of those social media sites that might surprise you. On the surface, it seems frivolous—do you really need to read all those Tweets about the smallest daily details of life? But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll realize just how powerful Twitter can be for your medical sales or health care sales career, if you learn to use it.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions - Q30

If we hire you, what will we know about you a year down the road? Some candidates might wander off the path they should be on with this question (as many do with “Tell me about yourself”) and start talking about how they’ll know you like football, that you make a mean cheese dip, or that you never take sick days.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Dress for an Interview if You Want the Job

Do you know that most people develop a lasting impression of you and what you’re like based on the first few seconds of meeting you? That’s way before you’ve said anything important…you’ve barely said “hello.” Some of that impression is based off your body language and handshake, true, but the rest is based off how you look—what you’re wearing.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Fastest Way to Find a Job - Tip 9 - Companies you’ve interviewed with before

Companies you’ve interviewed with before Companies you’ve interviewed with before but never worked for are a place to network that most people don’t think about. It’s really overlooked. It won’t work for everyone, but it will work for some and it will be extremely fruitful. Let me give you an example: I interviewed with Fisher Diagnostics back in 1996 for a product management role in Houston, Texas. And actually, they also offered me another role within Fisher in a different area at the same time. But I didn’t end up taking either job. I took a job with Chiron instead.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

What College Degree Is Needed For Medical Sales?

As a medical sales recruiter, I am asked (almost on a daily basis) what college degrees are acceptable for a medical sales job. Since the medical sales field is so varied (clinical diagnostics sales, laboratory sales, pathology sales, imaging sales, biotechnology sales, medical device sales, pharmaceutical sales, healthcare IT, medical software sales, surgical sales, and more), you do need a working knowledge of science and medical technology to be successful.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

What's the Secret for a Successful Job Interview?

Everyone looking for a dream sales job wants a “secret weapon”—the edge that will make potential employers eager to hire him or her, and willing to bestow high salaries, benefits, and bonuses! In many cases, that weapon is the 30/60/90-day sales plan. What is it? It’s a written plan that explains to the hiring manager how you’ll spend your time in the first 3 months you work for the company, in detailed steps that demonstrate exactly how you’ll be an asset to the company.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

11 Phrases That Kill Your Job Interview

Think about the kind of impression you want to convey to your interviewer or hiring manager: experience, ability, and confidence. If you’ve been paying attention to me, you’ve got the experience and ability portions down: a winning resume, a brag book, a 30/60/90-day plan, and high-quality references. Your confidence comes out in your physical presentation, your body language, and what you say and how you say it. Good communication skills are essential. Sounding even remotely uncertain of your ability to do the job you’re interviewing for (and do it well) is an interview killer.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Why Will a 30-60-90-Day Plan Get You a Job Offer?

A 30-60-90-day plan is a written document outlining what you will do as an employee within the first 3 months of your employment. It's broken up into sections: the first 30 days usually includes training, as well as getting to know the company and customers; the next 30 days are more focused on getting out on your own and into the swing of things; and the last 30 days are often more about branching out and bringing in new business. As a sales recruiter, I encourage all of the people I send to companies for interviews to create this kind of document and learn how to present it.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q83

What would your manager say was the area you needed most development in? This question might also sound like, “What would your boss say you need to improve on?” No doubt about it…impressing your boss is always important, and we all have things about ourselves that we could improve on. But, as with all job interview questions, you must be thoughtful and strategic with how you answer it.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Phone Interview Tips - Number 23: Watch Your Language

In job interviews, the language you use can make or break your chances—and that’s even more true in a phone interview, where your voice is all they have to focus on. Your conversation must be professional. Several very common speech habits you probably have will hurt your chances of getting the job. Text: Pop quiz: When you answer questions in a phone interview, which answer would hurt you the most?rn (A) “Um…I’m not sure…”rn (B) “I hated to leave that job. My boss was my BFF.”rn (C) “That customer was a pain in the _____, but I won him over.”rn (D) All of the above.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

You Can Use a 30-60-90-Day Sales Plan to Get a Non-Sales Job!

A 30-60-90-day plan is an outline (segmented into 30-day, 60-day-, and 90-day portions) of what you will do when you start a new job, filled with objectives you plan to achieve in that time frame. Presenting it during the interview sets you apart from other candidates (in a big way). Essentially, you spell out for your future employer, in as little or as much detail as necessary, how you will spend your time getting up to speed and contributing to the company.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q98

Why have you changed jobs so frequently over the past X years? Job-hopping is not a great habit. When you stay at a job for only a few months or a year, over and over again, you are cultivating an image of someone who can’t be depended upon, who doesn’t know what they want, and who’s probably more than a little immature. Employers question your loyalty, and tend to shy away from hiring you because you look like a very expensive disruption rather than a potentially valuable and stable employee.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Phone Interview Tips - Number 20: Ask Questions

In every interview, whether it’s a phone interview or a face-to-face interview, it is absolutely, critically important to ask questions. Why? (1) It makes you seem more engaged and interested in the job. No hiring manager wants to hire someone who isn’t going to be excited about working there. (2) It makes you seem more intelligent—if you ask good questions. Don’t ask questions you could easily find the answers to on Google. (3) It gives you a strategic advantage. Ask good questions, and you can easily find out what the interviewer really cares about. Focus your conversation and answer

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Are You Job Hunting? What Will Employers Find When They Google You?

Online social media is a fantastic tool for job hunting. The Big 3 (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter) each have their own unique style that you can utilize in different ways for your job search. But while you're working these sites to land the perfect medical sales job, employers and recruiters are looking for you, too. And if you get their attention in the early stages of the job interview process, they're going to be actively searching for more details about you. According to one survey, 70% of hiring managers and recruiters have rejected an applicant based on what they found online.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q85

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? In other words, are you going to bail on them in a few months for another job, or are you going to stick around and make their training and investment in you pay off? Is this a stepping stone on your career path, or is this a job to pay the bills until you can do what you really want to do?

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Sales Interviews Are About Sales! Quantify Your Experience.

A sales rep's job is to make the sale. So if you're looking for a new sales position in laboratory sales, medical device sales, or any other health care sales arena, the best way to get a medical sales job is to make it your mission is to demonstrate that you can ring that cash register, and do it well. Start with your resume. Your resume is your marketing document....your "brochure" that's going to draw them into calling you for an interview. And a sales resume is all about the numbers. That's what hiring managers (and medical sales recruiters) are looking for.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Job Personality Test: How to Use Them to Your Advantage

Personality assessments are sometimes used by companies to evaluate potential employees. Often, it’s because they’ve benchmarked their current top performers and pinned down what makes an employee in a given position successful, and are looking for someone similar to place in an open spot. It takes a lot of the risk of hiring out of the equation for hiring managers and makes them more comfortable. (Popular assessments include DISC, Caliper, Gallup, and Myers-Briggs.)

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Fastest Way to Find a Job - Tip 17 Newspapers (or Craigslist)

Newspapers (or Craigslist) If you know that I’m not very fond of job boards as a job search resource, then you must be really surprised that I would talk about newspapers or even Craigslist in a series about the fastest way to find a job. I’m sure you assume that I think newspapers belong to the Dark Ages and Craigslist is just the online version of classified ads. Which it is…but bear with me.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Job Interview Tip: Don’t Sabotage Your Interview By Making This Critical Mistake

As an interview coach, I always recommend that my clients bring a 30/60/90-day plan to their job interviews. This plan is a written outline for what they intend to do and achieve within the first 3 months on the job. It takes research and strategic thinking to put one together, and it’s a lot of work, but it produces fantastic results. It “shows” the hiring manager what life will look like with you on the job and helps him to see you in it, which gives you a big advantage over other candidates.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How Many Contacts and Resumes Are Enough? 10, 100, 1,000?

How many contacts and resumes are enough? That is an excellent question. Perhaps the answer is simpler and at the same time more frustrating than we would like. As success driven people, we like concrete answers with concrete solutions performed in a concrete, fixed period of time. Yet, in this case the answer is as many as it takes to win the job. So, instead of wasting time trying to measure the unquantified, job hunters need to focus in a laser-like way on driving more contacts and reaching each contact with increasing effectiveness on each subsequent effort.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q89

Why did you leave your last position? The underlying questions behind “Why did you leave your last position?” are, “Is there something wrong with you?” “Did you get fired for a reason?” “Will I regret hiring you?” Those are the concerns that you need to address when you answer this question.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How To Transition From Pharma To Medical Device Sales

The job market for pharmaceutical sales reps has gotten more and more precarious during the last few years. We regularly see headlines about big pharmaceutical companies cutting jobs, and the general consensus seems to be that there are more to come. The result is that thousands of pharma sales reps have flooded the job market, many hoping to land another position in medical sales. As a career coach, I am often asked to help ex-pharmaceutical reps transition into these new careers, particularly into medical sales or medical device sales.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Phone Interview Tips - Number 11: Practice Your Phone Interview

How do athletes win championships? Practice. How do violin students become virtuosos? Practice. How do you get better at interviews? Practice. Interviewing is not a talent. It is a skill. Most people don’t get a chance to spend much time honing that skill, because most of us don’t interview that often. It takes time spent doing something to get really good at it. The good news is that to be impressive in a job interview, you don’t have to put in the hours and hours that a Olympic athlete or an award-winning musician would. But a little practice goes a long way.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q70

What motivates you? What’s the one big elephant in the room that MUST be ignored with the motivation question? All together now: “Money.” As much as the money question is a big part of why you work, employers want to think that you’re also doing this because you love it. And you should love it. You can make money doing a lot of different things, so you should enjoy the job you choose to do.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Phone Interview Tips - Number 28: Small Phone Interview Mistakes That Cause Big Problems

Even if you’ve got all the big factors covered for your phone interview (quiet spot, landline, preparation), there are still some pretty small phone interview mistakes that will get you screened out and marked off their short list. Sometimes it doesn’t take much….phone interviews are real tipping points in the process, and even seemingly insignificant factors can tilt the scale. Some of these mistakes will surprise you. Drinking a glass of water with ice (or anything with ice)r

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Transitioning Industries: How Can You Stand Out As A Candidate?

Even though we all know that most adults change careers at some point in their lives (many more than once!), it can still feel like an overwhelming task—but it isn’t. What does it take? A great resume. Write a killer resume that highlights your transferable skills, using the keywords for your new industry as much as possible. Emphasize your accomplishments with quantitative evidence (numbers, percentages, dollar amounts, time saved, growth, etc.) Great networking.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions - Q22

How have you responded to a colleague who is putting you down at work? This is a pretty specific question, but it’s basically just another version of “How do you react in difficult situations?” This type of question is often asked in one version or another in behavioral interview situations. Employers want to get a sense of your judgment and decision-making abilities. Your answer here gives them a good idea of how you react to stress.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q75

What was your least favorite part of your last job? Why does the hiring manager want to know about your least favorite part of your last job? Because they want to find out more about you, and they are hoping to uncover any potential weaknesses or problems before they hire you. What you say and the way you say it will tell them a lot more than you think.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Win in Today's Job Search: Don't Apply Online

The Old Job Search: Not too long ago, if you were in the job hunt, you’d see an ad, or maybe hear about a job opening from someone you know, and you’d turn in your resume or fill out an application to 15 or 20 companies total, get 3-4 interviews, get 1-2 offers, you’d take one, and it would all be over. Today’s Job Search:

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions - Q41

Tell me about yourself. Some people think this is an icebreaker question because it’s one of the first questions they ask you in the interview (and because in normal circumstances, it is an icebreaker question). So they answer it like they would in a social situation and say something along the lines of, “I’ve got 3 kids, I love to run marathons, I’m a Steelers fan”…whatever. That’s a mistake. It’s the wrong response because that’s not what this question is about.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Sales Interviews Are Different – Why?

The job interview is always, at its core, a sales process, because your ultimate goal is to get the manager (the buyer) to hire and pay you for doing a particular job (buy your product, which is your skills as an employee). Even though that’s true, sales interviews are not like regular job interviews. Why are sales interviews different? Because, in a regular job interview, the potential employer is looking at your experience and skills. In a sales interview, the skills they’re looking for ARE the sales skills. You are actively demonstrating your sales skills during the interview.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Coming Back With Creative Questions at the End of the Interview

As a recruiter, I am always impressed by candidates who have questions of their own to ask—and I consistently receive feedback from hiring managers all over the country who feel the same way. The candidate who’s asked, “So, do you have any questions?” at the end of the interview better come up with something. One who answers, “No, I don’t think so,” is going to get a big negative mark against them in the hiring decision.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Are Your Job Candidates Taking Other Offers Before You Can Hire Them?

Hiring Manager Alert: If you have a problem with candidates taking other positions during your interview and hiring process, it's likely that you've gotten your candidates from job boards, newspaper ads, and so on... which means that it's also likely that you've contacted them late in the job search cycle. To avoid this problem, the solution is simple: work with a recruiter.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

How to Answer Interview Questions – Q92

Why do you have a big gap in your employment history? A gap on your resume can be anxiety-inducing for a job seeker, and for the employer who’s looking at them for a potential hire. But it’s really not as bad as you think. Actually, many people have employment gaps, and they have them for a lot of reasons ranging from the poor economy and mass layoffs in recent years to family obligations of the sandwich generation. It’s not that big of a deal. You just need an explanation. The company wants you to explain the situation to them in a way that makes sense:

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Job Search Advice for the Unemployed and Over 40

If you’re unemployed and over 40, it can feel like a “double whammy” of trouble for you in the job search, but it doesn’t have to be a negative. First of all, unemployment is a temporary status that you are going to change. Don’t be ashamed of that. Many people (especially right now) face some period of unemployment in their careers, and it’s not a big deal. It only takes one phone call, one interview, or one job offer to make the difference.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

Check Your Own Job References

Recently, I had a candidate who was going to get an offer-it was all over but the references. And that's where it all went wrong. We began calling to check (yes, we really do that) and two days later, only one was done. It wasn't even a matter of them trashing my candidate...they just wouldn't return our calls. If your references don't even think enough of you to call back, it reflects badly on you. It cost my candidate a job. Many candidates believe that their references don't matter all that much. And it's true that hiring managers sometimes don't check them.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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By Peggy McKeeRecently published1 topic

“Damage Control” Thank You Notes

Did you just flub your job interview? Were you awkward? Did you forget some critical piece of information that will make them want to hire you? Or did you make some other kind of job interview mistake? Whatever it was–it just didn’t go well, and you know it. But you still want the job. What do you do? You send a thank you note.

Primary topic: Interviewing Skills
Interviewing Skills
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