What employers want to listen is not you need to say in an interview. It is not a process where you need to please your interviewer or employer to get a job.  

It is a process where you discuss your skills, professional experience, achievements and learn about the organization. It is always vital to be comfortable during the interview so that you find a perfect match for your career.  

Being yourself means being authentic from resume to your explanations. Do you want to work where your personality and work style do not match? Here are some tips to be authentic and during the interview and find the perfect match.  

Be Authentic

When it comes to the interview, many candidates conceal or tamper a few facts. They feel compelled to do this so that the hiring manager sees them as a perfect match.  

Does any relationship succeed in long-term built on misrepresentation? Nope. 

Authenticity builds trust and strengthens the relationship. 

Self-awareness is Key

Most interview preparation blog posts underline the need for confidence during the process. No one can deny it. But, the unfortunate part is they miss out on emphasizing the need for self-awareness. One needs to have the right measure of confidence in wearing the right attitude while being aware of one's strengths and weakness.

Confidence with Self-awareness brings out humility. 

Don't overdo it 

Preparation of the interview is an excellent way to stay ahead. However, if you are trying to anticipate all the interview questions by reading thousands of online posts, you will end up unsuccessful.  

Would you like to be sounded a rehearsed person in the interview? No way, therefore read only a few authentic blog posts and learn a few valuable points.  

Be a storyteller

You can create an engaging experience for your interviewer with a strong storyline of your professional experience. Any good story is a hero's journey through the challenges and tribulations. So using this technique to share your professional contributions, success and the difference you have made in the lives of your previous employers can make you a hero in the eyes of the interviewer. 

Note: Any good hero gives due credit to his team and never fail to do that. 

Small talks can be helpful

You are in interview mode as soon as you reach the venue of the interview. You are always on a watch in the interview process. Your interaction with the front desk and any other individuals you meet as part of the interview counts. Small talks with front desk can help you learn about the culture and values.  

Build a Genuine Resume

One of the rookie mistakes that most of the job seekers make is forging their resumes with false details.  

According to HireRight's employment screening benchmark report, 85 percent of employers caught applicants faking on their resumes or applications. 

If you don’t have the specific skills required by an employer but still think you could be a right fit, make the case for it in your cover letter. 

Looking For A Job Is Itself A Full-Time Job

Undeniably, finding a job is a stressful process. Especially when you are unemployed for a long period and looking for a new position to stay afloat. However, if your job search continues for a longer period, you may start feeling depressed. It will derail your job search. You should not let the anxiety dictate your job search. Be Persistent in your search and don't let anything stops you.

The gravity of this situation has also attracted the researchers to figure out how much job search stress impacts on our lives. Here are some facts:

• Depression rates are much higher for people who have been unemployed for more than a year. (Source: http://bit.ly/2YA2g3h)

• Unemployed individuals are three times more likely to abuse alcohol. (Source: http://bit.ly/2Kk2er3 )

Don't Let The Stress Ruin Your Next Career Move:

DEVELOP A DAILY PLAN OF ACTION:

As we mentioned, the job search is itself a full-time job, you need to take it very seriously. Like your full-time job, you need to develop a daily plan of action and goals. You can set realistic and small goals such as sending 10 resumes in a day, sprucing up your resume, etc. It will keep you focused and active during your job search.

CONNECT WITH YOUR PEERS/NETWORKING Offline & Online

Your friends and family would be your good support network and can help you find a good job as well. You can spend some quality time with your friends to ease the job search stress. Networking helps you in many ways during your job search period.

HONE YOUR SKILLS OR DEVELOP NEW SKILLS:

Why can't you utilize this job search period to learn a new skill or hone your skills? Yes, it will not only help you to fight with job search stress but also bring you a good job opportunity.

TAKE A BREAK FROM YOUR DAILY LIFE:

Give yourself quality time and take a break from your daily mundane activities: Go for a vacation with your friends to freshen up and rejuvenate.

DON'T TAKE REJECTION PERSONALLY:

During your job search, rejections could be one thing to bother you the most. Focus on your strengths. You may not fit for this job, but another job is waiting for you, you just need to keep moving.

BE PERSISTENT IN YOUR SEARCH:

Don't let the negativity stop you to carry on your hunt for your dream job. There is a job waiting for you. Sometimes single follow up with the hiring manager can open a new door of opportunity.

A cell can be basically defined as a functional unit of all the living organisms. And there is this particular cell or grouping of cells in every individual. "Eve Ensler" the author of Vagina Monologues calls it "The Girl Cell". It is in men as well as in women. This particular group of a cell is central to the evolution of our species and is in the continuation of the human race. At some point in the history, the group of powerful people invested in owning and controlling the world, understood the suppression, oppression, undermining, destroying of this particular cell thus began the process of killing of the girl cell.

And that's been called patriarchy.

Now guess how the world ends up raising boys. To be a boy is to not to be a girl, to be a man is to not to be a girl, to be a woman is to not to be a girl, to be powerful is to not to be a girl, to be strong is to not to be a girl, to be a leader is to not be a girl. The irony, of course, is that denying girl, suppressing girl, refusing girl has led us here where we have come to live in a world with the most extreme form of violence, terrific poverty, mass rapes which is completely out of control only because we have suppressed our girl cells.

I invite you to value the girl cell within you and embrace your inner girl, Value the part that cries, value the part that's emotional, value the part that is vulnerable. That's where our future lies.

The world is free-
Traps the women in the idea that they are free;
It's a mental captivity.
The lands of free;
Knows how to program us into same circles
of shame
of inequality
of suppression
of disappointment
The smiles of love adorn
Yet Regret, Remorse and Shame.
Alone in the washroom with bright tiles around,
Experiencing the cruelty of blood for the first time
The stain it left both on clothes and heart
The base of women’s biology
Feeling the deception of the body against the soul
And the intense pain, humiliation, and disgrace within
Yet welcoming the sense of womanhood
In the miserable state of losing the cherished girlishness
Wishing the blend of happiness and prosperity deep within.
The mental agony at times
When people limit your beliefs,
Only because you are a girl..!!
Pleasant dreams turned to the shattered hopes,
And the dear dreams in the state of approval from the loved ones
Yet withholding all the power and strength,
Fighting for the battle of life and future
You are who you are unique and awesome.
Within the world like a warzone,
Women are made the warrior to win
With the right wisdom to choose the Warfield and
With the whip of peace and love, you are
Warrior to wrestle well
Who washes away the violence,
Wounds of the past, And
Worries of other women.
Withholding the will within
What a wonder-working warrior You are...!!
Worthy of millions of wows.

As per BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics), in May 2017 report, 3.8 percent of workers were contingent. There is no doubt that this number is going to increase in the upcoming years. Are you planning to hire contingent labor?

Managing contingent workforce is a challenging task, therefore, it is always suggested to connect with an MSP. Managed Service Providers (MSP) are the experts who handle the entire process of placing a contract employee. They manage talent acquisition, screening, onboarding, compliance and offboard of the contract employees. An MSP could be your best partner in success if you choose the best one. Much before selecting an MSP (Managed Service Provider), you need to consider some factors to ensure that you are selecting a partner that you can rely on completely to achieve your staffing goals.

You should start by understanding your requirements first. You need to know how many contingent employees you want and associated cost. Having all your numbers related to contingent labor will help you in selecting the right MSP. Here are the factors that you need to consider while connecting with an MSP: Once you are ready with your expectations from the MSP, these are the checklist for evaluating the selected MSPs

Wouldn’t be great if you connect with a staffing agency or MSP having expertise in filling the positions of your industry verticals? Yes, therefore, you need to ensure that MSP has the required industry specialization.

When it comes to managing contingent labor, a quick turnaround is one of the most important factors. You want to fill vacant positions or get the job done in time. Therefore, you need to evaluate this factor. How can you check how fast MSP can fulfill your job order? You can ask them to share their job order fulfillment rate. Moreover, you can check some testimonials as well to verify the facts.

Transparency in the process is a vital determinant of success. Therefore, an MSP should be transparency in the entire process of managing contingent labor. You should have access to all relevant reports and data, screening process, validation, billing accuracy, compliance, etc.

If you are looking for a quality MSP, you wish to have the one that ensures agency follows all compliance and lawsuits related to the contingent workforce. Therefore, you need to evaluate the potential MSP on these compliance factors: Contract and audit compliance, Legally compliant and overall risk mitigation.

An MSP should have the right talent pool so that whenever you share your requirement, the agency can offer you the option. The ultimate objective of connecting with an MSP is getting the right talent at the right time. An agency having a pool of the right talent would be the best choice.

Not only finding the right talent should be your top priority but also keeping the contingent labor costs low. Therefore, you need to ensure that MSP helps you to manage your contingent labor costs.

The reason we are discussing these factors is the availability of several staffing agencies in the market. Not all but surely a few of them would match your criteria. It is not only having the right talent at the right time but building a long-term relationship.

Saxon Global, headquartered in Irving, has a reputation to consistently bridge the gap between the right job and the right talent. We provide a truly integrated onshore and offshore recruiting model that increases the volume and quality of candidates. With 3 India locations and 2 U.S. locations, we are recruiting around the clock to meet your needs. Our decades of experience catering to finding the right candidates for your IT and engineering needs.

Recently, we had the opportunity to bring together technology leaders from DFW that had over 150 years of collective experience in the technology space. A healthy discussion on their daily challenges and the strategies they’ve tried over the years took place, and several valid points were made. The discussion was led and moderated by Michael Mirau, Former CIO of Interstate Batteries and one of the leading Gazelle coaches in Dallas.

As we continued to discuss our people problems, the key issues that emerged were expected. We all struggle finding and keeping the right talent, building healthy pipelines of talent, and maintaining the ability to ramp-up quickly. These struggles are the downstream challenges of leaders. While communication with the Board of Directors, getting their buy-in for new technology initiatives, and procurement seemed to be the upstream people issues.

In the current market, where every job opening only has 0.7 qualified resources available, organizations are competing for talent. Mike shared the easiest ways to be successful at finding and keeping the best talent in today’s market by following 4 simple rules. First, organizations should be hyper-disciplined in defining a job scorecard for each role. This promotes clarity and diffuses confusion, right from the beginning. Second, maintaining documented processes inside the organization will bring consistency and stability to employees and outside parties. Third, training & onboarding employees should be top priority. Giving employees tangible and definitive proof that the organization wants them to advance can go a long way in building trust. Fourth and final, creating a culture that fosters and recognizes giving & receiving feedback at all levels of an organization brings transparency and drives innovation.

As a staffing partner looking to help these technology leaders, Saxon is re-committing to perfecting our processes:

A)     Vetting candidates – Making sure that consultants who are being submitted have the right skill set for the Job, have experience in similar industry or technologies, value addition that they can bring into the project.

B)    Understanding the client’s business – Majority of staffing vendors operate without understanding the business of the client. It always pays off to learn about the nature of client's industry, business process & models

C)    Understanding competencies – Keywords of technologies are important to filter but one needs to go in depth and look for extensive experience in skill sets desired for the job.

D)    Alignment – How many times do we ask the hiring manager about their culture & values. It is extremely important that the consultants who we send over align to client's organizational ecosystem

E)    Process – Hiring process is unique to every organization and it becomes important for staffing partners to have good understand of it. This will also help them to educate consultants in terms of timelines and stages of interviewing.

Social psychology has helped us understand social norms based on how individuals think, feel, behave and interact. These three variables can be measured in human interaction and help us understand and predict how certain individuals may react to one’s actions. Social psychology examines these variables to bridge the gap between psychology and sociology. In 1945, we started to see a shift in the study of sociology and psychology to macro variables, which focuses more on individuals' actions and thought processes.

The reciprocity rule is a social psychology term which describes the social norm of how we interact when receiving a positive action or response. In most situations, when you communicate positive action with another individual, that individual will then respond with another positive action. The importance of this rule in a professional business setting really starts to set in when you are in a sales environment. It is believed that the survival of humans has been based our ability to grow cohesively by sharing goods and services. The notion of repaying someone with a gift has been embedded into our culture and is arguably a basic human instinct. There are many different ways in which you can utilize the reciprocity rule to help ensure positive client interaction, and grow a relationship. As we have seen, a simple thank you email after a meeting can drastically influence interaction with a particular client. Some other practices which have been proven as effective are dropping off a small gift 1-2 days after client interaction. This can be something simple like a gift card for a coffee shop. One of the best ways you can utilize this rule is by stopping by to drop off breakfast to a prospect. I have heard countless success stories using this simple technique – who doesn’t love free food?

The higher number of positive responses communicated to an individual will almost always yield higher positive responses back. This is due to a feeling of indebtedness which is triggered by a positive interaction, which can be initiated by either party. Taking these actions will help keep you fresh in a client's mind, and sets you apart from the rest of the competition. This will in turn lead to more sales opportunities, higher closing rates, and increased client interactions.

Saxon Global has shown tremendous growth since its start in 2007. The company was founded by Gopi Kandukuri as a technical staffing and business intelligence consulting firm. Starting with an office in North Texas, Saxon quickly expanded to add an off-shore team in India. Gopi was able to build an outstanding recruitment team, and the staffing division aggressively grew. The off-shore team focused on supporting large system integrators and Tier 1 staffing firms; while the on-shore team worked to build a fast-moving model that was able to source the right technical candidates effectively.

For ten years, this model has been successful. In 2018, we are reaching for even bigger goals and looking to shake-up the IT staffing, recruiting, and consulting industry. Backed by disciplined and highly-trained teams, Saxon Global has set its sights on the rest of the United States. We will continue to provide a great value for our clients that are challenged to scale past their own recruiting capability.

2017 Growth and Shift

For the 3rd consecutive year, Saxon Global’s revenue has exceeded the national growth rate average by double digits. Finishing 2017 at an all-time high, our revenue is on track to keep growing at an accelerated rate in 2018. In 2017, the Dallas team focused on building relationships with direct customers and training their new team members on the best practices of IT recruiting. Our internal headcount has tripled in our Dallas office and Saxon has added over forty new faces to the teams in India. We’ve filled up our office space in Dallas with veterans of the IT staffing world and quick-learning new comers to the industry.

2018 Headcount Growth Goals

To stay on track for our 2018 growth goal, Saxon is building solid teams that will serve as the foundation for the growth to come. The Dallas office is expanding to a team of 30 account managers and recruiters by the end of the year, and the off-shore team will reach 150 team members. This gives us a platform to service our local market with an exceptional amount of customer service while utilizing the scalable power of the off-shore team.

2018 Culture and Milestones

The Dallas team is forming a culture continuous learning. Whether it’s our time spent at weekly skilled sales training or our monthly Lunch N’ Learn technology seminars, we are always pushing ourselves to evolve. Culture is important in any business, but at Saxon Global it is an essential cornerstone to servicing our clients. We only hire team members that amplify the ideas of our core values: accountability, customers first, teamwork, simplifying, playing bold, and having fun.

2017 was an exceptional year of growth at Saxon Global, but 2018 is looking even brighter. We’re excited to continue this journey of growth and success with all of our clients, present and future.

What is Greener Than Grass?

One of the great privileges of working for Saxon Global is the amount of effort the leadership puts into training all levels of staff. One of the most difficult parts of working for Saxon is being, by far, the least technically savvy person in the room.

I have the immense pleasure of being the most green employee in the entire office. Part of the extensive training involves bringing in actual consultants to share details about their trade and focus in the IT world. A few weeks ago, we hosted the immensely talented Rabea Buksik as gave us a thorough lesson on Scrum Framework and the benefits of the practice. Rabea, a certified Scrum master and former TK20 employee, was quick to a joke but still incredibly insightful.

The meeting started with Rabea asking who all was familiar with Scrum Framework and how technical she could be with explanations. As luck would have it, everyone has at least three years of applicable experience and had a thorough understanding of Scrum so we could skip the basics. Everyone, of course, except for myself. This wouldn’t be a tremendous problem because Scrum is relatively intuitive; it is a framework (NOT a methodology) for sustaining and producing complex products. In short, Scrum allows for open and flexible communication during projects.

What is Scrum?

I am by no means an expert, but the training by Rabea left me infinitely more knowledgeable about the process. Scrum can be mistaken for a methodology, but the true purpose is more relaxed than that. Methodology suggests a particular set of principles, tools, and practices will be used for a project while a framework implies autonomy and personal license. Scrum does not dictate what tools will be used; it acts as a catalyst for improved communication and teamwork.

Scrum is broken up into 2-4 week “sprints”, but maintains daily meetings to monitor progress and hold the team accountable. The process has a couple of different players:

• Product Owner – Liaison between business stakeholders and development team. Sets “goals” with user stories in the form of product backlogs.
• Development Team – Does bulk of the coding or development of the “goals” set by the product owner
• Scrum Master – Facilitator for the Development Team, but not to be mistaken for a lead. More than anything, the Scrum Master is a servant leader and assists wherever possible. Runs the Daily Scrum.

All of these players come together to create an environment that is more flexible and much quicker than old school waterfall methodologies. The sprints have the following (ideal) structure:

Product backlog à Sprint planning à Sprint backlog à Sprint! à Ship product

The teams work independently for this 2-4 week sprint, but the Scrum Master will lead out on a “Daily Scrum” every morning in which the entire team to discuss impediments, user story progress, and general work context. There is a serious focus on everyone standing during the Daily Scrum so time is not wasted and people get through their talking points quickly.

The end product within Scrum can fall under many different spectrums, but all Scrum projects have a focus on speed and transparency. Ultimately when a consultant works in Scrum framework they have experience in a fast-paced, teamwork centric environment and everything else is a variable.

I have a ton to learn about the implications of Scrum, but Rabea has given me adequate knowledge to have confidence when discussing the framework with potential consultants, and that means the training is incredibly effective.

Alex R. – First Year Recruiter at Saxon Global