Four Important Questions to Ask Your Interviewer

Many job seekers miss a golden opportunity when they are asked towards the end of an interview if they have any questions. 

If they feel the interviewer adequately explained the position, they make the mistake of answering "No" to this question. But this is the perfect time to find out if you really want to work for this person! After all, even a wonderful job can turn into a miserable experience if you don't get along with the person you work for.

Here's how to find out if the boss will be as great as the job -- ask these questions during the interview:

1. "What's your ideal employee like?" Asking this question will give you an idea of what this boss would expect from you. Listen carefully to the answer and deduce what it will mean for you. For example, if her ideal employee works independently, you'll know this boss is not a micromanager. If her ideal employee follows procedures without question, you'll know it may be an uphill battle to implement changes or new ideas. If her ideal employee works long hours, don't expect to leave on time every night.

2. "What are the other people in the office like?" Does this boss really know the people who work for her? Does she list their accomplishments with pride or say something vague and unimpressive? Note her tone of voice when she talks about her team. Is she enthusiastic or disappointed?

3. "How does an employee succeed on your team?" Hopefully she'll give you something more enlightening than "Do the job right." You want to learn what standards are expected. For example, if it's a sales position, will you be expected to exceed a specific dollar value in sales or obtain a percentage of satisfied customers? So if her answer is too generic, you may have to follow-up with more questions to get specifics. Ask about the typical career path for an employee who successfully meets goals.

4. "How do you go about solving problems?" How she answers this question can give you insight into her management style. Does she prefer to take charge when things go wrong, or encourage her team to develop solutions?

In addition to the answers themselves, note this person's overall attitude about answering these questions. If she was open to them and answered thoughtfully, she's probably someone who enjoys promoting good working relationships. If you're offered the job, you shouldn't have any hesitations about working for this person. But if she appeared to resent the questions and didn't answer them to your satisfaction, she's not someone you'd want to work for. It's better to know this sooner rather than later.

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Vacancy 

Taking Charge Of Your Career

The workplace has changed dramatically in the 21st century. Surprised? Of course not. You’ve been hearing terms like empowerment, cross-training, entrepreneurship, reengineering, and downsizing, and so on for quite some time. Like most people who have spent even a minimum amount of time in the workplace, you’ve probably experienced and lived through one or more of the actions listed above.

But who is deciding how such actions affect you or your business? Believe it or not, most employees, managers, and business owners are still content to merely react to changes that impact them without really thinking about the long-term consequences. They are under the mistaken impression that the company, government, or someone else, will look out for them and their careers or business.

But the workplace has changed dramatically: unless you become proactive and self-reliant in your career or business, you will at some point get a surprise, and it probably won’t be a pleasant one.

Think back on the last few years of your work history. What have been the greatest changes and challenges? What has impacted your business or career the most? Have you received the raises, promotions, or profits you deserve? It is important to answer and take action on these questions to gain control of your destiny in the workplace.

Begin by taking a hard look at where you began in your career and where you intended to go from that point. To perform an effective self-assessment, you must be honest with yourself and ask yourself some tough questions.

Are you continuing to progress in your career? If you are a business owner, have you consistently met your projections? Are you serving clients and customers as well as you intended to when you began your business? Is your company growing and vital, or is it beginning to fall behind the competition? If you haven’t attained the position, salary, net profits, or status you had once hoped for, why not? What are the factors or influences holding you back? And perhaps the toughest question of all: Are you really doing the type of work that you want to do? Are you in the right field or industry? If not, it is time to begin evaluating what it would take to shift to an area that you really want to be in.

Once you know what your strengths or motivated skills are, that knowledge sticks with you. It gives you greater freedom to choose the activities you are willing to undertake. It also increases your ability to cope with things you have to do but don’t enjoy.

This type of self-evaluation is not easy to do, but it is vital in assessing where you are and where you want to be with regard to your career or business. It will give you a taste of so many different things that are available to you. By performing a rigorous self-assessment of what you can do and match those things with what you want to do, your options will increase dramatically and will be more attainable.

Once you have performed a career check up, you will have a clearer picture of where you currently are and you’ll have some ideas on where you want to go in your business career. The next stage in taking control of your career is renewing your personal quest toward what it is you really want to do.

Easier said than done, right? But it’s not as difficult as you might think. It comes back to simple goal setting techniques. Are your career or business goals, clear, realistic, and attainable? This isn’t the time to sabotage yourself with far-out ideas and impractical strategies. This is the planning stage where you can regain lost ground or continue to progress in your chosen direction.

Studies show that the minority of people who are sure of what they want to do, succeed at it. But the problem is that the majority of people, don’t know what they want to do in regard to their career or business endeavors. Most people entered fields they are currently in through a vague expectation of where it would lead them. Many people continue to get into fields or start businesses as a result of someone else’s suggestions, rather than basing such decisions on solid research and information of what to expect. The key in this stage of taking control of your career is to begin to take action on your own behalf.

Decide where you want to go within the company you work for or how you want your business to grow. Begin today to strategically plan for where and what you want to be tomorrow. Put together written plans for one, five, and ten years that are realistic, flexible, and attainable. For most people, it’s deciding what you want that is the hard part.

Simply performing a career check up and renewing your career quest is not enough to ensure that your business will prosper or that you will stay employed. Increasing competitiveness at the national and global levels makes it an employer’s, rather than an employee’s market. The Law of supply and demand suggests that there are many more qualified workers than there are attractive positions available. Therefore, employers are able to pick and choose which employees they will hire.

The same is true for business owners. As more new businesses enter the marketplace, competition for products and services increases in direct proportion. In other words, the business owner is faced with a buyer’s market for the products or services he or she is selling, which makes it that much more important to know where his or her business fits.

To remain marketable and competitive it is critical that employees and entrepreneurs maintain top-notch skills. This often means you must continue learning about every facet of your profession or business. Adopting a "learning how to learn" and "lifelong learning" mindset related to your career area or your business market is crucial in being able to take control of your career.

The dynamic nature of the workplace also encourages industry to hire employees who exhibit not only specific job-related abilities but also process "transitional" and "transferable skills". These are skills and abilities that a person can transfer from one job or activity to another. Whether you are an employee of a company or the owner of a company that hires employees, it is important to know what these transferable skills are and how they apply to your career or business area.

Interpersonal skills are important for you to possess. You must be able to work on teams, teach others, serve customers, lead, negotiate, and work well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds. You must have a good working knowledge of technology. We are living in the Information Age, so you must be able to work with computers, use different software, and be able to use the Internet.

Some other important skills that are transferable that you must possess are the basic skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You must also possess higher level thinking skills, such as the ability to critically learn, to reason, to think creatively, to make decisions, and to define and solve complex problems. Lastly, whether you are an employee, manager, or business owner; you won’t get very far in the workplace today without the personal qualities of individual responsibility, self-esteem, self-management, and integrity.

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Vacancy 

Do You Have What it Takes To Work in a Call Centre?

By Canadajobs.com Staff

job, jobs, career

Working in a call centre might seem like an easy job at first glance. It's just about answering phones, right? Wrong. There are many different jobs in call centres. There are Customer Service Reps (CSRs), Technical Service Reps (TSRs), Supervisors, Managers, and Human Resources staff, and many others who work to ensure a call centre, the customer's first line of contact with a company, works as a well-oiled machine.

So what does it take to work in a call centre? Though for this article we'll focus on CSRs, many of these skills are critical in other call centre jobs too.

Ability To Work in a Fast-Paced Environment:

In a call centre, it's all about speed. If you are working in an inbound call centre (meaning call come in to your call centre, as opposed to CSRs making calls) the main focus is how fast can a rep answer a phone. How quickly can they solve a customer's issue? Call times and wait times are how a centre calculates its efficiency, and therefore, it's costs and profits. But call times and wait times aren't just important for the company, they are also important to the customer. That's why it's critical to be able to work under pressure.

Accuracy and Attention to Detail:

The customer is calling you because they have a problem. You must be able to answer their inquiry quickly and correctly so their faith and trust in your company is upheld. It's important to the company you work for that their customers aren't frustrated. These customers are the backbone of your company, and they need to have faith that their call is being handled professionally and correctly and that they will get the same correct answer if they call next time. Accurate consistency is critical. And for that, you need to be the type of person who can learn and retain information.

Ability to Learn New Skills:

Products and services change constantly. And though the basics will remain the same, you need to be on top of new things. The last thing a customer wants to do is be calling you for answers and you don't know what they're talking about. You also have to be willing to learn computer programs or software unique to your call centre. Call centres have a lot of processes and you must be able to learn how those work so you can work more efficiently, and better serve customers.

Learning new skills such as another language can also help your job prospects in a call centre. Many list the ability to speak a second language as an asset.

Ability to Deal with Difficult People:

More often than not, customers will call because they have a problem and they want you to fix it right away. If you cannot show empathy, and support them in their frustrations, they will get increasingly upset. You must be able to deal with difficult people and know how to handle and diffuse them. Consider taking a course on the subject. You'll learn how to improve your listening skills, and learn little tricks as simple as repeating back what you hear from your customer. This helps them feel listened to, understood, and in the end, it helps them feel better. The more ability you have in dealing with difficult people, the better you will feel also.

Flexibility:

Though a call centre can be a great 9-5 job, most of them require you to work some shift work. And this or may not fit your schedule. When you decide to apply for a job at a call centre, make sure you know what you are able to do in terms of shift work. If you have dependents, you will need to make alternate care arrangements. Remember too that changing shifts can affect your sleep patterns and your activities outside work hours.

The nature of call centres can also mean that you can be called in at the last minute. You might also be sent home if there is not enough work. If this is a concern for you, ask how often this happens when you are considering a job in a call centre.

Working in a call centre as a CSR can be a satifying job. Often, opportunities to move up to a team leader or scheduler can be had with the work experience you gain starting at the bottom. If you have the right skills and the desire to improve them, a career as a CSR might well be worth investigating.