Last week’s column generated a lot of feedback from readers, many of whom were recent university graduates who had undergone less than pleasant interviews, fought the good fight, finished the race but were struggling to keep the faith. I did come to one conclusion though: most of our universities are NOT preparing their fourth year classes for the recruitment process. They are throwing the graduates out to the job recruitment sharks and hoping that they will sink or swim. The solution is simple as pie: universities should link up with organizations in both the public and private sector and get their Human Resource teams to come and run a mandatory minimum of 5 hours course for the final year students on how to prepare yourself for the job market. It will be a win-win scenario for both parties: for the universities they will get actual practitioners who will provide valuable education on exactly what it is they are looking for while for the organizations they will get a chance to begin to influence the kind of output that is being generated by the universities as it will be made fit for interviewing purpose.

Based on the feedback I received, I realized that some of the recruitment train smashes occur begin even before the actual interview takes place. A good place to begin would be your email address. For purposes of your CV please get a simple professional private email address that reflects your name and not your flavor. For instance [email protected] or [email protected] is pretty straightforward. [email protected] or [email protected] is…well….nothing short of very unserious. Most email addresses are free and cost just a few minutes of your precious time. Secondly, always assume that the recruiters will do a background check on you if they like what they see on your CV. The first point of entry will be to “google” your name. It would be advisable to “google” your own name and see what turns up in the search. It is noteworthy that the electronic age we live in ensures that even criminal or civil cases that we may have been involved in and that may have been published either in the media or in law reports will appear in a google search. Your Facebook profile or Twitter posts will also appear in a google search and be under no illusion that a recruiter will not proceed to view your Facebook page or Twitter profile both of which are open to the public (unless you have put in privacy settings). So all those posts of the last all night drinking binge that you took part in will show up to a nosy recruiter doing due diligence. This would be a good time to “untag” yourself from any photos which you have been tagged in including those where you were member number five at a strip poker game. On that note, any abusive, foul mouthed tweets that you may have posted regarding any topical issue should be deleted particularly where you may have ranted and raved about the very organization that you are applying to work in or its affiliate.
If you have put your telephone number on your CV and are expecting recruiters to call you, for the love of God and country do not have some popular rap, genge, gospel, mugithi mix, ramogi special ringtone running off your mobile phone. Why? Well, I understand that you feel it shows your unique music tastes to which you are entitled, but it does not reflect the professional side that is required to be seen during a recruitment process. Always assume that you are trying to woo a partner (employer) and just like in any romantic liaison, you only show your best side during the first couple of dates.

Now in the event that you do get past the due diligence as described above and get called to an interview, other than what I indicated in last week’s column, one should also be very careful not to reveal insider information about their current employer. So if an interviewer asks something along the lines of “What is your current employer’s strategy regarding customer acquisition in Nyeri county?” you should not have a problem telling the interviewer that it’s not in your best interests to reveal internal company information due to the confidentiality clause in your employment contract. Yes, you are entitled to push back in an interview if you feel that the questions are infringing on confidentiality or becoming too personalized beyond the professional realm (questions along tribal or racial lines fall into this category). I personally underwent an interview where the interviewers began asking me questions about the other candidate as they knew that I personally knew the candidate and I pushed back by saying that I would not be drawn into discussions about said candidate as it was neither fair nor professional of me to do so. But one of the interviewers was like a dog with a bone and kept wheedling at me to reveal information because in her opinion, it was important to the interview, which -in my opinion- it was not. In the back of my mind I knew that they might draw the opinion that I enjoy slagging off the competition, or that I have a loose tongue, but more importantly I actually thought it was in bad taste for them to try and get information about a candidate from another candidate. A sober minded panel chair brought the discussion to an end when he saw that I was not about to budge. While I did get the job, the experience left a very bad taste in my mouth and I never trusted that interviewer during the tenure of my employment. Talking about the competition during an interview whether it is an organization or an individual is highly unprofessional. But as I concluded last week, common sense good people, is not common to everyone.

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