canadian headhunter

WE are not amused.

As the lyrics of a quasi-popular song go:

“I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating….”

And I believe I have said this somewhere before on the blog but it does bear repeating.

I was interviewing someone via the telephone last night and every question I asked was answered in the plural form.

By that I mean that the person never once used the personal pronoun “I” to answer any questions about accomplishments or duties or projects.

At one point the questioning went like this:

Q:"What was the biggest dollar saving you achieved in your role?"
A:"Well we saved $500,000.00 on parts by (I wont trouble you with the whole answer)"

Q:"How did you do that?"
A:"Well we…"

At that point I had to interrupt

Q:"Wait a minute who is WE?"
A:"Myself and the supplier."


So in essence this person had achieved this all on his/her own. He/she wasn’t a part of some large project team but a single player from the company side of things.

Yet the answers I was getting kept me wondering how much of a factor this person actually was.

If you are being interviewed for job remember I am not interviewing your whole company. I am interviewing you.

My clients are interested in hiring you.

So we (the client and I) would like to know what YOU have done.

If you were a part of a team that achieved something significant be specific about your role on the team. It is not doing you any good to say that “we did this and we did that”. It just makes you look like you are hiding behind a group because you really didn’t do anything of significance.
I have worked on group projects before but when asked in an interview I give clear outlines as to the structure of the group and what the roles were.

Remember Headhunters and HR professionals are not experts in your field so don’t assume we understand how your project team was structured or what the roles were.

Which brings me to another point that I will elaborate on in another post.

Learn how to describe your job to a layperson.

I will let you think about that one but in the meantime remember there is no We in I.