In difficult times the employment market is extremely competitive; especially when you are trying to catch the attention of an executive recruiter. These tips will help you get the interview you are looking for regardless if you have been downsized;

• Relevant Experience – if your experience has varied but you have great exposure to what a specific job is looking for HIGHLIGHT that experience or more importantly move it to the first few bullets on your resume.

• Recent Successes – employers want high impact players that make a difference and your success needs to be clearly written on your resume. Briefly describe what you have accomplished and the impact it had on the business.

• Reasons for Changes – Often we see resumes with multiple jobs in a few years or some job seekers that have not been employed for a few months. This has become more common in this market. The assumption is always negative so take that out of the equation by letting potential employers know about those situations on your resume.

• Tailor your Career Highlights or Summary – If you have a Highlights or Summary section on your resume tailor it for the job you are applying for. I have seen people apply to a job and their highlights have little to do with the job that they applied for. This will not open many doors.

• Format – make sure that your resume is easy to read or easy to scan. The odds of your resume being read in its entirety are slim. When resumes are received they are visually scanned and people look for key words, titles and previous employers. People need to see a clear professional document. Resumes with bullet points are much easier to read that those written in paragraphs. Always make sure your font style and size is the consistent throughout.

• Spelling and Grammar – This is obvious but so important. Make sure you spell check your resume and always have someone else proofread your resume.

Remember the purpose of your resume is to get you in front of an executive recruiter and eventually an employer. Your resume does not (and should not) tell everything about you but it needs to tell them why you will be an asset. It should be a clear representation of who you are and what you bring to the table. It will open doors to executive recruiters and then it is up to you to sell yourself

What If Your Interview Is Tomorrow? 

Even if you have less than a day before your job interview, you can outshine the competition with a little preparation. The following four tasks will take you about four hours (plus five minutes) to complete, and you’ll walk into the interview confident you’ll be successful.

Conduct Basic Interview Research

Find out as much as you can about the interview. Call the person who scheduled your appointment and ask:

• Who will you be talking to? Will you meet the manager you’d work for, or will you just talk to HR? What are the interviewer’s expectations?
• What’s the dress code? Dress better than suggested. Most times, it’s best for men to wear a suit and women to wear a professional business outfit. You’d be amazed how many candidates show up looking like they’re going to class, not presenting a professional demeanor.
• Get directions to the office. Plan to leave early. Keep a phone number to call if you get stuck on the bus or in traffic. If you arrive late and stressed, the interview will not go well.
• If you don’t have a detailed job description, ask for one.

That’s a five-minute phone call.

Learn About the Company Online

Do some fast Web research, which will give you something to talk about in addition to the job description. Go to the employer’s Web site, or search the Web for information such as:

• How big is the company in terms of annual sales or employees?
• What does the company say about its products or services?
• What recent news (such as a new product, a press release, an interview with the CEO) can you discuss?
• If the company is public, the boilerplate at the bottom of its press releases will tell you a lot.

Basic research should take you about an hour.

Think of Some Stories

Write down and memorize three achievement stories. Tell about times you’ve really felt proud of an achievement at work or school. These stories demonstrate all those hard-to-measure qualities like judgment, initiative, teamwork or leadership. Wherever possible, quantify what you’ve done, e.g., “increased sales by 20 percent,” “cut customer call waiting time in half,” “streamlined delivery so that most customers had their job done in two days.”

By the way, nonwork achievement stories are good too; if you volunteer for the local food pantry, write down a time you overcame a big challenge or a crisis there.

Achievement stories make you memorable, which is what you want. There’s an exercise in Monster Careers: Interviewing called “Mastering the Freestyle Interview,” which helps you develop these stories into compelling sales points.

Take the time you need — at least three hours on this task.

Pick Your Outfit, and Go to Bed Early

Lay out your interview outfit the night before, get a good night’s rest, and always get an early start. The last thing you want is to arrive at the interview flustered and panicked because you couldn’t find a parking spot

On Martin Luther King weekend I had the pleasure of backpacking the Appellation trail on a cold weather camping trip with my sons Boy Scout trip.  It’s a trip we make every January and I always look forward to it.  We decided to arrive Friday night after a 4 hour drive and hike 2 ½ miles, climbing 2600 feet, so that we could sleep in the Roan Mountain Shelter.  The Roan Mountain Shelter is the highest shelter on the Appellation trail.  Around Midnight, after hiking in two to three feet of snow, we arrived at the shelter under a cold, clear sky, the Milky Way lighting our way.

We awoke the next day and hiked about 5 miles, again in 2-3 feet of snow, until we arrived at the next shelter.  This shelter was small and only had three sides so we used it as a place to dine and play cards while we pitched tents and prepared for a windy and snowy/rainy night.  We knew there was a chance of rain but hoped that we were high enough on the mountain that it would snow, rather than rain.  This is when things started to fall apart.  When you pitch a tent in snow, traditional tent stakes don’t hold.  We tried to use downed tree branches as steaks and they worked well at first until the winds broke 30 miles an hour and the rain, not snow, was blowing sideways.  We did the best we could with what we had and tried to sleep with the wind howling and the rain pelting our tents.  I didn’t sleep well but I managed to stay dry.  I later realized that I was the only one is our group that stayed dry that night although my boots under the rain fly weren’t so lucky, therefore my feet would be wet all day.   Everyone was wet and it was a cold, windy 35 degree morning.  We decided to eat and pack quickly and then try to keep moving forward and hike out to where we had a truck parked about 6 miles away.  

When you are wet and cold, as long as you keep moving, you can keep from getting hypothermia and frost bite.  The key was to keep moving and heat up the moister in our cloths.  The first half of our Trek was on a virgin trail, three feet of snow that no one had walked on since the snow had fallen.  On the Appellation Trail the blaze markings are spread out about one every fifth to one every tenth of a mile.  As a team we found our way to the over mountain trail 3 miles away at a rate of less than one mile per hour and then proceeded to head down about 3000 feet to our car.   At this point we were struggling to find the trail and found ourselves hiking through a briar patch.  A branch flew back and penetrated my left eye.  I was in saver pain but realized I would have to suck it up in order to make our truck by dark.  If we didn’t make it, then we would risk hypothermia and possible frost bight.  We moved forward.  At 5:15 pm after hiking for 7 hours, we made it to the truck and drove to the hospital and home. 

I look back now, mostly out of my right eye, and think about what I learned from the trek and the ordeal.  Mostly it is this, when you have no choice but to achieve a goal, a literal life and death situation, leaders figure out a way to make it happen.  In the past 18 months, the restaurant business has been on the brink of disaster and yet many companies, including yours, decided to move forward or change direction and are better for it today.  Others through up their hands gave up and made excuses.  They are now in the restaurant graveyard.  If you work for a company that has shifted direction but kept moving over the past year then you should be very happy.  Even though you may have had to alter your plans and move in a different direction then originally planned, you are still here, delivering guest service every day.

Although I believe the worst is behind us, we all must keep our eye on the prize, providing excellent customer service and delivering on guest expectations.   In 2010, I pledge that I will do just that, to my candidates and clients.  They are my customers.

It’s probably one of the most overused phrases in job-hunting, but also one of the most underutilized by job-seekers: dress for success. In job-hunting, first impressions are critical. Remember, you are marketing a product — yourself — to a potential employer, and the first thing the employer sees when greeting you is your attire; thus, you must make every effort to have the proper dress for the type of job you are seeking. Will dressing properly get you the job? Of course not, but it will give you a competitive edge and a positive first impression.
Should you be judged by what you wear? Perhaps not, but the reality is, of course, that you are judged. Throughout the entire job-seeking process employers use short-cuts — heuristics or rules of thumb — to save time. With cover letters, it’s the opening paragraph and a quick scan of your qualifications. With resumes, it is a quick scan of your accomplishments. With the job interview, it’s how you’re dressed that sets the tone of the interview.
How should you dress? Dressing conservatively is always the safest route, but you should also try and do a little investigating of your prospective employer so that what you wear to the interview makes you look as though you fit in with the organization. If you overdress (which is rare but can happen) or underdress (the more likely scenario), the potential employer may feel that you don’t care enough about the job.
How do you find out what is the proper dress for a given job/company/industry? You can call the Human Resources office where you are interviewing and simply ask. Or, you could visit the company’s office to retrieve an application or other company information and observe the attire current employees are wearing — though make sure you are not there on a “casual day” and misinterpret the dress code.
Finally, do you need to run out and spend a lot of money on clothes for interviewing? No, but you should make sure you have at least two professional sets of attire. You’ll need more than that, but depending on your current financial condition, two is enough to get started and you can buy more once you have the job or have more financial resources.
Hints for Dress for Success for Men and Women
Attention to details is crucial, so here are some tips for both men and women. Make sure you have:
• clean and polished conservative dress shoes
• well-groomed hairstyle
• cleaned and trimmed fingernails
• minimal cologne or perfume
• no visible body piercing beyond conservative ear piercings for women
• well-brushed teeth and fresh breath
• no gum, candy, or other objects in your mouth
• minimal jewelry
• no body odor
Finally, check your attire in the rest room just before your interview for a final check of your appearance — to make sure your tie is straight, your hair is combed, etc.

Here is the scenario; you are the restaurant manager on duty and in walks your District Manager and a guy from HR. They have a little small talk with some of the hourly staff and then ask to speak with you in the office.
They ask if you know the company policy about (sexual harassment, inventory control, cash handling) and then describe to you an incident where you are alleged to have violated company policy. There is a short discussion about the incident and then you are told you are being terminated for violation of company policy.

So you get your resume, contact the Gecko Hospitality recruiter and start your interviewing.

The toughest question is: Why are you no longer with your last company?

How you answer that question will determine how successful you will continue in the interview process.

What I usually hear is, there were differences between the District Manager and me, there was no room for upward growth, the company has gone through cultural changes that I wasn’t comfortable with and a bunch of other stories.

I usually listen to those and then ask, what really happened? This is the time when it is important to tell the truth.

I recently placed a manager who had been terminated for violation of company policy regarding fraternization. Of course, that wasn’t what the manager told me, he said “I just wasn’t happy there any more and it was time to move on”.

I got a list of references, and after the first call found out about his termination was for fraternization. I had already sent his resume to a recruiter for a national company, who I have a great working relationship with.

I called the recruiter and let him know what I found out. The recruiter really liked my candidate and decided to continue him in the process. He was then interviewed by a District Manager and was offered the new position.
The District Manager understood that sometimes mistakes happen and he saw a candidate with great potential who made a mistake.

The truth will set you free, be honest with your recruiter and explain your circumstances. We might be able to help you talk about your separation from your last job that still puts your skills in a positive light.

Marty Tarabar

A fellow Recruiter sent me this great article!________________________________________________________________________

While most big hospitality companies (and many small ones) have a formal policy about job references, not everybody abides by it. Heidi Allison, president of reference checking firm Allison & Taylor, says about half the calls her staffers make turn up unexpected trouble.

Even if a reference doesn’t say anything definitely damning, he or she will often use a lukewarm tone of voice or vague, terse comments to put down a candidate, or to hint at less-than-stellar performance. As one former boss told a reference checker recently: “I’d rather not comment. You can take that however you want.”

Have you ever suspected that your former boss was giving you a bad reference? Leave your comments at the bottom of this story.

“The fact is that most people have no trouble talking and, with a little prodding, they will often be surprisingly candid,” says Allison. “You’d be shocked at what some references have said about candidates.” Then again, maybe you wouldn’t.

The first step in resolving the problem: Use different references. This was your first job out of college, but aren’t there other bosses from previous part-time jobs whose names you could give instead? What about former colleagues who could say good things about your work? And this time, be sure and check with them first. Just in case they’ve forgotten how great you were, you can even give them a short list of accomplishments you’d appreciate their mentioning when employers call. If you decline to give your old boss’s name as a reference, and a hiring manager asks about it, you can say you never hit it off with this person and you doubt he’s a fair judge of your skills and achievements. Then move the conversation on to the (far more interesting) topic of what you have to offer.

“At some point in their careers, many people run into a boss who just isn’t a fan,” says Allison. “Most hiring managers understand that — and better you should say it up front than have them discover it in a reference check.” In the meantime, in case some prospective employers might still try to contact your old boss, consider hiring a lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter. Jim Abrams, an attorney at Allison & Taylor, frequently writes such letters — usually marked “personal and confidential” and sent by registered mail to the reference’s home rather than his office. Why? “The purpose isn’t to punish the bad reference by embarrassing him or her at work,” says Abrams. “The goal is just to make the negativity stop.”

What does a typical cease-and-desist say? It might point out that giving out information about a former employee beyond dates of employment and job title is in violation of company policy and — depending on state law where you live — possibly also a violation of the employee’s privacy rights.

“Companies don’t give out job-performance information about current employees to any stranger who calls on the phone, especially if the information is negative,” Abrams points out. “So why do it to ex-employees?” He adds: “One legal principle that applies here is ‘intentional interference with economic relations.’ Your skills and employability are property rights that a bad reference is taking from you. So we remind people of that, and of the fact that just because someone did not work out in one position at one company does not mean he or she won’t be just fine somewhere else.”

A stern letter from a lawyer is usually enough to make a bad reference change his tune, since no one wants the expense and embarrassment of a lawsuit.

If the letter doesn’t do the job, you could get an injunction against your old boss, but that could also be costly and potentially awkward for your job hunt. Instead, Abram suggests, “consider going back to your old employer and requesting an internal dispute-resolution process like arbitration, which is usually available to both current and former employees.” This strategy will work in your favor if you ever decide to sue your old boss, he says, since “the courts tend to look harshly on companies that refuse access to these alternative methods.”

For more advice on how to fight negative references, please visit AllisonTaylor.com.

I’m not sure where I read this article (it’s been a few years) but it’s good solid information that still works today!  ‘

Answering questions is an important part of the interview, but what distinguishes you will be the questions you ask. How do you ask great questions? Be prepared with well thought out, open-ended questions for the interview. 

One of the best strategies for engaging and even bonding with your interviewer is to ask questions. Hiring managers are more likely to judge candidates by their questions than their answers. Tailor your questions to the company you’re interviewing. Do a little research before hand about the history of the company or its current activities or recent news items. Don’t worry about asking specific question that might make you sound like you assume you have the position. Such direct interest helps build your value and shows you’re capable. But remember: only ask questions you can’t find answers to yourself! 

Pick about 5-8 questions from below, write then down (legal pad or notebook) and take notes as you get the answers: 

Some ideas for effective questions to ask include:

1. How big is the team I’d be working with?
2. How many people would I be managing?
3. What are the primary goals of the restaurant?
4. What are the company’s objectives for the year?
5. What makes this company different from its competitors?
6. What do you like about this company? What keeps you here?
7. If I meet or exceed the company’s expectations, will there be additional opportunities to expand my responsibilities?
8. What sort of communication style works best with this team?
9. What can you tell me about the culture and the environment?
10. How would you characterize successful employees in the restaurants? What are their common qualities?
11. Please describe the duties of the job for me.
12. Is this a new position or am I replacing someone?
13. Does your company encourage further education?
14. How often are performance reviews given?
15. Do you have plans for expansion?
16. How do you feel about creativity and individuality? 

Stop asking questions if you sense it is bothering the interviewer.

The better you are prepared ahead of time, the better your interview will be. But also review your major accomplishments so that you’ll be able to tell stories about your achievements when asked. The more prepared you are the better you will perform.

After  6 years of recruiting restaurant managers and 20 + years as a restaurant manager, general Manager and Area Director, I have interviewed over 10,000 people.   What I can honestly tell you is this; It is much easier to get a new job if you are currently employed then if you are unemployed.  Now don’t get me wrong I successfully place unemployed people all the time however if you are currently employed and want to look for a new opportunity without posting your resume all over the job boards, You will get more interviews and be paid a higher salary then if you are not currently working.  The reason is simple, companies want the best managers out there and they often like the challenge of taking a great manager from one of their competitors.  Managers who post their resume on all of the job boards are not a challenge and usually not the best.  If someone put a Honda Accord next to a BMW 3 series and said choose the one you like, 9/10 people would pick the BMW not because it’s a better car but because it’s more expensive and their for harder to acquire.  Honda makes a great car and I have one myself but what I’m saying is be the BMW.  Make yourself more desirable through marketing yourself to the select few.

Managers who are unemployed are unemployed for a reason and usually that reason is they were let go or forced to resign. Sure people quit every day because they need time to interview and want to take a break before starting something new but what I will say is this.  When you are hired to run a business, you are hired to make good sound decisions and quitting a job with no job in your pocket is a reckless and a reflection on your ability to make good sound decisions.  Before you give notice, call me and we can discuss all of your options, you won’t regret it.

When you receive a gift that was unintentional is it more special than if you expected it? I’ve always believed that answer to be true however as a businessman, when you receive a gift from a client that also pays your salary, how special is that?

They say that your employees are a true measure of the integrity of your organization and I’m a true believer that those core qualities start from the top on down. I’ll stop babbling right now and get to the heart of the story. For the past 7 years, Gecko Hospitality holds it’s franchise meetings in different cities throughout the United States every 6 months. In January, 2010, our meeting was held in Orlando, Florida. Right as the flight attendants were ready to signal to everyone to turn off your cell phones for takeoff, I just so happen see my light blinking that I’ve received a new e-mail.

As I disregard the flight attendants request, I opened the message and saw that it’s from the Director Of Recruiting from one of our clients. Susan (our client) got word that our meeting was  being held in Orlando and was inquiring who was taking care of our food and beverage needs for all of the attendees while our meeting was taking place. As I read further, the words “I INSIST” shot out of the email that I should call Susan immediately.

Miller’s Ale House has been a client for the longest time and regardless, it’s very unusual for a client to display such a gesture of generosity. However, I will soon learn that Miller’s Ale House would be different. As I contacted Susan after landing in Orlando, Susan in her energetic but girlish voice tells me that a call has already been made to the restaurant closest to your hotel and you just tell me how many people. I tell her in a very stand offish voice, “Susan, we have over 25 people and are you sure you want us taking those seats?” After all it was the BCS Championship Game that night!! Without hesitation, Susan says “consider it done and one of my managers will be there to take care of you.” I was truly blown away.

Needless to say, our entire group was blown away that a client would extent this much generosity on what would be a great revenue day for a restaurant with the BCS Championship Game on that night. Not only was the food, drink and service top notch, but a member of the executive team drove in to meet and greet us to make sure everything was okay. All I could think is if a company such as Miller’s Ale House treats its vendors this way then being an employee has to be incredible. After speaking to not just to the management team at the restaurant as well as several of the  hourly employees, they confirmed my notion that Miller’s Ale House is a class act and they treat everyone like they are part of the family!

I want to send out a big thank you to the staff of the Miller’s Ale House in Orlando Florida and especially Susan and Kim who oversee the management recruiting selection process for this growing organization. You are true ambassadors of your organization and to the word “HOSPITALITY”

Any candidate looking to join a company that treats their people like gold, do not hesitate because this company practices what it preaches.

                                                                                                                          Stay tuned to our Gecko Blog for great career tips!