Interview Doctor

Marta Goertzen

Be an Innovative Leader

By

Are you an innovative leader?

An interesting notation by Stephanie Castellano, How to Crush Innovation, in Talent Development magazine has bold application to business leaders and job seekers who want to be business leaders.

Looking at what DOES NOT work offers four ideas on how to be successful:

examples of innovative leadership

  1. Install leaders with no track record of innovation. Don’t be one of these folks. Be the leader who encourages ideas to bubble up, the one who shares ideas and applauds risk takers.
  2. Establish vague, confusing goals. Be the leader with plans and process innovations that support business goals. Important innovations often start as ideas and develop into project plans that finish as business changing innovations.
  3. Create a culture of fear. This is much easier than creating a culture of involvement and inclusion where new ideas can be shared and plans for the future can include everyone. This is more than a poster about open door culture. We are talking about walking around listening to the team members interested in creating a culture of involvement. Demonstrate your inclusiveness through the stories you share about past team successes.
  4. Don’t give employees time to work on side projects. The next innovation probably doesn’t come from that 4 inch binder that contains the strategic plan created by executives behind closed doors. The plan is important but the next innovation comes from a tiny idea dreamed up by that quiet lower level employee. You will miss it if you are not careful. Pay attention, listen carefully and encourage team members to work on those tiny ideas in their spare time. Better yet, remove barriers and distractions to free up time for tiny dreams to become ideas that will move the company forward.

Everyone is just one business meeting away from being a job seeker. With that in mind, can you point to stories that demonstrate your track record of innovation with clear goals that arise from a culture of involvement and inclusion? Are you listening? Are you open to ideas that start as germs from the quiet person in the corner?

Pull together those stories that demonstrate your leadership and innovation. These stories are gold for the next company that wants an innovative leader! Most of all, take a close look at the trail you leave to be sure you are the kind of leader you want to be!

Oops… that LinkedIn Profile does not Match the Resume

By

What happens when the recruiter discovers your LinkedIn profile and resume do not match?

Is it a question of integrity or just or a simple oversight? Can you control this situation?

A recruiter friend of mine, Ted Rosenmayer at Breezeway Corporation International, raised this question recently. His client company was seeking a specific kind of engineer in the aerospace industry. Ted did his recruiter-thing that he does so well and met a fellow he thought was a sure fit for the job. We will call him “Jack” for purposes of this discussion.

integrity during job searchJack’s LinkedIn profile was exactly what the company wanted. He used all the right words to describe his background. Jack even worked at a few of the target companies in roles that provided a great background for success in this role.

The phone screen with Jack went great. Ted wanted to present him to the company. Jack was excited too! This was the opportunity he wanted to move his career to the next level! Ted asked Jack to send over the resume so he could include it in the packet to the client company.

When Ted received the resume in email, he stopped for a second. Something was a little off. Somehow the resume was different from the LinkedIn profile. Dates and job titles didn’t match; one entire job appeared in one place and not in the other. These are not small discrepancies. Mmmmm… What is going on here?

If you were Ted, what would you think?

Consistency is critical in this day of social media. Our profiles and information appear in numerous forums and platforms, sometimes whether we want that information revealed or not. You cannot control what conclusions people draw based on variations in information about you available to the public in social media.

Ted said, “I sent him an email to ask him to explain, but dependent upon his answer I might not even present him if there is even a hint of deceit.” Ted jumped to the same conclusion I arrived at, that there is a big problem when the information in the resume and LinkedIn profile do not agree. It becomes a question of integrity.

Maybe it is all a simple mistake. Maybe not. But what started so optimistically might not end so well. Jack’s chances at the job of his dreams teeter on the edge of an explanation. It didn’t have to end this way; all because of a little variation. What a waste.

So what should you do? Here are a few tips:

  1. Be certain that every profile about you reflects the same TRUE information in terms of jobs, dates, titles, and companies. Google yourself to find all the places you appear in social media. Read the profiles checking for consistency with your resume.
  2. Take affirmative steps to make corrections so all your various profiles are consistent with one another. Write a basic profile then copy and paste if you have to so you can be certain you are being represented consistently.
  3. Don’t EVER misrepresent yourself. You cannot control the information enough in this social media. It will come back to haunt you.

Here is an unsolicited plug: have a professional check your various profiles against your resume to be sure you don’t end up like Jack and lose a great job opportunity because you neglected to follow up. Just saying.

Why does everyone have a different opinion about resumes?

By

Why does everyone have a different opinion about resumes? It is kind of funny. People viewing resumes have a visceral reaction when they pick up a resume.

how to write job resume
Tom Mosser – “A Golden Retriever at the Museum” www.tommosser.com
I could create a resume that looks beautiful to me. Perfect even. But the next expert looking at that same resume would be compelled to pick up a red pencil.

What looks good to some people doesn’t look good to others. Even hiring decision makers have their own pet peeves. What is a job seeker to do?

Ask yourself two questions:

  • Does your resume look good to you?
  • Does your resume convey the information and impressions about you that you want to convey to the view?

If you answer yes to both questions, then move on to the main portion of your job search.

A resume is a tool. You can get a job without a resume or with a resume that some expert thinks could be improved.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ~ Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

If your resume is not pleasing to you, then change it. Solicit opinions from people who have hiring experience. They are likely to know what hiring professionals are looking for.

But does it really matter? As long as the resume is easy to read, contains the information you want to convey about your background and fit for the job you want, and is readable, don’t worry. The resume is useful as a handout – it conveys information. A perfect resume is not the end goal. Your real goal is a job and that takes networking, research and the ability to talk to people.

With that said, we love to give our opinion about resumes and make the changes that help your resume stand out because it says what you want it to say. Just let us know.

Persistence is the Key to a Successful Job Search

By

I was raised thinking anything was possible.

persistenceMy dad often said, “When they tell you No, you tell them Yes”.  I was raised to think anything was possible, but more than that, I was raised to challenge everything.

This characteristic came in handy recently.

A client, Karen, was making a transition from one line of work to another. This is hard. She had to be persistent to overcome nay-sayers who wanted to pigeonhole her in her former line of work. Karen called me after an initial discussion with a recruiter about a vacancy in the line of work Karen wanted to join. The recruiter heard her story and said, “No, you would not be a good fit for that client. You don’t have enough ______.”

Karen walked away because that sounded like the final word. After all, in job search recruiters are often the first and last word in accessing decision makers. When the recruiter says no we often just walk away.

I heard my dad’s voice in my head and suggested Karen challenge that final word. Maybe there was a way around.

Karen called the recruiter and laid out the many ways in which her experience fit perfectly into the vacancy. Her background offered far more than the recruiter noticed in a cursory glance. Karen got the interview and she got the job!

Persistence is the key. When they tell you no, step back and evaluate. Get a second opinion. Sometimes a no can be turned into a yes with the right point of view.

We congratulate Karen Dinehart on her new position!

The Interview Doctor and Stark SHRM spiff up Canton OH candidates

By

Food… shelter… a job… education…

“Giving back is among the most important and valuable things an entrepreneur can do. Period.”

Sometimes when we have all these things we take for granted how difficult life can be for other people who don’t. I know here at The Interview Doctor, we spend every waking hour figuring out how to grow our business. We are entrepreneurs. We are constantly marketing, constantly networking and meeting people to reveal the next client. We don’t think about much of anything outside of our clients.

helping others through giving backWhat else is there in life? Turns out… a lot.

When we focus so much attention on ourselves and our quests we can forget that other people are out there having completely different experiences, some not so nice.

Being out of work is bad enough. Many of us have been there. But what if you were out of work without the resources to even dress nice enough to handle an interview? Wow, that is tough. Seems like that problem ought to matter to a company called The Interview Doctor.

Giving back means taking some action and not expecting anything in return. We give back when we do something not because it will help the business grow but just for the sheer joy of making the world a little better place. So we made giving back a central part of our year-long 10 year anniversary celebration!

This week, in conjunction with Stark SHRM in Canton, OH Dan and Katherine worked with the Workforce Readiness Committee to hold a clothing drive!

where to donate interview clothes ohioWe collected a mini-van full of suits, dress pants, jackets, dress shirts, shoes, and some gorgeous silk ties and jewelry as our contribution to Stark Social Workers Network Clothing Closet. They will distribute the clothing to people preparing for interviews.

A bunch of good things came out of this service project:

  • Folks transitioning into the work force will get new interview outfits. They will look Mahvelous!
  • Folks who have a lot got to clean out their closets knowing clothes that no longer fit them might fit a job seeker very well.
  • Local employers will have access to new talent they might never have seen without being able to dress for the part.
  • Dan and Katherine pulled their heads out of their hidey holes to appreciate the kind works of colleagues giving other people a hand. Just for the sheer joy of making the world a little better!

We want to thank our friends at Stark SHRM for their generosity and community focus. It warms our hearts to mingle with such fine people. It feels so good we might do it again later in the year!

What can you do today to make the world a little better place for someone else? Think about something else today – just for the sheer joy of it!

Copyright © 2026 · The Interview Doctor, Inc. · Site by: Pepper It Marketing Services, Inc.
Home · About · Contact · Blog · Terms · Privacy