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PayScale’s VIP Blog Roundup: Don’t Stalk the HR Manager

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Sometimes, the job interview process feels like the worst parts of dating. So much depends on having good instincts and good luck, and no matter how clever you are, you’re always going to be plagued with at least a little self-doubt. This week’s roundup kicks off with advice that will help job seekers avoid overdoing the follow-up after an interview. (Plus: tips on goal setting after your New Year’s resolutions fail and more insight into why the gulf between older and younger workers sometimes seems so huge.)

bad interview

(Photo Credit: David Blackwell/Flickr)

Alison Doyle of About.com’s Job Searching site: Job Interview Follow-up Do’s and Don’ts

Do You Know What You're Worth?

What’s the difference between reasonable follow-up and stalking your interviewer? Alison Doyle explains how to toe the line:

“…I’d recommend avoiding social media. An HR Manager or the person who might be your new boss is not your Facebook friend. LinkedIn can work, if you are connected with your interviewer already. Otherwise, I’d stick to email, a call or a note. Texting obviously doesn’t cut it as a way to follow up. Your follow up needs to be as professional as you were during your job interview. … Don’t call the interviewer multiple times. The employers surveyed by Accountemps definitely didn’t want multiple phone calls. This is your one shot at making another good impression, so use it wisely, but don’t overuse it.”

Lindsay Shoemake at That Working Girl: How to Set Realistic Goals for 2015

If you’ve already blown most of your New Year’s resolutions, fret not. Lindsay Shoemake offers her advice on setting goals that stick:

“Rather than setting resolutions this year, I’ve carved out 5 tangible goals for this year, which I aim to work toward every day. I limited myself to 5 — why? Because I want to be realistic. I want to lead by example by setting goals that I know I can reach. And I also want to be held accountable!”

Terri Webster Schrandt: Why Play Is Important

Boomers and Gen Xers, here’s another reason you might be having trouble connecting with the Millennials on your team — they never had unstructured play time as kids. Terri Webster Schrandt posits that this has changed the way they think about leisure as adults.

Baby Boomer and older Gen-X parents spent years structuring their Millennial children’s leisure time. A typical schedule after school looked like this: Monday was ballet, Tuesday and Thursday was soccer practice, Wednesday and Friday was music lesson or (you fill in the blank). Saturday was game or performance day. Pretty busy for the whole family and no down time to just relax.

 

Ask any Millennial adult now how they feel about unstructured time. He or she will likely look at you and ask, “What?” Most Millennials lived very structured lives as children and now find it difficult to seek unstructured leisure time. Each semester, when I teach my Perspectives on Leisure class, we discuss this and students share this fact with me this over and over.

Play, of course, is important at every age, but it’s hard to appreciate leisure if you’ve never really had it. Food for thought, the next time you’re pondering the generation gap at the office.

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Jen Hubley Luckwaldt
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