Oregon job opportunities

If you can say "yes" to all three of the following questions, this may be the job for you!

1. Do you see yourself doing the job?
2. Does your experience and education match the minimum qualifications?
3. Do you have the desired attributes or requested skills and abilities listed in the job posting?

Use the qualifications section to determine if this is the right job for you. We may receive over 100 hundred applications for one job posting. Applicants who meet the minimum qualifications and most of the desired attributes or requested skills listed in the job posting have a higher success rate for getting interviewed and ultimately getting hired.
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It's important to make your application stand out. Here's how:

• Write your application or resume to the job. Highlight how your work experience matches the qualifications listed in the job posting. No two jobs are usually the same. Change your application or resume to address the unique qualifications for the job.
• Make your application materials easy to read. Bullets are a great way of listing job duties in a clean format that is easy to read. Action words make a big impact. Start your bulleted items with an action word.
• Keep the hiring manager and recruiter in mind. Busy hiring managers and recruiters are reviewing hundreds of applications daily. Don't make them hunt through multiple paragraphs to find your job qualifications. Lay it out for them in simple and short sentences.
• Talk about your accomplishments, not just tasks. Use quantitative information. For example:
  

Developed and conducted quarterly training: four-hour sessions on safety procedures for up to 75 participants

• Highlight your soft skills. Soft skills are your abilities to interact and get along with others. Your soft skills, more often than not, are why you are hired. Use specific phrases to describe your soft skills. If you are a problem solver, you might list something like this...

Decreased high staff turnover by creating an onboarding program that helped new employees relate their work to the company mission

• Proof read, proof read, and then have someone else proof read. Your application or resume says a lot about you, for instance, your attention to detail. Don't let typos and misspelled words detract from your experience and skills.

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​​The best way to ace the interview is to prepare.

• Check-out the agency's website. Doing your homework and knowing a little something about the agency's purpose and mission makes a big impression.
• Review the job posting and position description again. You got the interview because your application or resume showed you are a potential good fit for the job. Familiarize yourself with the job description and qualifications and how your skills match the needs of the job.
• Tell me about a time...We often use behavioral interviewing because past performance is a good predictor of future performance. You'll need to come up with some good examples that show you have the qualifications listed in the job posting, particularly the soft skills.
• STAR answers. A STAR response helps you give a complete answer to an interview question.
• Situation - Describe the situation to give context to your example
• Task - State the task or what you needed to do
• Action - Identify the actions you took to get the task completed
• Results - explain your results, the outcome achieved by your actions
• Your turn. You'll be expected to have a couple of questions prepared to ask the interviewer. If you don't have questions, it can come across that you are just not that interested in the job. Your questions give the interviewer a sense of what is important to you or in other words, another opportunity to see how suited you are for the job.
• Practice, practice, practice. Developing any skill, including interviewing, requires practice. A quick internet search will give you plenty of practice questions. Ask a friend to help you.
  

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