It seems as though we’re constantly being bombarded by media reports of major security breaches all over the internet. So it was last week when the largest web recruiter, Monster.com, was compromised, leading to the personal details of hundreds of thousands of candidates being captured and subsequently used for phishing attacks (see the Symantec Blog for full details). Monster.com was compromised on two fronts; firstly some employer account login credentials were captured. Secondly it provided open access to full candidate information to all employers, making it simple for the intruders to get hold of candidates’ details once they had the employers’ logon details.

We spoke with Igor Drokov, CEO of security company Cronto, to find out what candidates and employers should do to protect themselves from these and future threats.

J4Q: Who should be responsible for safeguarding personal data on the internet, is it the individual or organisations?

Igor: As pointed out by the recent report on Personal Internet Security, placing responsibility for personal Internet security with the individual is “no longer realistic” and instead organisations providing Internet services should take the lead. Unfortunately, many service providers online and offline rely on what could be described as “identification circus” - using weak personal details (e.g. mother’s maiden name, date of birth) for verifying individual’s identity. These businesses expose themselves and their users to potential identity theft and should, ideally, abandon such practices. In the meantime, however, the only way for users to reduce these risks is to limit publicly available personal information and choose providers that implement better privacy policies.

Most users probably wouldn’t be happy if they saw a bus carrying a poster with their address, phone number, date of birth, favourite colour etc., yet this is the exact type of information available on many public web sites such as e.g. Facebook. Even when some details are already accessible from other sources (e.g. the Electoral Register), why make it easier for fraudsters by putting all of them available from a single place?

J4Q: But in some case, for example recruitment, individuals have to expose their personal details. What should we expect from organisations who are charged with holding this information?

Igor: In case of a valid need for your personal details, e.g. a recruitment service, a user can evaluate the measures implemented by the service provider to protect their data. This does not have to be technical, but rather policy-driven: who can access the information you provide, how they gain this access, does a user have any control about the way their information is accessed?

At the same time, businesses should be evaluating their practices and having a clear accessible way of communicating them to the users. With personal internet security being a focus of legislators, failing to implement adequate controls could be result in high fines, as it was demonstrated by the recent £980,000 fine of the Nationwide Building Society (for losing a laptop with details of nearly 11 million customers).

Here at Just4Qualifieds we have always believed in securing the confidentiality of our candidates and have employed a very strict privacy policy. We ensure that candidate contact information is only made available to employers when the candidate has made an application or when the candidate has agreed that this information can be displayed. This gives candidates true control over who will see their personal details, making attacks like that on Monster.com much harder to perpetrate.

Following on from our earlier article regarding CV tips, this blog provides some suggestions on how you should prepare for, and conduct yourself through, an interview.  Many candidates get nervous before an interview so the points outlined below should ensure that you are well prepared for the situation.  It is also important to remember that you have already passed the first stages of the selection process; to actually get an interview means that the potential employer has vetted your CV and believes that it is a good fit with the role.  All that remains is to prove that to them in a face-to-face meeting.

Preparation

Preparing yourself for an interview is relatively straight forward but very important.  You should make sure that you read the interview notification letter very carefully.  This should provide details of the date and time for the interview, the locations and, potentially, provide details of the interviewer and the format of the interview.  You may also be asked to confirm the date and time and also to bring certain documentation with you to the interview.  To prepare for your interview we suggest that you:

1. Research the company; you should as a minimum look through the company’s website to learn more about their: history, corporate identity and core services.  More detailed research may involve looking through recent press releases and company reports.

2. Review your CV; you should review your CV and identify key achievements and strengths through your employment and academic history.  Make a note of these and elaborate on them at the interview.

3. Review any specialist knowledge; if you have any specialist skills or areas of expertise, make sure that you are up-to-speed on latest developments in these specific areas.  If you are being interviewed for a role in a specialist area you may be asked for your views on the impact of recent or future developments.

4. Prepare your questions; if you have any questions about the organisation or the role make sure that you think about these beforehand and put them to the interviewer at the appropriate time.

5. Research the interviewer; in many cases you will be told the name of your interviewer; finding out a little more about them and their background may give you some indication of the questions they may ask and the interests they may have.

6. Look up the location and work out the travel time; you should ensure you know the location where the interview will be held.  Work out the time it will take you to get there and allow for contingencies, such as travel delays.  You should always aim to turn up early; if you are delayed you must ring the organisation’s HR department and warn them that you will be late.

The Interview

 The interview process is relatively simple in its aims; the interviewer will ask a set of questions to assess: your technical competence, your attitude/ motivation to undertake the role and your ability to fit into the organisation/ team.  These attributes will be assessed not only from your responses to the questions asked but also on the manner in which you answer.  The following points will help to ensure that you make the appropriate impression: 

1. Presentation is very important; first impressions are important, especially for accountancy and finance firms where many of the roles are client-facing.  You should dress to be smart and professional.

2. Listen and be brief; the interviewer will, in many cases, already have a model answer for each of the questions that they ask.  You need to be alert and listen to the question and ensure you address all the points raised.  Do not interrupt when they are speaking and try to be brief and concise when you answer.  It is very easy to stray off the subject and ramble, especially if you are nervous.  Try to constrain your responses; if you think other things are relevant mention them and ask permission to go into them in more detail.

3. Sell yourself; the first interview is really all about how well you present your competencies for the role to the interviewer. So when answering their questions try and highlight your skills in relation to specific elements in the job specification.  The interviewer will also be assessing your ability to interact with others so you should be confident in your responses and make sure you make eye contact.

4. Don’t lie; make sure you are sincere and truthful, don’t lie or pretend to know something that you don’t.  If you are unsure about something then say that you do not know.

5. Ask questions; the interviewer will expect you to interact throughout the interview so feel free to ask relevant questions when appropriate.  It is also a good idea to get the interviewer to explain their interpretation of the role and duties early on; this will help you to focus your subsequent replies.  If you have prepared some generic questions about the role or the company and these have not been addressed through the interview then ask them at the closing stages, when the interviewer has signalled that he is ready for your questions.

6. Next steps; at the end of the interview, the interviewer, or a member of the HR team, will normally describe the next steps in their recruitment process.  They will provide you with an indicative date when you will hear back from them.

After the interview

 After the interview you will have to wait for the employer’s HR department to contact you.  There are only two real outcomes, either you are unsuccessful in your application or you will be invited back for further interviews. 

1. Send a thank you note; although there is no requirement to do so, it is appropriate in some cases to send a thank you note to the interviewer or their HR representative.

2. Unsuccessful applications; if your application is unsuccessful and you would like to understand why, that you can ask the employer’s HR department for feedback.  Although there is no obligation on the employer to provide this, some employers do provide details of why your application was not progressed.

3. If you don’t hear from the employer; if you have not heard from the employer within the time they indicated then you should contact the employer’s HR team for an update.

Second Interview

1. Second interview; if your initial interview was successful you may be invited back for subsequent interviews.  Most organisation will hold just one other interview, the second interview.  This will focus more on assessing your ability to fit with the organisation/ department/ team and may include a short session with a member of the organisation’s senior management, e.g. Partner or Director.  However, this may also include a shorter competence assessment, so be prepared.  Remember that this is your final hurdle and you will need to be attentive, confident and enthusiastic.

It appears that many more accountancy and finance organisations are turning to the web to perform background checks on prospective employees. Gone are the days when employers relied solely on a candidate’s CV to build a profile of the individual. There are now so many publicly available sources of information, each of them accessible through a simple Google search, that employers can easily perform some rudimentary background checks.

See for yourself: just Google your name and see what information is available about you.

With so many people directly or indirectly publishing personal information on the web, either through: web sites, blogs or profiles on social networking sites, there’s a wealth of information available to anyone who needs to find out more about your background.

Much has recently been written about the legitimacy of using the web to profile employees, citing the Mullins case in the US, where it was alleged that a Mr. Mullins lost his job after his employer Googled his name and found that he had been fired from his previous two jobs. In fact, this case rests more on the issue that Mr. Mullins had 102 cases of misconduct rather than what was discovered through Google.

 However, this does highlight some important concerns: information about you (whether good or bad) is available on the web; once indexed, this information is often difficult to remove and, furthermore, employers are starting to use this information to better understand their employees and prospective employees. This becomes very significant for professional services organisations (e.g. accountancy practices, consultancies, legal firms) where their clients could perform similar checks on the consultants/ advisors who are assigned to them. 

For candidates we advocate a cautionary approach when publishing information on the web. Remember that on the web there are no boundaries between your personal and professional life; so before you add your real name to anything that you publish, be sure to evaluate the impact. The information you publish is likely to be available to all and may be there for a long time. 

For employers there are several factors to consider. Although these checks can provide some quick, basic background information, can you be certain that the information relates to the candidate in question? Names are seldom unique and you could be tracking the wrong person or mixing information about several individuals. Also, if you collate or store information from the web you may be contravening privacy or data protection legislation. 

The trend suggests that sooner or later most accountancy and finance organisations will use the web to check details of prospective employees. So candidates beware of what you publish on the web.

Running an e-recruitment service like Just4Qualifieds, we see a lot of CVs and resumes, and it still surprises us how candidates can get the very basics wrong. Many candidates fail to appreciate that their CV is the first real point of contact between themselves and a prospective employer. Candidates must regard their CV as a piece of personal marketing which has to engage recruiters and differentiate them from other applicants. A good CV is important for any role but it is crucial when applying for accountancy and finance positions.

This post aims to provide simple guidelines that will enable any candidate to review and refine their CV, so that they improve their chances of selection and progressing to an interview.

1. Target your CV to match the role
   Ideally you should rework your CV to meet the specific requirements of the role and prospective employer. In practical terms this may not always be possible but you should make every effort to alter your CV so that it matches and emphasises the key criteria specified by the employer in their role specification, in most cases this can be achieved within the profile at the head of your CV.
2. Basic CV structure
   Accountancy and Finance organisations are reasonably conservative in their approach so we would encourage you to adopt a conventional style and structure for your CV. The main sections that you must provide are:
   • Personal information; name and contact details (address, phone, mobile and home email).
   • Employment/ Work experience; detail all previous roles, specifying the previous employers, dates of employment, role titles, duties, responsibilities, achievements and skills acquired. Ensure that you highlight any key achievements and, where possible, target these to match the criteria of the role for which you are applying. Present these with the most recent first.
   • Education; your academic history and professional qualifications, including details of the academic establishments and the qualifications and skills acquired. Highlight any key achievements, e.g. first time passes, awards or prizes. Present these with the most recent first.
   • Additional skills; other skills beyond those already identified, for example IT skills, familiarity with Accountancy/ Finance systems, etc.
   • Activities and interests; identify personal interests that highlight a skill (e.g. leadership, team working, etc.) and present them in a way that will appeal to the reader
   • References; you do not need to provide details of your referees on your CV, simply state that references are available on request. However, you should ensure that you have confirmed with your referees that they are happy to be contacted.
     

     Note, the introduction of the UK Age Discrimination Act 2006 means that the information you should disclose on your CV has changed. You should take every effort to ensure that employers cannot discriminate against you as a result of the way information is presented on your CV. Therefore you need not provide any information that could lead to an employer determining your age - for example your date of birth or the dates associated with your academic history.

3. Get to the point and be concise
   When writing your CV you should bear in mind that potentially the recruiter will be reading through many CVs, so you need to make sure that you highlight your key skills and capabilities for the role in a concise and consistent manner. Many recruiters do not have time to go in detail through every part of your CV; their aims are to quickly reject those that do not fit. Large, verbose and rambling descriptions do not help them with their task and will be regarded poorly. You should identify key points that you want to emphasise and bullet point these with short and snappy statements. As a target try not to have more than six bullet points in each section.
   
4. Size is important
   The optimum size for your CV should be two pages, anything more and it looks too excessive and anything less looks like you have too little to say. If your CV exceeds two pages, try to reduce the following: reasons for leaving previous jobs, past salary information and details of jobs held more than 10 years ago.
   
5. Prioritise the content
   An implicit prioritisation is placed on the items in each section of your CV based on the order and the amount you write for each item. So, important items should appear early in each section and should be presented in greater detail. A mistake that candidates often make is to put everything down in equal measure; focus on your most recent and most relevant experience.
   
6. Don’t Lie!
   Remember that your CV forms part of your contract of employment and therefore must be truthful. Employers often independently check the details in CVs; if discrepancies or lies are discovered it could become a reason for an employer to end that contract or discard your application.
7. Check the grammar and spelling
   There can be no excuse for grammatical or spelling errors in your CV; in fact employers frown upon these types of mistakes and you should make every effort to ensure that you CV is clear of these. As a minimum you should use the spelling and grammar checking tools provided in word processing applications such as Microsoft Word, to initially check your CV; and then ask colleagues or friends to perform similar independent checks.
   
8. Presentation and layout do matter
   Although the content is crucial, the presentation and layout are also very important. A poorly presented CV may lead recruiters to believe that you pay little or no attention to detail, or worse, that you are unprofessional with your written work. The fact is that presentation is the easy part; there are numerous templates available on the web so there’s no real excuse - you can even download our CV template. The things to remember are:
   
   
   • don’t overcrowd your CV or use too small a font size
   • white space makes your document easier to read
   • colours should be kept to a minimum
   • photographs are unnecessary
   • use headings and bold typeface to emphasise key areas, but don’t overdo it.
     

Remember that a well constructed and presented CV can make all the difference in getting you an interview.

Look out for our next article on interview tips to help you get through the interview process.