Best Ways to Discuss Your Career Mishaps in a Job Interview

A significant way that prospective employers evaluate a candidate’s potential for success or failure is their response to this question: “Tell us about one of your significant professional disappointments or failures.  What caused it and how did you handle it?”  This requires an interviewee to come up with a particular event specific moment rather than asking them the typical “What are your weaknesses?” question. This asks them to describe a definitive professional occasion which gives them plenty of options: Do they focus on a promotion they felt they deserved or a project that failed? Do they make it about themselves or do they make it about their company? You can learn a lot about them by how they interpret and then answer the question.

In addition, the question doesn’t require an applicant to take responsibility for the failure although they might choose to.  Here are 3 types of answers and then let’s evaluate the pluses and minuses of each.

How to Write an Effective Job Description to Attract Top MEP / HVAC Talent

All your best employees were once candidates going through your hiring process. It is important to understand how you attracted those candidates, so you can improve your recruiting and continue bringing in candidates that help grow your business. Attracting top talent can be especially difficult in an oversaturated job market, so it’s important to stand out from the crowd. In today’s environment of public job boards and social media platforms like LinkedIn, where any HR manager can continuously post ads, gaining visibility is especially tough. In order to differentiate yourselves from the crowd, you need to make a lasting first impression with a great job description.

Hiring Managers – Recruit MEP Employees with these 6 Soft Skills

As a hiring manager for a building contractor, engineering, or consulting firm, you look for specific technical skills when recruiting mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) employees. But, what about soft skills? What personality traits and other qualities should you be looking for when hiring MEP employees? This post examines the most important soft skills and how to measure them during an interview.

Soft Skills Matter in the Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Professions

Hiring managers know that each open position requires certain technical experience – working with specific equipment, or on certain types of jobs. Drafters need AutoCAD skills. Estimators may need to know RSMeans. Electrical controls engineers need to understand power distribution circuits.

How to Hire a Facilities Management Executive

Facilities management (FM) executives work at large buildings or organizations with significant infrastructure. These organizations range from medium-sized retirement communities and hospitals, to hotel chains, to large companies like Gap or Coca Cola who employ FM executives in distribution centers all over the world. It can be tough to find people with good management skills, impressive credentials, and years of hands-on facilities experience. In the 10th year of an economic expansion, the United States has seen lots of new building construction and business formation. As a result, there are lots of opportunities for FM executives and the top talent mostly have good jobs already.