Messages In This Digest (2 Messages)
- 1.
- Phone Interview Tips - Long but very good From: Gary Wright - Wright Associates
- 2.
- Business System's Analyst - Portfolio Accounting - Investment Manage From: Gary Wright - Wright Associates
Messages
- 1.
-
Phone Interview Tips - Long but very good
Posted by: "Gary Wright - Wright Associates" gary_wright@verizon.net wrightassociates
Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:55 am (PDT)
Source - Paul Krasinkewicz - With his permission
Phone Interview Tips
by mgill
Paul captured the audience with a presentation on conducting a world class
phone interview. Everyone left with real action items to improve their phone
interviewing skills.
Here are the "Cliff Notes" from his presentation:
Be Yourself – "At Your Best"
Prepare-Prepare-Prepare
Listen-Think-Speak
Confident – Professional – Assertive
Be Brief – Be Bold – Be Done
Speak Less ; Listen More
Questions are more important than responses
Things to do that seem incorrect…but they work!
Pick up the phone on the 2nd or 3rd ring
Dress-up for a phone interview
Take a photo of someone to look at when you are talking to the person on the
phone.
Write out your questions, things you want to say, answers to possible
questions (no one will be able to see this piece of paper…use it)
Don't ask for an e-mail address
Use Pauses (no longer then 15 seconds)
If you are interested in the position let the interviewer know. "I am very
interested in this position and the opportunity to work at Acme Paper".
Things to do that seem correct…and are!
Make sure you speak to someone else in the morning before the call and/or
meeting--this will wake you up.
Make sure you have done a lot of research about the company, the job and the
industry.
If you are speaking to the hiring manager, then know about him/her as well.
Make sure you are polite and remember to say thank you!
Use vivid words (be graceful; be clear)
Take notes
Listen Carefully!!
It takes at least 22 touch points to get a job. Some come from us and some
come from you.
Be enthusiastic. "Some people find it helps to smile while they talk,"
Stevens notes.
Use a land line, and disable call waiting. Interruptions caused by dropped
or incoming calls just add stress you don't need.
Have a list of questions prepared. Well-thought-out questions show you're
really interested in the company and the job. Also, have your resume in
front of you. Make sure it's the same version the interviewer has.
Match your style to the interviewer's. "If the interviewer uses a lot of
technical terms and industry jargon, so should you," Stevens says.
Never interrupt. Silently count to two or three seconds after the
interviewer stops talking before you start.
Avoid negative words. "Banish negative verbs like 'can't,' 'haven't' and
'don't' from your vocabulary," Stevens advises. "Employers want people who
can offer solutions, not potentially create problems.'
Recap your "fit" for the job. Be ready with a 30-second summary of why
you're right for this job, using an example or two from your work history.
Ask about next steps. At the end of the call, ask how well your
qualifications meet the company's needs. This will give you a chance to
address minor issues immediately. Then ask when you can meet with them in
person.
Say thanks. Follow up with an e-mail or a handwritten note. While you're at
it, briefly remind the interviewer how your skills and achievements can help
the company meet its goals.
A few more suggestions, from Paul Bailo:
Wear business attire. Of course the interviewer can't see you, but "you
won't feel, or sound, as businesslike in your pajamas," Bailo says.
Eat a cough drop before the call. A medicated cough drop (especially one
with menthol) will be good for your voice, says Bailo: "It's a small but
helpful thing."
Have a photo of your interviewer on your computer screen. This could be from
LinkedIn, Facebook, the company website, or anywhere else your interviewer's
face might appear online. (You have Googled him or her in advance, right?)
"It makes the interview a little more like an in-person conversation," Bailo
says.
Avoid saying "um" or "ah." Try replacing those sounds with a pause, which
Bailo says is "a sign of intelligence."
Take notes. Jot down topics and questions that seem to be of particular
interest to the person interviewing you, so you can touch on these when you
send your thank-you.
Even if you decide you don't want the job, proceed as if you did. People
sometimes realize during a phone interview that the job in question just
isn't for them. "At this stage, you still don't have the full story," Bailo
notes. "You never know whom you might meet at in-person interviews, and what
networking opportunities could result. Until you get a firm offer and must
make a final decision, keep your options open." After all, that's exactly
what the company is doing.
Let's start at the beginning here. You have launched a website called Phone
Interview Pro. You have written a book, The Official Phone Interview
Handbook, which was just released this month and is available on Amazon.com.
Let's start with your book, The Official Phone Interview Handbook, which is
a small paperback focused exclusively on phone interviews. I think you
mentioned to Judy that you were the Tootsie Roll.
Why did you write this book, Paul?
Paul: Peter, it was interesting. I was working for the sixth largest
Internet company and they had a big downsizing, I was impacted. I was in
outplacement and it occurred to me that as I spoke to people, everyone had
said when you go for your face to face interview, this is how your resume
should look, this is how you should dress, but no one actually looked at the
phone interview. It's always after the fact. So I said to myself there must
be a need here for people to do real research on the phone interview.
I'm currently studying for my PhD.; I've done a lot of research and I said
this seems like there is a real need for people to methodically go through
the phone interview. What I did was I came up with very unique ideas that
don't exist currently in the career service industry. It's my own research,
it's done very methodically, very scientifically, and it's a compilation of
over 50 different strategies to ace and perform a world class phone
interview.
Peter: How did you go about developing these 50 strategies?
Paul: What I did was I got a group of my PhD. friends together and other
good friends in the HR world – senior executives, and we sat down and I had
surveyed them and I said what does a world class phone interview look like?
What is it from beginning to end? And very minutely, we took into effect the
quality of the phone, we looked at when the candidates should pick up the
phone; is it the first ring, the second ring, the third ring or the fourth
ring? What should they say, how should they say it, and what are the key
components that senior leaders want to see from a candidate on a phone
interview?
We've done the research and said look, this is what a world class phone
interview looks like and this is how you could go about doing it. There are
certain things that came out of our research which indicated a lot of people
seem to do poorly in the morning on phone interviews and a lot of our expert
advice came from senior leaders in HR who said it seems like a lot of people
aren't relaxed in the morning or that their voice muscles aren't really up
to performing.
When you look at the book, we have a whole chapter on exercising your voice.
Before you go for that phone interview, what you want to do is possibly call
a friend or talk to someone, or call yourself, but get your face muscles to
start moving to help you relax and also get ready for that phone interview.
So we've taken it on a very, very detailed level.
Look, there is a ton of competition out there, and what we really need to do
is all candidates really need to sort of perform at their best level
possible and every single thing that's said, how you say it, impacts the
view of you and what you have to do is everything very properly.
What the book does is takes you through, beginning to end, of how you
perform really a world class phone interview. And the funny thing is I've
given this book to people who have been in the career services industry for
over 30 years and the reaction 5x over was they've never seen anything like
it.
Peter: And you're absolutely right, I've never seen a book like this, and I'
ve been doing this for four years now. I get 15-20 books a week on business
related to leadership and careers and jobs, I've never seen anything as
specific as this and yet, as you know, phone screens/phone interviews have
become commonplace. I don't know anybody who is interviewing these days who
hasn't gone through at least one phone screen before they get to an actual
live interview.
Paul: That's a very good point, Peter. I mean the key to understand with a
phone interview is that the companies aren't looking to have a phone
interview because they love you. What they're looking to do is really weed
you out. A phone interview is not just a phone interview; it's the minute
they call you on the phone to schedule a meeting. What we try to do at Phone
Interview Pro is to surrogate people to understand that, it's not just this
date and this time where you're going to talk to a hiring manager or someone
from HR; it's when that phone rings, how you sound ,what you say, the words
you use, how expressive you are, how passionate you are – that's building a
mental real estate in the person's mind to say I like this candidate or I
don't.
People really need to understand, what you have to do is you have to go from
them liking you to loving you. The beginning of this journey is really when
you first pick up that phone to schedule that phone interview and then to
perform really well, but you have to really understand that the phone
interview is really a weeding process; it's very cost effective to call you
than to fly you in to corporate headquarters or to spend a whole day in the
office.
Peter: As you well know, Paul, a lot of these initial phone interviews,
these phone screens, are not even conducted by the company themselves or the
hiring manager or someone within HR; it's a third party company that the
company has contracted with to do, as you well put it, the weeding out
process.
If you are doing a phone interview with a third party, do you conduct that
differently than if you were speaking to a hiring manager or an HR
professional within that organization?
Paul: No. What you're going to do is perform. It's like my mom always said,
going to a birthday party as a child, and she would say "be yourself, but be
your best." So in other words, no matter who you're talking to on that
phone, you've got be yourself and you have to be your best. You still have
to treat it as if you're talking to the hiring manager. You can't bring your
defenses down, you have to perform very, very well no matter who is on the
end of that phone because once again, Peter, you're building up your mental
image of yourself in the person's mind, you have to get a really good
reputation in that person's mind, even if it's an outside agency because
once you perform well on the phone interview, they're going to say "wow, I
talked to Peter, he sounds great. He sounds energetic, he sounds articulate,
he seems very interested in the position."
You want to perform perfectly every single time as it relates to the
position that you're trying to obtain. So there is no deviation in the
performance of the phone interview for an outside agency, a hiring manager,
an HR person – it's all the same; you have to perform at your peak level.
Peter: I want to go back to something you brought up earlier in this
conversation that I'm very curious about and that is, the number of rings
before you answer the phone. I find that really interesting.
Paul: It's an interesting thing. As I've said, I've taken it to a very
scientific level and looked at every key aspect of the phone interview.
I think of it this way, when my mom always used to tell my sisters if a boy
is going to call you, don't pick it up on the first ring. I always wondered
why that was – because you don't want to seem too eager. But she always said
the second and third ring, that's okay, and the fourth ring, forget about
it.
So when we did our research from the hiring manager perspective, the surveys
indicated the fact that they like people when they pick it up on the second
and third ring. Their impression of the candidate when they pick it up on
the first ring is that they're too needy. And as you probably know, Peter,
most people don't want things they can get very easily; they want things
they can't have, and that's even in terms of looking for a candidate.
Our survey indicates that the person who is interviewing you will think of
you better if you picked it up on the second or third ring. If you pick it
up on the first ring, it shows once again that you're too eager, you may
give the impression that you're slightly desperate for a position. If it's
on the fourth ring, we recommend don't even pick it up; it shows the fact
that you weren't ready, you weren't prepared, and what we recommend is let
it go to the answering machine. Quickly think of an excuse of why you weren'
t able to pick it up, call the person back and quickly get into the phone
interview.
So as you could see, no one has really studied or looked at the phone rings
but you have people in the industry who has been in there for 30, 40 years,
but they've never actually told their candidates when to do this. So we find
it very unique and very intriguing that we've looked at every single, we
believe a large, portion of the phone interview process from beginning to
end, starting with the ring.
Peter: What in your research did you find was the biggest mistake people
make in doing these phone interviews?
Paul: There are really three big mistakes. The first one is not being
yourself. There is only one of you in the universe, right, so you're very,
very unique. You really want to be yourself at your best. Just relax and be
yourself.
The second big mistake we see is that people aren't prepared, and that means
they haven't done the research, they haven't really prepared their work
environment for the phone interview, there is a lot of distraction. What we
recommend in the book and in the evaluation on interview pro-evaluation and
recommendations is the fact that you sort of sterilize your phone interview
space; that means have your resume ready, have the job description posted
right in front of you. A phone interview is like an open book test, right?
You have all the answers. So what you want to do is be prepared. And what we
find out is is that people aren't prepared; they're not prepared for the
questions, they are not prepared to articulate their value proposition.
What we see is the first one is the fact that people really aren't
themselves, they try to be someone else; so you've really got to be
yourself. The second one is to be prepared – really be prepared for this
phone interview. It's not like the phone rings and you just go for it; you
really need a day or two to prepare and get your answers ready and get
everything going.
Peter: You need to take this as seriously as you would take an in person
interview with someone, and I think …
Paul: There is no difference. The words that most people use, Peter, is "oh
I just got a phone interview." Well it's not just a phone interview; it's
the beginning of a new job, it's the beginning of a new career, and people
really do need to take it extremely serious because this is the first step
in the relationship with trying to get that new position.
Peter: And if you don't ace this, you're not going any further. That's it,
it's over, right?
Paul: Yeah, it's over, it could be over in a quick conversation … it could
be over by the time you schedule a phone interview.
The third biggest thing that we find, which is very interesting, is the fact
that people do not spend enough time on the phone handshake. What we mean by
the phone handshake is within a minute or minute and a half, that's where
you sort of greet the person, get to know the person a little bit. What our
research is indicating is most people rush into the phone interview. Our
research indicates that you should only have a phone handshake no more than
a minute, a minute and a half. And once again, it's sort of "good morning,
how are you… how's your day going…" very niceties, just to get to know the
person before you get down to business. You can't go over that minute and a
half because then it shows that you may be a little sloppy, that you're not
diligent. But most people don't spend the time in the beginning just to know
the person they're talking to. Look, the phone interview is a conversation,
it's from one person to another person, and that's what people really need
to understand.
So if people could just be themselves and relax, people could just get more
prepared, they'd be in a really very good situation, and (3), is to just
take a moment to get to know the person on the other side of the phone.
Because remember, they can't see you either, 80% of your communication
skills are eliminated, both for you and the person interviewing you. So that
minute, minute and a half of "hi, how are you, how are things going…," we
call that the phone interview handshake. It goes a long way.
Peter: So should I try to identify who I am speaking with, or do you work
for the company, are you a third party that's been hired to do this initial
screen?
Paul: I'm a Red Sox fan, as many of my friends know, so if, for instance, it
could be as simple as if the phone number area code indicates they're in
Boston, you could say "oh I noticed that you're calling from Boston. I see
that the Red Sox beat the Yankees last night." It's a nicety. It's similar
to what you would do in a face to face, Peter. During the phone interview
handshake, you want to do a number of things.
The first thing is get to know the person.
The second thing is you want to confirm the contract of the phone interview.
That means, "Dear Mr. Jones, I just want to make sure I have on my schedule
that we're meeting for an hour. Do you have a hard stop?" Now that's
important because you want to be considerate of that person's time. There is
no greater gift than the gift of time. The person may say "no, I don't have
a hard stop, so let's see how it goes." That gives you an open window to
continue the conversation; it gives you the window to add more value
proposition to what you could do for the position.
So within that one and a half minutes, it's get to know the person, get to
understand who they are a little bit, gets them to understand what they want
from this phone interview and then confirm the contract of time with them –
when does it begin, when does it end, are there special things that you want
to focus in on. So it's basically is sort of like a preface to what that
phone interview is going to look like. So you can naturally get yourself
mentally ready to perform at a high level for that entire phone interview.
Peter: In the section called "It's In Your Control," you write "the
interviewer may be asking the questions but ultimately, you control the
phone interview." I think that's what you've been speaking to over the last
couple of minutes.
Paul: Yes. Once again, a phone interview is people talking to people and it'
s not just a one way street. You could highly recommend things during the
phone interview, and as we talk about the phone interview handshake, you
want to assess, very quickly, what kind of phone interview this person
wants. Is it fast and furious? We have something in the book called the FBI
phone interview. But you could easily suggest things. You could say "Dear
Mr. Jones, it sounds like you're very interested in my background in the
international arena. Could I suggest that we spend a little more time on
that, would that help you?" So in very nice ways, you could sort of navigate
the phone interview, offering advice to the person doing the phone interview
for you. You could guide it.
For instance, a person may have a question if it's a technical phone
interview. If you did all your homework and you have everything prepared,
you could say something like "Dear Mr. Peterson, would you like me to email
you my technical document that I designed for IBM?" So what you could do is
you could sort of start crafting that person's mind and feeding that person
the information that you want them to know about you and offer suggestions
on how the phone interview could move in different directions.
Now, I'm not saying you control it 100%; it's like a dance. In a dance,
sometimes when I'm dancing with my wife, I'm leading and other times she is
telling me how to lead. So it's a dance. A phone interview is really a dance
between two people; you could lead the person to ask you certain questions,
you could lead the person into saying "oh by the way, I could send you this
information…". I mean how powerful is it that if you're on a phone
interview, you've done your preparation, and you have all your documents
ready to potentially be sent over there, so the person could actually look
at it, and when that happens and the person is looking at the document – the
same document you're looking at – it now becomes a team effort. It's not me
against you or you against me; it's let's look at what I've done, let's look
at that website I designed, let me show you what I could do.
Peter: That's terrific advice, and it really goes back to what you were
talking about earlier in this conversation that you really need to prepare
well for these phone interviews, just as you would prepare as if you're
going to meet someone in person.
Paul: Absolutely. There is no difference. No difference whatsoever, Peter.
It's a matter of what you would do in a face to face is the same exact thing
that you do in a phone interview. Even to the point of when you have a phone
interview to actually get dressed up for it.
Now most people would say I have an early morning phone interview, they may
be in their pajamas. We highly recommend – and there is a whole chapter on
this – is to get dressed up as if it was a regular – as we would say a face
to face interview. Wear your suit and tie, wear your makeup, get dressed up
because it puts you in the right mental zone for the phone interview.
If you know the person who is interviewing you – and a lot of times, a lot
of people are on LinkedIn, so we recommend during the preparation of your
work environment for the phone interview, if the person has a LinkedIn
photo, to actually download that photo, blow it up and look at it, so as if
you're actually talking to the person. It keeps you in the right mindset.
So dress up as if you were for a regular phone interview, blow up a picture
so you could actually look at the person, and we recommend sitting down
actually for the phone interview; we think it's more natural.
Peter: Interesting.
Paul: We think it's much more natural… because if you think about it, you
know, if you're trying to impress someone, or if you're in a face to face
interview, Peter, do you ever get up in the person's office and walk around
and talk to them?
Peter: No, I don't think so.
Paul: It's unnatural. We researched things as have a mirror and you're
looking at yourself so you could smile. I mean that's unnatural too. The
right procedure is is to sit down at your desk, we believe having a photo –
we've seen a 15% increase in phone interview performance by looking at a
person, predominantly if it's actually the picture of the person…
Peter: That's wild.
Paul: … that we've seen a 15% increase in the performance of that person's
phone interview skills.
Peter: In reading The Official Phone Interview Handbook, I had to smile
because you have one section where you say don't use a cell phone for a
phone interview. And of course, in what I do, I'm always telling people you
have to be on a landline phone. But Paul, Gen-Y'ers don't have landlines.
They don't. I can tell you that from personal experience.
Paul: We highly recommend a landline…
Peter: If I'm interviewing somebody under 30 years old, they don't have a
landline; they only have cell phones.
Paul: It's the preference of if you want to do this right, the right way to
do it …
Peter: So go over to mom and dad's house and use their landline, folks.
Paul: Yeah, or what we really recommend is very interesting – we talked to a
lot of outplacement agencies and they looked at me like I had three heads
and the suggestion really is, is to go out, buy an old clunky AT&T telephone
and get a landline. The sound quality is better, the probability of having
any interference is almost nil.
With a cell phone, the problem is is also that we've been trained just to
keep talking. You're walking down the street, you're not being very
articulate, your etiquette is maybe a little sloppy. Not only do you need a
landline just for the phone interview, you need a landline for your entire
job campaign. We consider it like the Bat Phone for your job campaign,
meaning there should be one unique phone number, predominantly a landline,
that any and every time that phone rings, it only has to do with your job
campaign – nothing but a job campaign. There is no confusion of who or what,
when that phone rings, who it could possibly be. When that phone rings, it
relates to your job search.
Peter: So since you brought up Phone Interview Pro, let's talk about Phone
Interview Pro because it's a very unique and interesting concept where you
actually do phone interviews with your clients prior to doing the actual job
phone interview. Can you tell us a little bit about this and how it works.
Paul: What we have found as a niche in the world of people looking for work,
and we created a company called Phone Interview Pro, and I actually hold the
patent on the process of phone interview scoring.
So we offer is a mock phone interview with a senior level person who has
years of experience predominantly either a graduate degree or a Masters
degree in the HR arena, and we offer the person for $69.95 a mock phone
interview, but it's a real phone interview. The minute that phone rings, we
start scoring you. We look at when you pick up the phone, how many ums and
uhs, did you have a landline, were you passionate, were you bold, were you
brief, were you to the point. We have a number of unique psychological
questions that we ask you. Now, they're generic questions, so that means a
person who is in the health field or a person in the technical world or a
person in the financial world could all go through this process because what
we've done is we've gone to the core element of what a world class phone
interview looks like. It lasts about 30 minutes, and we go through a whole
litany of questions. And then what happens is, is I've built an algorithm
and a database and we run the algorithm, and the algorithm predicts the
probability of you being recommended to the hiring manager, and it also
gives you a gauge of how you performed against your peers in that industry
based off of your level and based off of your education.
We're the only company in the entire United States who does this.
I tell people it's like your SATs. If you have a real phone interview or you
're in your job search campaign mode, you're crazy if you don't do this. The
reason for that is you don't know how you're doing on that phone interview,
and for $69.95, we give you a litany of information – 250+ dimensions of the
phone interview.
Peter: After the phone interview is over, you run this through your
algorithm, you do the scoring, and then I get back my test results, so to
speak.
Paul: Right, with answers and recommendations. So it's like the SATs; so
what you get is you get a whole list of points relating from the beginning
to the middle and the end of your phone interview, things even as was there
background noise or not, right?
Peter: Right.
Paul: And each and every question has a certain weighted average against
your overall score. And then after the phone interview, it takes about one
to two days to process all the information, run it through the algorithm and
the database and then you get a whole report. And in that report it tells
you how you performed, it has a list of recommendations, it also has the
perception of the executive evaluator who works for Phone Interview Pro of
what they thought of you.
This is very subjective, but based off of your voice and based off of how
you answer the questions, did you come across as being trustworthy, did you
come across as being easy to listen to – and these are things that the
individual candidate who comes through to do the evaluation has to think
about. And once again, that part of it is subjective.
We also have a piece that gives you recommendations – what should the person
do, what should the person not do, did the person use too many ums and uhs,
and in the evaluation, we allow for a certain amount of ums and uhs. If you
go over that portion of ums and uhs, you significantly decrease your score.
And then what we have is sort of a write up of comments and recommendations.
This is, as I explain to some people, this is like your insurance policy. A
lot of our clients who come to us, come right before they have an actual
phone interview because they want to know how do you perform at a very high
level and there is a lot of competition, as you know, out there, Peter.
But once again, it's a high level evaluation of your phone interview skills
from beginning, middle, end, from the minute you pick up that phone, to what
your voice quality is, how articulate you were, how many ums and uhs you
had, and then you get a whole list of recommendations, and then the key part
is how did you rate, what was your overall rating of the Phone Interview Pro
mock phone interview. It's amazing what we find.
We find that after you do the Phone Interview Pro evaluation, 5-10 days
later we send you a survey, and our results indicate that we have a 95%
success rate of people who have gone through a Phone Interview Pro
evaluation and they either got another a phone interview or they received a
face to face interview. So the numbers are off the charts really.
Peter: How long have you been doing this, Paul?
Paul: We started five months ago, actually. The book we've been writing
for … came up about nine months ago, and the book, as you said, just came
out on Amazon two weeks ago and the #1 phone interviewing book on Amazon.
The company I test marketed at Sacred Heart University Job Fair with some of
the students and it was just off the charts. The goal is to get people back
to work. That's the goal.
We're really trying to help people master that phone interview so that they
could get through the phone interview, so they could get to the face to
face.
Peter: I think what you're doing is terrific, and I love the fact that you
started doing this because you were in your own job search and you realized
that there was a need out there that wasn't being fulfilled by anybody.
Paul: Yeah, it just came to me, really. I basically took my severance check
and said okay, I thought to myself look, I have three Masters degrees, I
worked for some of the largest companies in the world – GE, American
Express … some really large, highly respectable companies – and I said to
myself it can't be that hard getting a job. I talked to some really smart
people and it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I'm a very good
networker, I've always networked – it just so happened that all of my
networks were in the same companies that were in the credit crisis. I just
said to myself, I said "okay, this sounds like there is something here." And
just having an open mind and being open to what the world throws at you and
I said "wow, here is something really cool." The more I talked to people …
and even my own outplacement, people looked at me and said you know, this is
so obvious, that it's not that obvious.
Peter: Exactly.
Paul: The phone interview has been happening for years and we basically
said … I just basically said, "look, I think there is an opportunity here."
(1) Predominantly get people back to work and (2) to really say look, there
is a better way of doing this and putting real rigor around the phone
interview and you know, really helping people to say look, this is really
what you have to do during that phone interview.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
- 2.
-
Business System's Analyst - Portfolio Accounting - Investment Manage
Posted by: "Gary Wright - Wright Associates" gary_wright@verizon.net wrightassociates
Tue Jun 14, 2011 1:16 pm (PDT)
Please feel free to refer this position to other groups and people you know
that might be a good fit.
Position Title – WRCOAABSA062011
Business System's Analyst – Portfolio Accounting - Investment Management –
Boston, MA Area – Up to $120K
Base + Bonus + Comprehensive Benefits
Local Candidates only – No sponsorship
Stable work history required
Company
Successful, smaller, and growing, Boston based Investment Management firm
with $45B+ under management
Position Responsibilities - Summary
As a member of the IT group, this position will play a key role in the
support of the portfolio accounting and other investment operations systems.
It is a highly visible position with exposure to many business units in a
dynamic quantitative investment management firm. The position requires a
high level of direct interaction and collaboration with end users, excellent
analytical and communication skills, and outstanding domain knowledge.
The Business Systems Analyst must comprehend and organize a collection of
business requirements and communicate those requirements to application
developers. Negotiate technical and non-technical solutions that both
satisfy the business user and conform to the technical architecture.
Detailed Responsibilities:
· Drive efforts that identify business requirements.
· Write specifications for new/revised systems based on knowledge of
business needs by working closely with senior department managers and key
department members.
· Identify and document scope changes escalating appropriately to
project manager for action.
· Participate in functional and change impact analysis for existing
business processes and develops recommendations for improvements and
enhancements.
· Conduct business and systems requirements analysis at code and
data level such as data mapping, and data conversion analysis.
· Perform complex data analysis in support of ad-hoc customer
requests.
· Work with Business and Technology Departments to identify data
lineage analysis, source and destination requirements for applications.
· Analyze the business processes in terms of activities (tasks),
workflow and dataflow.
· Facilitate the creation of testing documentation and manages the
testing process.
· Research, track and communicate business issues and software
defects related to projects and level 2 applications support.
· Participate and support post implementation process including end
user training.
· Collaborate with team members and manager to define standards for
future business analysis efforts.
Required Skills and Competencies:
The candidate should have a minimum of 5-8 years of experience working as an
IT business systems analyst in the financial services industry. In addition,
the position requires:
· BS degree in MIS, BA or related discipline
· Strong understanding of global investment portfolio accounting and
portfolio reporting
· Strong understanding of investment processes, accounting and
performance measurement systems, workflows and data
· Experience with portfolio accounting systems such as HiNet,
performance measurement systems such as StatPro and FactSet and fixed income
systems such as Aladdin a plus - Prior knowledge of BARRA, GIPS, Bloomberg,
Reuters desired.
· Strong analytical and problem solving skills - Strong
interpersonal and communication skills - Strong business and technical
writing skills.
· Experience in managing small to medium scale projects or
subcomponents of a major project
· Ability to lead project meetings with users - Ability to
effectively handle multiple priorities
· Solid MS Project /Visio and MS Office application skills
· Working knowledge of SQL (Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase)
· Experience gathering and documenting business requirements from
users
· Experience with systems integration in the financial services
industry
· Experience with systems development lifecycle methodology
· Previous direct responsibility for writing structured business
requirements, functional specifications, test plans and test cases
Contact Information
Gary Wright - President – Wright Associates
Phone - (508) 761-6354 - Email - replywrightassociates@verizon. - WEBnet
Site – www.wrightassociates.org
Need to Reply?
Click one of the "Reply" links to respond to a specific message in the Daily Digest.
The New England Networking Group is Moderated by:
Gary L. Wright - President/Principal - Wright Associates
Wright Associates specializes in High Technology Recruiting Services for the New England Market Place.
Phone: 508-761-6354
Email: mailto:garywright@prodigy.net
Website: www.WrightAssociates.org
Gary L. Wright - President/Principal - Wright Associates
Wright Associates specializes in High Technology Recruiting Services for the New England Market Place.
Phone: 508-761-6354
Email: mailto:garywright@prodigy.net
Website: www.WrightAssociates.org
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