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BY Brock Dudley
January 2025 Career Conference: Onto the Follow-Up!
We just wrapped up our January 2025 Career Conference. All of the Officers who attended are now in the “follow-up process” where they are traveling around the country conducting follow-up interviews and taking the final steps toward an offer.
With the January 2025 Career Conference behind these JMOs, it’s time for them to enter the final phase of their career search: The “Follow-Up Process”. This is the stage where Officers will conduct site visits, learn more about the companies, and ultimately earn offers. This process moves quickly as these companies are looking to fill these competitive openings quickly. Throughout the entirety of this process, Cameron-Brooks stays closely aligned with the JMOs and acts as a sounding board and a guide to ensure their best interests and career objectives are represented.
Conference Statistics
The candidates conducted a total of 441 interviews over Monday and Tuesday, with an average of 10 interviews per candidate! The pursuit rate for this Career Conference was 69%, which is right in line with the historical average.
The pursuit rate is defined as the total number of pursuits divided by the total number of interviews. To simplify for this conference, JMOs across the conference received 7 pursuits over the course of 10 interviews (Bare with me as I rounded up 1% to simplify).
Now, what does a pursuit really mean? It means the JMOs were successful connecting their skills to company requirements and showed a high level of interest in moving to the next steps! After earning pursuits, the playing field gets tougher and the companies not only want you to continue to connect your skills to company requirements, but also to prove your fit and your interest in efforts to earn offer(s).
Preparing for Follow-Up Interviews – Mentality!
It’s competitive to earn an offer. JMOs are competing against other candidates who have industry experience and even are internal to the company! Thus, they must be as prepared as possible. The level of knowledge of the industry, company, and position must increase!
Companies expect these JMOs to have significantly more knowledge than they did at the Career Conference. One of the most common reasons for rule out in the follow up process is a lack of knowledge. This can be indicative of a lack of interest or a lack of follow-through – both which can work against highly qualified candidates for the complex roles.
Here’s how the JMO’s are preparing:
- Going back to their conference briefings which help them focus on the industry, company, role and how to connect their backgrounds.
- They receive follow up briefings and coaching sessions from the Cameron-Brooks team.
- Thorough research utilizing the internet to reference anything pertaining to the industry or company for which they are interviewing for. This includes the company website, LinkedIn, business publications, product listings, and YouTube. There are many other avenues to conduct thorough research, but these are a great place to start.
- Many other Interview Preparation exercises that help JMOs based on their increased knowledge of the company and what the position requires objectively and subjectively speaking. Every JMO has spent hundreds of hours in the Development and Preparation Program, at the Career Conference, and on their own time preparing for this critical professional event where they will connect their background, prove their ability and their interest in order to prove the qualification and fit for these A-Tier, Industry leading organizations.
What is the Key to Interviewing Success?
Proving your FIT. This means connecting on 3 levels:
- Proving your ABILITY to do the job.
- Proving you are INTERESTED
- Building RAPPORT with everyone you meet
Want help with this?
You don’t have to do it alone!
Cameron-Brooks has over 50 years of experience helping JMOs navigate the complexities of the transition covering every stage of the Career Search: From Pre-Conference preparation to Conference preparation, Follow-up Preparation, to Follow-up interviews to earn Offer(s) and then evaluating offers to help YOU make a career decision that is right for YOU!
There’s a lot packed in there for EVERY stage of the career search. If you want to know more about Cameron-Brooks, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I would be happy to chat at any time. Stay tuned for our Post-January 2025 Career Conference review. If you want an example of what these entail, you can view the last two here and here. (Get a sneak peek of type of companies, positions, and roles and hear from great Cameron-Brooks alum!)
Brock Dudley
Principal, Transition Coach
