Word Of the Week #562: Practice
May 13, 2015 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word Of the Week #562: Practice
Practice: doing something repeatedly in order to acquire or polish a skill.
Have you ever played on a sports team? How well did you do? Did your team win any championships or titles? How much time was devoted to practice?
This week’s WOW is the second part on interviewing from Laszlo Bocks book “Work Rules.” He writes, “Most of what we think is “interviewing” is actually the pursuit of confirmation bias. Most interviews are a waste of time because 99.4 percent of the time is spent trying to confirm whatever impression the interviewer formed in the first ten seconds.
The fact that most of us don’t know how to interview well is a huge opportunity. Because that weakness lets you control the encounter. It lets you win. Here’s Bock’s other three tips:
Prove yourself. Every question should be answered with a story that proves you can do what you’re being asked about. “How do you lead?” should be answered with “I’m a collaborative/decisive/whatever leader. Let me tell you about the time I ….” Always tell a story or have facts to prove you are what you say you are.
Read the room. All that brainpower you’re not using to desperately come up with answers to questions? Look around. Focus on the interviewer. In the first 10 seconds, is there anything in their office, or about them, you can notice and use to forge a connection? A book on a shelf? A family photo? A painting? Read the interviewer: is their body language open or closed? Are they tired and should you try to pep them up? Do they like your answer or should you veer in another direction?
Make it to Carnegie Hall. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Same goes for getting a job. When I was in my second year of business school, I practiced my interview answers — out loud — until I could tell each story smoothly, without thinking about it (but not so smoothly that I was bored with the re-telling). My roommate walked in one day to find me sitting on the futon reciting why I thought I was a great leader again and again. He figured I was stuck in some kind of self-help loop. But I got 7 job offers from 5 companies (that’s another story) and was on track to get another 6 before I stopped interviewing. How is that possible? Practice.
Everyone deserves an amazing job. I hope this helps you get one.
This week is all about practice. How good are you at telling stories about your accomplishments? How good are you at focusing your attention on someone? How about reading body language? How would it feel to practice landing your perfect job or getting the raise you’ve earned?
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Word Of the Week #561: Advantage
May 7, 2015 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word Of the Week #561: Advantage
Advantage: superior or more favorable position or power.
Let’s assume you’ve got an awesome resume. Now you’ve got the interview. How do you convince the person on the other side of the table to hire you? How do you win the interview? You use the fact that most of us aren’t very good at interviewing to your advantage.
This week’s WOW is a follow up on interviewing from Laszlo Bock’s book “Work Rules.” He writes “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” was the tagline for a Head & Shoulders shampoo ad campaign in the 1980s. This unfortunately encapsulates how most interviews work. In other words, most of what we think is “interviewing” is actually the pursuit of confirmation bias. Most interviews are a waste of time because 99.4 percent of the time is spent trying to confirm whatever impression the interviewer formed in the first ten seconds. “Tell me about yourself.” “What is your greatest weakness?” “What is your greatest strength?” Worthless.
But if you’re a job seeker (and who isn’t?), the fact that most of us don’t know how to interview well is a huge opportunity. Because that weakness lets you control the encounter. It lets you win. Here’s Bock’s first three tips on how:
Predict the future. You can anticipate 90% of the interview questions you’re going to get. Three of them are listed above, but it’s an easy list to generate. “Why do you want this job?” “What’s a tough problem you’ve solved?” If you can’t think of any, Google “most common interview questions.” Write down the top 20 questions you think you’ll get.
Plan your attack. For EVERY question, write down your answer. Yes, it’s a pain to actually write something. It’s hard and frustrating. But it makes it stick in your brain. That’s important. You want your answers to be automatic. You don’t want to have to think about your answers during an interview. Why not? Keep reading.
Have a backup plan. Actually, for every question, write down THREE answers. Why three? You need to have a different, equally good answer for every question because the first interviewer might not like your story. You want the next interviewer to hear a different story. That way they can become your advocate.
This week focus on your advantage. Have you ever prepared for an interview by anticipating the questions being asked? Have you ever written your answers out so you were prepared? Have you ever had an interviewer not like one of your answers? How did you recover?
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Word Of the Week #560: Opinions
April 29, 2015 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word Of the Week #560: Opinions
Opinions: judgments or beliefs not founded on certainty or proof.
Have you ever wondered how people’s opinions are formed? How can we make a judgment not founded on proof? Did you know that people make assessments in 10 seconds based on a first impression?
Washington Post writer Jena McGregor’s article, “GOOGLE HR MAN AND AUTHOR BOCK HAS IT ALL WORKED OUT” inspired this week’s WOW. She writes, “Laszlo Bock runs ‘people operations’ at Google, an apt title for a human resources department that seems far more like a data-driven lab than a mere home for HR administrivia. Only one-third of the people he hires for the department have a traditional HR background. The rest are strategy consultants or hold advanced degrees in subjects such as organizational psychology and physics.
Since joining Mountain View-based Google in 2006, Bock and his team have examined questions such as: 
What’s the ideal number of interviewers to assess job candidates? And, how does the size of the plates in Google’s famous cafeterias affect employees’ eating habits? His upcoming book “Work Rules,” shares many of those findings.
When asked what led him to write the book, Bock says, “I’ve always been a little frustrated and disappointed not only in myself as a leader, but also in how leadership and management work. We spend more time working than we do with our loved ones, than with our kids, than sleeping. With a little science and comparing notes with other organizations and testing at Google, we’ve been able to figure out ways to make work better. The hope is that through the book we can make work better everywhere.
When asked what’s the biggest mistake managers make when it comes to conducting interviews he says, “Relying on their own opinion. We all think we’re amazing at assessing character and candidates, but the research shows that we make an assessment in 10 seconds, based on a first impression. The rest of the time is spent trying to confirm that, even though we don’t know that’s what our brains are doing.
The best thing you can do to fix it is to have a bunch of people (we say four) interview every candidate. Make sure it’s not just the manager but people who are going to work for, and around, this person. Have every person assign a score, average that score, and make your decision based on that. Everybody has some level of error in their assessment. Some people are a little soft on candidates, some are a little hard on them, some are biased one way, some are biased another.
The second thing you should do is only hire people who are better than you in some way. Unless you walk away thinking, “That person is better than me at organizing things, or running a process, or solving a problem, or selling to customers,” you shouldn’t hire that person.
This week’s focus is on opinions. Are you open to hearing other people’s opinions? Have you ever had more than one person conduct interviews? Is the staff ever involved in hiring co-workers? What could be done to make your workplace better?
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