Monthly Archives: November 2021

The MostĀ ImportantĀ Step to Landing a Job is Being Prepared for Your Interviews

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

Why prepare for a job interview?

You have already submitted an application and/or resume, and you know your work history, achievements and skillsets, so what need is there to prepare? The most important reason to prepare is to enable yourself to do great in an interview!

Companies typically interview quite a few candidates for each open position. Interviewing provides a special opportunity for each candidate to have his or her own time slot to exchange information that both the candidate and the company need to make a decision about next steps. The next step could be moving forward in their selection process, a job offer, or parting ways.

Your ability to speak effectively about your qualifications–your job-related skills, knowledge, and experience–as they relate to the company’s needs and requirements, is critically important to your success in a job interview. Your personality, communication skills, level of interest and enthusiasm for the role are important components being considered, as well.

Preparation is the ingredient that enables you to present yourself at your best. There are many advantages you can gain from investing the time for this valuable activity; preparing well for an interview:

  • Can reduce fear, stress and anxiety
  • Increases your comfort level
  • Enables you to focus on answering each question clearly and effectively
  • Provides you with basic knowledge about the job and the company that equips you to ask good questions
  • Helps you anticipate and be ready for some of the interviewer(s)’ questions
  • Equips you to speak well, choosing your words ahead of time to best explain your experience and job changes

Companies are looking for the best qualified, most motivated people they can find. They want new people who will add both value and positivity, for the company and the company culture. Walking into an interview without being well prepared can hurt your chances of being selected or seriously considered for a job. Being eliminated from consideration because you didn’t do well enough in a job interview means you’ve missed out on an opportunity that was within your grasp.

Preparation Tips

First, Do Your Research

  1. Educate yourself. Step one, gather information. Learn about the company. Where can you find the best information? Try the following sites:
    • The company’s website is the best starting point to learn about products, services, the company purpose, mission and culture and values
    • LinkedIn is a good source for information both about the company and individuals who work there; you may be able to find the person you’re interviewing with by searching by his/her name.
  2. Understand the job opportunity. Review the job posting thoroughly, more than once. Highlight or write down the key information:
    • Job responsibilities/duties
    • The job requirements: Skills, Education, Knowledge, and Experience, etc.
  3. Assess how good a match your qualifications are with the job responsibilities and requirements.
    • Using your resume for reference, list (using bullets) examples of experience you have that matches up with each responsibility and job requirement.
    • Note the training you’ve had that relates to the job you’re interviewing to do.
    • Note the gaps: any job requirements you do not meet1.
    • Remember the suggestions you made that your boss supported you in implementing — this may include improvements you’ve made in your work methods or the impact you had by following your curiosity to improve your performance results.
  4. Make a list of questions you anticipate you will be asked.
  5. Make a list of 2-4 questions you will ask.

Second, Prepare to Answer Interview Questions

Each interview question posed to you provides you with an opportunity to give a clear picture of what it would be like to have you on the team. Answer each question thoroughly, clearly and concisely. Don’t ramble or go off on tangents.

It is likely you’ll be asked quite a few questions; some of the most common topics include the following:1

  • Your work history: where you were employed, dates of employment
  • Job responsibilities
  • Accomplishments
  • Improvements you innovated and gained approval to implement
  • Reasons for leaving each employer
  • Examples of problems (and solutions)
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Objectives
  • Various questions about your job-related behavior

Create a list of questions you want to practice answering as part of your preparation. Jot down responses, tweaking your responses until you’re satisfied that they are professional, positive, complete, and concise.

Take opportunities when appropriate to highlight times you’ve gone above and beyond to prevent or solve a problem.

Practice enough; either in front of a mirror or with someone else–enough so that you become comfortable talking about your skills, knowledge and experience, and you have examples ready that demonstrate your performance, problem solving, and accomplishments without sounding full of yourself or falsely humble.

Third, Keep in Mind a Few DOs & DON’Ts for the Interview

  • Do: Manage your grooming and maintain a professional appearance; make sure your clothing is not too casual, too revealing, or too dressy.
  • Don’t: wear perfume/cologne.
  • Do: Turn your cell phone off before you enter the building.
  • Do: Bring a small bottle of water; nerves and talking can make us thirsty.
  • Do: Bring extra copies of your resume, just in case.
  • Do: Be prepared to answer questions about your desired compensation
  • Do: Be friendly and respectful to everyone you encounter from arriving at the door to your departure.
  • Do: Be patient while waiting. Stay professional. Review your resume, observe your surroundings, look at a company brochure if one is offered/available on a table.
  • Don’t: Play computer games or listen to music while waiting.
  • Don’t: Chew gum, hum to yourself, put your feet up on a table, slouch in a chair or slurp your beverage.
  • Don’t: Be negative, cast blame or badmouth co-workers or companies who hired you in the past.
  • Do: Be positive and show enthusiasm for the work, role, and growth in prior positions.

Summary

Each interview provides a unique new chance to show your individual approach to work, and how you make a difference through what you do and how you do it. Having the will to find the right job opportunity is important; having the will to prepare for the interview is vital. We wish you success in preparing so as to succeed in finding the right role for you and landing the job!

Footnote:

1It may go without saying: We recommend our clients be honest even in describing difficult situations that are anticipated to come up in interviews. Misleading and exaggerations will likely plague one’s conscience, generate anxiety, hinder tone/voice/body language as well as potentially become a cause of termination when discovered by the employer. Prepare your explanation to include what you learned from the experience, and what you’ll do differently in the future.

“The Job Interview: Tips for Success and Common Interview Questions,” — LINK: https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/career/job-interview-tips

“Your Complete Guide to a Successful Job Interview,” — LINK: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/9728-interview-guide.html

“21 Job Interview Tips: How to Make a Great Impression,” — LINK:https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/job-interview-tips-how-to-make-a-great-impression

“5 Behavioral Questions to Know,” — LINK: https://www.kforce.com/articles/common-behavioral-interview-questions/

“Job Interview Questions, Answers, and Tips to Prepare,” — LINK: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/job-interview-questions-and-answers-2061204

Copyright 2021 by Rosanna M. Nadeau

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Agility: The Ability to Zig and Zag

Image source: Pinterest

As a dog owner and animal lover, when I hear the word, “Agility,” I first think about dogs jumping hurdles and running through tunnels and chutes, taking sharp turns, making U-turns, and doing it all as a race for time and accuracy. Then, I discovered a video on YouTube.com of a squirrel racing along a complex obstacle course including running along wire, through tubes, up poles and making sharp turns, all to get nuts! (enjoy the video, “Mission Impossible Squirrel” below!)

These are fun examples of how animals change on a dime at speed, facing unexpected obstacles and resolving complications to get what they’re after. Each time, they need to access their memories and apply past learning to deal with each glitch. Wild animals, have developed agility to survive throughout their lifetimes.

Our work environments are extensions of the world, integrated with it and impacted by its constant change — in the economy, technology, customer needs, and advances made in industries as well as by competitors. We are routinely faced with opportunities and problems that require adjustments or even wholesale changes in our approaches. So, today’s organizations recognize the critical requirement for agility for both short term and long term survival, growth and prosperity.

It is not enough for a few leaders among a board or leadership team to be skilled in agility. To be successful, employees need to build agility skills. Organizations must rely on their people for agility, to know when to adopt new technology, and agility to drive change quickly.

Agility skills are important in all aspects of our lives, at work and outside work. We often experience the unexpected, events we cannot plan or control, that require us to make timely, if not immediate, changes of course. Agility is the capability to do that effectively.

What, then, is agility? The word Agility has different meanings depending on the context. It’s much more than an attitude of openness and flexibility. It’s a way of living and working day in and day out, and it employs a set of skilled that can only remain honed through continuous use.

Agile people are ready to make adjustments and view it as a natural part of being. Seeking and spotting solutions to problems as well as improvement opportunities, is, for the agile, are routine.

To stay with or ahead of the market and organization must build, collectively, knowledge and skills to read the business environment and respond quickly and effectively to changes in organizational needs.

People re-shape their lives and businesses adapt to continuously changing circumstances.

Bersin by Deloitte defined agility as “…a person’s ability and passion to quickly study a new problem and to apply his knowledge and prior learning to form a deep understanding before making a decision. It is not, for example, the ability to shoot from the hip.”

Experience itself is not enough to guarantee learning. People must take take to reflect and find meaning, to understand what happened and why it happened. Agility is not simply the ability to shift but is the ability to do so speedily. Lisa Haneberg wrote, in her article for ASTD, “Training for Agility: Building the Skills Employees Need to Zig and Zag,” Lisa said “Agility is our capacity to be consistently adaptable without having to change. It is the efficiency with which we can respond to non-stop change.”

To be agile is a life skill. It’s the ability to be in a constant state of readiness — to adjust, to find a new solution, to shift direction swiftly in response to the unexpected.

Examples of agility in business abound.

Agile leaders who are focused on the future can change the course of their organizations to find new success. For example, Robert Gavin, CEO of Motorola in the mid-1960’s, realized that the retail industry was changing due to Japan’s emerging presence. He strategized with his leaders to move Motorola away from retailing radios, televisions and stereos to focusing on chips and wireless communications. By the 1990’s Motorola had divested its former retail product lines and become a dominating force in cellular communications.

We can intuitively understand why our leaders need to be agile and future-focused. But, what does it mean to build an agile organization? Does everyone need to focus on the future while they do the work of today?

Building an agile organization means building agility in its individuals, teams and groups. We need to develop agility skills as Hanenberg defines them. And, we need to provide people with a shared purpose, a cornerstone made up of information about the Company’s business strategy, in particular, the value proposition. The cornerstone provides a most important benchmark as they think about what they do and how they do it.

Lisa Hanenberg’s article also provides us with a sports analogy: Imagine a profession tennis player named Bjorn. What may be the value proposition he needs to deliver? Perhaps it is to win the season. Hanenberg wrote, “…in between tournaments, Bjorn practices dozens of shots with a variety of practice partners on hard, grass and clay courts. Each tennis match is unique, but he will be better able to respond to each new challenge because he has trained himself to adapt quickly.

To build our agility, we can train as Bjorn does to increase our abilities to respond to new situations without having to change. Agile work approaches can be practiced day in and day out, enabled by an individual’s desire to improve his work product or process. This is different from change management, which is a process we use to implement and manage change. While agile work processes require adjustment, change has a broader scope.

The culture of an organization may need to be changed to make people more comfortable hacking their work methods. In organizations where hierarchy and standard procedures are emphasized, leaders will need to develop a strategy for agility, and to drive change in the culture, policies and leadership to create an environment conducive to agile behavior. In an organization where agility is defined as a core competency, is part of the business strategy, and can fit within the culture, managers can lead by example, and a learning/training organization can provide training in skills and behaviors that foster agile work practices.

Conclusion

Building skills through practice in the following areas can help develop agility:

  • Problem solving techniques
  • Self-regulation
  • Developing new habits
  • Stopping undesired habits
  • Submitting suggestions
  • Developing alternatives
  • Conducting experiments

Leading by example, managers can introduce systematic approaches that develop capability to apply learnings from past experience. For example, routinely conducting project or production post-mortems as a team, to learn from successes and failures, without finger-pointing.

Fostering and building agility effectively can provide a multitude of benefits. As people become more agile:

  • Changes do not stress people, because they are constantly on the ready to make adjustments
  • They can identify and act on possibilities
  • Ability to deal with stress improves
  • Skills in resilience, the ability to bounce back, can be strengthened
  • They learn to see the positives in change

In today’s fast-paced, changing world, our ability to continuously learn and adapt will impact how we feel about our work and personal lives. It will help us to maintain the skills and capabilities we want and need for our success and happiness. It’s what enables people to overcome obstacles, find creative solutions to problems, and reach our potential.

Why Does The Image Of A Speedboat Head This Article?

A critical skill for agility is the ability to think fast! The video below, Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0- Ninja Warrior Course by Mark Rober on YouTube demonstrates this in a fun, creative way! Click below to check it out!

How can we become faster thinkers? Consider what squirrels do. They pause before acting. They recognize patterns. They practice, practice, practice. There are lots of ways we can speed up our thought processes. Research online and choose activities to add to your daily routine. Yes, make it a habit to hone this skill. Consider the implications of learning to think fast, to come up with the best moves to make to solve problems under pressure. Just imagine!