Job Interview: Why Only 3 Questions Really Matter

March 31, 2014

 

Even for the most fearless amongst us, job interviews can be nerve wracking. In order to give us the best chance of success we tend to prepare for many of the difficult questions we anticipate, questions like:

• Why should we hire you?
• What can you do for us that other candidates can’t?
• What are your key strengths and weaknesses?

Of course, you can never predict how an interview will go and what questions you will get. You might get an interviewer who fires one tough question at you after the other, or one that turns the interview into a more comfortable, natural two-way conversation. Preparing, therefore is difficult. In most cases we practice the answers to a long list of possible questions. The problem is that this can leave you over-prepared and as a consequence your pre-conceived answers can come across a bit robotic.

From my experience, there are really only 3 questions you have to prepare for and you can link most of the interview questions back to these three. Preparing for these three questions also means you can answer most questions more naturally, simply by referring mentally back to your preparations for these three questions.

Basically, any interviewer wants to establish 3 key things:

1.  Have you got the skills, expertise and experience to perform the job?

2.  Are you enthusiastic and interested in the job and the company?

3.  Will you fit into the team, culture and company?

However, during the job interview, the interviewer might use many different questions and angles to get to the answers. If the interviewer doesn’t get what he or she wants from one question, they might ask them in different ways. Or they might probe from different angles to test for consistency in your answers.

Here is what’s behind these 3 questions:

1. Have you got the skills, expertise and experience to perform the job?

Think about the key skills you might need for the job you have applied for and assess your own level of expertise and experience in that context. It makes sense to identify the more specific or technical skills that your potential employer might expect as well as some more generic skills such as being a good communicator, having good IT skills, being a team player, etc. Once you have prepared for this question it will help you answer many different interview questions without getting sidetracked into talking about things that are not relevant. Remember that you want to demonstrate that you are aware of the key skills, expertise and experience required to do the job and that you have what it takes to perform it. Always go back to the key skills, expertise and experience when answering scary (and sometimes silly) questions like:

• Tell me about yourself?
• What are your greatest strengths / weaknesses?
• What can you do for us that other candidates can’t?
• Why do you think you are right for this job?
• What do you think the main challenges will be?
• Etc.

2. Are you enthusiastic and interested in the job and the company?

Any potential employer wants to know that you are interested in the company and excited about the prospect of working there. You therefore want to demonstrate that you have researched the company, understand its strategy, current performance, structure, market position and products and that you can’t wait to join them. For most, you will have done your homework before you even applied for the job, but if you haven’t then check out the ‘about us’ section on their website and search for the latest strategy documents, annual reports, key statistics as well as the company history. Show that you know them and demonstrate your enthusiasm for the job and company. Here you might also want to think about your ambitions and how they fit into the company you have applied for. You can then use the insights for answering questions such as:

• What do you know about our company?
• What do you think our company is aiming to achieve?
• What do you know about our products and services?
• Why do you want to work for this company?
• Why do you think this job is right for you?
• What motivates you?
• Etc.

3. Will you fit into the team, culture and company?

This final key question is about your personality and your style and how you as a person fit into the team and culture of the company. Companies have different cultures, which translate into different ways of behaving and working. It is important to make sure you fit in and don’t feel like a fish out of water. In fact, it is important for the company as well as for you. Again, hopefully you will have done some research prior to applying for the job. Sometimes, it can be tricky to find detailed knowledge about the company culture, in which case you simply talk about your assumptions and why you feel you fit in. One relatively new website that offers a glance inside companies is Glassdoor. The site is still in its infancy but provides a growing amount of data and information about what it is like to work for different companies. You want to map the culture of the company or the team you are planning to join and compare this to your personality traits, style and behaviors. Again, once you have done this you can use it to answer questions such as:

• How would you describe your work style?
• How would you describe yourself?
• How would your colleagues describe you?
• What makes you fit into our company?
• What makes you a good team member?
• If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
• Etc.

Of course, any interview is a two-way process. In the same way the interviewer wants to find out that you are right for the company, you need to assess whether the company is right for you. Each of the questions can be turned around so that you can assess:

1.  By joining this company, will I make best use of my skills and expertise and will they help me to grow them further?

2.  Is the company excited about having me work for them and will they give me the necessary support?

3.  Is the company culture the right fit for me so that I can flourish and be myself?

If you ask relevant questions from your point of view then this will make the interview more balanced and create a more natural conversation.

I hope this is useful? Please let me know your thoughts and share any comments you might have on the topic.

-------------------

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Destacado em:

• Your Career

Publicado

 Bernard Marr

 

Is 'Working from Home' Another Big Work Lie?

March 25, 2014

When I wrote about “Out of Office” as a fib, all hell broke loose. Lots of comments and advice about work/life balance and office protocols ensued. The firestorm put a spotlight on another potential office fib: the concept of “working” from “home”. So let’s explore the truthiness of that pronouncement.

It’s a Friday morning and you receive an email message that declares, “I will be working from home today. I can be reached on my cell. Call if you need me.” We have all seen this note and it makes the mind wander and wonder.

Questions about the words “working” and “home” immediately come to mind. Is there anything more to believe than what the note says? The possibilities are endless. The note could mean:

• Surf’s up, I am on the beach for a three-day weekend.
• The endless interruptions in the office are frustrating. I really need to get something done today.
• My child (or parent) has a doctor’s appointment and I can’t deal with the logistics of going to work and running around so I am making it easy on myself by not coming in.
• I really need a mental health day to recharge my batteries. When I return on Monday I will be shockingly more productive.
• Baseball season started and I am playing hooky to see Derek Jeter.
• I need a break from my boss before I kill him or her.
• My commute is an hour each way every day, I need a break from traffic and for this one day I don’t want to waste the time in my car/train.
• Last week I worked 80 hours, I deserve a day off but I will have my phone with me anyway.

“Working from Home” could mean any or all of the above. Working from home every day is a slightly different situation but the perception of those who are always telecommuting is often a variation on the same theme mentioned above. Lately, the concept of working at home has taken a beating. The thinking is that people not in the office are less productive and the team needs everyone to show up. That ‘less productive’ perception is probably not deserved.

Nonetheless, companies, large and small, have reconsidered the notion of working from home. The assumption is that those working remotely might be looking for old flames on Facebook rather than really contributing. Traffic on the VPN was a simple way to find out who was “in” and “on” and in some cases the traffic was surprisingly low.

Is the notion of working from home sometimes abused? Yes.

Are some people more productive when not in the office? Yes.

Do remote workers negatively impact corporate culture and teamwork? Maybe.

Will teams perform at a higher level when the team shows up? Probably.

Is “Working from Home” another way to say, “I will contribute, regardless of where I am sitting”?

Read on.

The facts:

• Contrary to the perception that the person who works at home is a twenty-five year old techie or a young mother, the typical telecommuter is a 49-year-old college graduate who earns $58,000 a year and works for a company with more than 100 employees. These are numbers from the Census Bureau’s Annual American Community Survey. All ages at all levels work from home. And the group includes an equal distribution of men and women and people with and without children.
• Telecommuting has risen 79 percent between 2005 and 2012 according to statistics from the same American Community Survey. Lots of organizations are thriving with telecommuting workers.
• The severe winter and all those snow days that many suffered through this winter helped individuals and organizations see both the benefits and pitfalls of telecommuting.

So, is “Working from Home” a big fat lie? The answer is no. Usually. Working from home is a reality of today’s workplace that is being embraced. Flexibility helps us deal with complicated lives and helps organizations retain key people. Researchers are confirming that those who work at home tend to put in longer hours and are often more productive. “Working from home” is usually on top of the regular forty-hour workweek.

But we also know it can hurt an employee’s promotion chances and that some combination of working at home and showing up in the office is better. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not a good career planning mantra if you want to get ahead. The organization suffers too if no one ever shows up. Plans and accommodations need to be put in place that will ensure the organization’s success and accommodate the diverse workforce.

Sure, ‘Working from Home’ is sometimes abused. Sure, there are reasons why it can’t work in some organizations. Sure, most of us want to be part of a terrific team that is a model of innovation and productivity. And technology has been a curse and a miracle when it comes to being productive wherever we might be. So ‘Working from Home’ almost always means work is being done somewhere. There are enough lies and fibs at work, "Working from Home" is rarely one of them.

Destacado em:

• Your Career

Publicada por Richard A. Moran

Seguir  

       O Conselheiro Da Produtividade

                     sparks & honey posted by SAP

              (sobre como desenhar a rotina de trabalho)

Nos dias de hoje e na epoca dos aplicativos sob medida, para cada um dos aspectos da vida, parece que estamos nos aproximando de uma nova oportunidade de marketing, a qual tem revelado uma crescente necessidade social—a necessidade crescente de desenhar uma vida sob medida.

Sparks & Honey apresentou um estudo sobre os 20 top empregos que estarão mais demandados nos próximos 10 anos. Um deles era este – “ O Conselheiro Da Produtividade “

Faz Sentido.

Há tanta coisa para ser dita sobre a infelicidade no trabalho, web sites sobre produtividade, e coaches, ou conversações sobre como redefinir o trabalho.

Eu penso que a sociedade esta começando a concluir alguma coisa que o antigo filosofo Aristoteles sempre dizia. O mais importante e a felicidade. E a felicidade esta diretamente relacionada ao ser humano trabalhando. Esta também direcionada a como o ser humano esta sendo produtivo para aquilo que foi criado, para fazer.

Um amigo, me disse a sua formula teórica da felicidade :

O nível de contentamento/que VC produz = felicidade

Se no entanto fizer sentido VC começar uma nova carreira como conselheiro de produtividade va em frente. Mas isso não significa se especializar em psicologia e dar consultas para clientes numa poltrona reclinável. Eu penso que este tipo de consultoria ira precisar também de um requisito essencial – fome por tecnologia desenvolvida para aplicativos moveis.

Opa ! Psicologos, combinam com programadores de aplicativos.

Se olharmos para os smartphones e os tablets dos seus amigos agora, VC poderá ter uma ideia da vida que eles levam, baseado nos aplicativos que eles tem. Hoje em dia existem aplicativos para corrida, escolher restaurantes, escolha de roupas, para yoga, relação com parentes e para sua religião.

Numa visão mais ambiciosa, eu também vejo constantemente exclamações sobre questões existencialistas, como – o que eu realmente quero fazer com a minha vida?

Entao, o que eu preciso, para ser este tipo de profissional, ou um guia para salvar vidas (se VC preferir)?

Eu não sei exatamente. Mas eu penso que ajudaria muito voltar atrás para os pensamentos mais fundamentais – o que os filósofos antigos tem falado sobre – qual e o proposito dos homens? Do que constitui a felicidade dos homens?

Quando alguém compreende a resposta para esta pergunta, ele/ela podem usar a tecnologia para fazer a humanidade perseguir e atingir a felicidade.

Afinal de contas a tecnologia e meramente um facilitador. Na realidade e o espirito humano querendo ver avanços e florescer.

BH 30.03.2014

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March Madness: The Top 10 Dumbest Hiring Mistakes Smart People Make

March 21, 2014

“,,,, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

Over the past 40 years, I’ve interviewed over 10,000 people for hundreds of different jobs, from entry-level to CEO. As part of this, I’ve debriefed over 1,000 managers and tracked the subsequent performance of the people they hired and didn’t hire. Based on this, I can safely conclude these are the top 10 classic hiring mistakes:

1.  Using Presentation Skills to Predict Performance. Too many interviewers overvalue the candidate’s appearance, affability, assertiveness and how articulate the person is. These “Four A’s” don’t predict performance, all they predict is the likelihood the wrong person will be hired.

2.  Instantaneous Judgmentitis aka “Cherry-picking” Syndrome. Once a yes/no hiring decision is made (often in a few minutes) the balance of the interview is used to seek out information to confirm the initial flawed decision. For those candidates in the “yes” group, the tough questions are avoided, and for those receiving a quick “no” the toughest ones are asked. The problem can be minimized by waiting at least 30 minutes before making any hint of a yes or no decision.

3.  Using Hard Skills to Predict Performance. It’s what people do with what they have that makes them successful, yet most interviewers focus more on the depth of the having rather than the quality of the doing. It’s better to first determine how these skills are used on the job, and then use the one-question interview to figure out if the person has done what needs to be done.

4.  Thinking Soft Skills are Too Soft to Matter. Collaborating with other people in other functions, meeting challenging deadlines, changing priorities, making business tradeoffs, obtaining resources, and the like, are too important to be called soft. Yet most interviewers spend too little time on how these non-technical skills drive performance.

5.  Missing the Forest for the Trees. If you’ve ever hired someone who’s partially competent, you’ve experienced this problem. Technical people focus too much on technical brilliance and not enough on how these skills are used on the job. Intuitive people rely on a narrow range of abilities, like assertiveness and intellectual horsepower, and assume global competency. The problem can be minimized by preparing a performance-based job description defining the top 4-5 things a person needs to do to be successful. Then put them in priority order and get everyone on the interviewing team to agree. Combine this with the one-question Performance-based Interview and you're unlikely to make this mistake again.

6.  Gladiator Voting. Putting a bunch of interviewers in the same room and deciding to hire or not hire someone by adding up the yes/no votes is a recipe for hiring the wrong person. Sharing evidence around the factors that drive success is the key to an accurate assessment. Here’s a scorecard we recommend using to collect the objective evidence needed to make an accurate assessment. When there is a wide variance of opinion around each factor, you can safely assume your company’s interview process is based on something other than the candidate's ability to do the work that needs to be done.

7.  The Safety of No. A no vote is easier to make since those that invoke it can never be proved wrong. A “no” also rewards the weakest and the most conservative interviewers, since neither has enough information to vote yes. Worse, one no vote can override 2-3 yes votes, especially if the person voting no has more authority. This is why the talent scorecard approach mentioned above is more effective.

8.  Misreading Motivation. Motivation to do the job is essential to job success. However, doing the job is not the same as motivation to get the job. Being prepared, being on time, doing company research, or responding “correctly” to the question, “why do you want this job?” are terrible predictors of real motivation. Unfortunately, too many interviewers are seduced by these superficial displays of interest. The one-question Performance-based Interview will reveal what really motivates candidates to excel.

9.  Ignoring Situational Fit. Even if you overcome all of these relatively easily preventable hiring mistakes and measure true ability, there is one issue that is often overlooked. If the candidate isn't highly motivated to do the actual work that needs to get done, doesn’t mesh with the hiring manager’s style, or can’t thrive in the company culture (i.e., pace, decision-making process, approach to collaboration, level of sophistication, level of support and resources available) success is problematic.

10.             Asserting the Wrong Consequent. An example best illustrates this problem. Most interviewers falsely assume that the best sales reps make good first impressions. With this viewpoint, many compound the error by concluding that everyone who makes a good first impression will be a good sales rep. (This is an example of "asserting the consequent" logic problem.) What I’ve discovered is that the only common characteristic among the best sales people is a track record of great sales performance. When I find a great sales rep who makes less than a stellar first impression, I've discovered the person works harder than everyone else. You can apply this same principle to any job where there's a belief that first impressions matter. What matters is a track record of past performance doing what you need to get done.

Don’t take shortcuts when it comes to hiring. This starts by defining what you need done. If you skip this step you’re likely to fall prey to one or more of the common hiring traps described here. As someone once told me, “If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He's also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people

March Madness: The Top 10 Dumbest Hiring Mistakes Smart People Make

March 21, 2014

“,,,, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

Over the past 40 years, I’ve interviewed over 10,000 people for hundreds of different jobs, from entry-level to CEO. As part of this, I’ve debriefed over 1,000 managers and tracked the subsequent performance of the people they hired and didn’t hire. Based on this, I can safely conclude these are the top 10 classic hiring mistakes:

1.  Using Presentation Skills to Predict Performance. Too many interviewers overvalue the candidate’s appearance, affability, assertiveness and how articulate the person is. These “Four A’s” don’t predict performance, all they predict is the likelihood the wrong person will be hired.

2.  Instantaneous Judgmentitis aka “Cherry-picking” Syndrome. Once a yes/no hiring decision is made (often in a few minutes) the balance of the interview is used to seek out information to confirm the initial flawed decision. For those candidates in the “yes” group, the tough questions are avoided, and for those receiving a quick “no” the toughest ones are asked. The problem can be minimized by waiting at least 30 minutes before making any hint of a yes or no decision.

3.  Using Hard Skills to Predict Performance. It’s what people do with what they have that makes them successful, yet most interviewers focus more on the depth of the having rather than the quality of the doing. It’s better to first determine how these skills are used on the job, and then use the one-question interview to figure out if the person has done what needs to be done.

4.  Thinking Soft Skills are Too Soft to Matter. Collaborating with other people in other functions, meeting challenging deadlines, changing priorities, making business tradeoffs, obtaining resources, and the like, are too important to be called soft. Yet most interviewers spend too little time on how these non-technical skills drive performance.

5.  Missing the Forest for the Trees. If you’ve ever hired someone who’s partially competent, you’ve experienced this problem. Technical people focus too much on technical brilliance and not enough on how these skills are used on the job. Intuitive people rely on a narrow range of abilities, like assertiveness and intellectual horsepower, and assume global competency. The problem can be minimized by preparing a performance-based job description defining the top 4-5 things a person needs to do to be successful. Then put them in priority order and get everyone on the interviewing team to agree. Combine this with the one-question Performance-based Interview and you're unlikely to make this mistake again.

6.  Gladiator Voting. Putting a bunch of interviewers in the same room and deciding to hire or not hire someone by adding up the yes/no votes is a recipe for hiring the wrong person. Sharing evidence around the factors that drive success is the key to an accurate assessment. Here’s a scorecard we recommend using to collect the objective evidence needed to make an accurate assessment. When there is a wide variance of opinion around each factor, you can safely assume your company’s interview process is based on something other than the candidate's ability to do the work that needs to be done.

7.  The Safety of No. A no vote is easier to make since those that invoke it can never be proved wrong. A “no” also rewards the weakest and the most conservative interviewers, since neither has enough information to vote yes. Worse, one no vote can override 2-3 yes votes, especially if the person voting no has more authority. This is why the talent scorecard approach mentioned above is more effective.

8.  Misreading Motivation. Motivation to do the job is essential to job success. However, doing the job is not the same as motivation to get the job. Being prepared, being on time, doing company research, or responding “correctly” to the question, “why do you want this job?” are terrible predictors of real motivation. Unfortunately, too many interviewers are seduced by these superficial displays of interest. The one-question Performance-based Interview will reveal what really motivates candidates to excel.

9.  Ignoring Situational Fit. Even if you overcome all of these relatively easily preventable hiring mistakes and measure true ability, there is one issue that is often overlooked. If the candidate isn't highly motivated to do the actual work that needs to get done, doesn’t mesh with the hiring manager’s style, or can’t thrive in the company culture (i.e., pace, decision-making process, approach to collaboration, level of sophistication, level of support and resources available) success is problematic.

10.             Asserting the Wrong Consequent. An example best illustrates this problem. Most interviewers falsely assume that the best sales reps make good first impressions. With this viewpoint, many compound the error by concluding that everyone who makes a good first impression will be a good sales rep. (This is an example of "asserting the consequent" logic problem.) What I’ve discovered is that the only common characteristic among the best sales people is a track record of great sales performance. When I find a great sales rep who makes less than a stellar first impression, I've discovered the person works harder than everyone else. You can apply this same principle to any job where there's a belief that first impressions matter. What matters is a track record of past performance doing what you need to get done.

Don’t take shortcuts when it comes to hiring. This starts by defining what you need done. If you skip this step you’re likely to fall prey to one or more of the common hiring traps described here. As someone once told me, “If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He's also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people