Interviewing- Build up your story

Build your story might appear like advice on spinning a yarn during the interview. Let me assure you it is anything but.

Some interviewers use a method called a single question interview. Here after the preliminaries a single question is asked which tries to peel of the layers in the candidate mask.

This question could be related to some particular accomplishment , or could relate to candidate expectations of his job or his like or dislikes regarding his current employment. Whatever be the question – the idea behind it is that it is general , and there are no right or wrong answers to this question.

As the candidate, which is “you”, get into the details of your job your expectations or accomplishments the interviewer probes with numerous follow up questions getting specific details and going deeper into the plot so to say.

This is where your ability to build your story gets tested. It is so crucial to be able to recall the details of the experience you went through in your job accomplishment. If you happen to have the habit of maintaining a journal – then these details stay more or less fresh forever.

But, if you don’t have this attribute then the best thing would be go through a thorough pre-interview preparation of jotting down all the details of your accomplishments , your role in the organisational achievements, the difficulties you faced, the challenges , the disappointments.

If you are able to take the interviewer through this entire ride , relive the experience with the interviewer so to say – then you will no doubt be able to build a bridge with the interviewer and influence his decision.

Mind you the story that you tell has to be a true story – based entirely on your experience at the job.

Once you are through with this process the interviewer will have clear cut evidence of your competence devoid of any gut feel and prejudices.

So, if you want to ace interviews one advice would be to develop the habit of maintaining a daily journal.

Follow-up Follow-up Follow-up

As an entrepreneur some of your time needs to be spent on calling your suspects & prospects.Reason is simple you can never letgo on the process of scaring up new business. While doing so, at times you might find in your Business Development diary prospective clients, fallen by the wayside, because you never got back to them after promising them otherwise.

It is not too late still. Don’t hesitate to call them up now. When you call them up – most might not remember at all, and the whole process may have to be started from scratch once more. But, that is still worth the effort as statistics show that a second or a third contact is a much better position to be in than the first contact.

Followup is an oft used phrase , much bandied about by the Bosses ( self included) but never practiced to its full extent. Infact I have a A4 poster on my wall espousing the same cause – but so many times I find myself falling short on this critical aspect of doing Business.

There are times after a good first meeting with a client, I decide to send a thank-you note. But, in the process of refining the mail time is lost sometimes beyond 24 hours and beyond that it sending it appears kind off forced.

A note to prospective candidates You can polish your professionalism by sending a thankyou note after attending an interview. It adds to your appeal. In this rat race would’nt you be better off even with a marginal each over the competition?

I confess not to be very good at Followup- but – let that not prevent you from choosing this more elegant path. You will be rewarded with excellent Business relationships. And maybe you might even thankme someday.

Now considering that I have been contacting so many prospective clients and letting them off the hook after one or two interactions – who is to blame if my conversion rates are so low?

Interview Thoughts

Just finished reading this article “Do you rely too much on Interviews ” by Susan Heathfield of the About.com HR fame.

Susan is spot on when she says that candidates who do well in the interview do not necessarily turn out to be successful employees.

This is not exactly a path breaking observation. A person who has good interpersonal skills and a smattering of the job knowledge is likely to go through purely on the basis of the chemistry he develops.

This is not to say that “Job Interview” as a candidate shortlisting mechanism is redundant. But if certain other shortlisting mechanisms are used alongside the hit rate is likely to improve many times over.

One of the methods which can be very effective is the trial period. Just like a new vendor gets a trial order. Why not let the employee be tried out on the job and see how he performs for a week or two.

But, in our bid to come up with new ways of effective shortlisting – we cannot really overlook the efficacy of a simple face to face interview process. It is simple, easy to organize, the result gets known immediately – either he makes it or he doesn’t – though the candidate might not get to know that so soon. And 9 times out of 10 it is effective ( 9 out of 10 candidates shortlisted through this process stay with the company for atleast a year- this is a home grown statistic)

There is definitely something going for a method which uses 3 out of our 5 senses to evaluate. ( Sight, sound and touch)

And while you are at it you can also check out this very interesting article from Punk Rock – especially if you are a candidate – The number 1 Job Interviewing Skill and in-case you happen to be in a job which is nothing to rave about – I guess this article should lift your spirits.

photo credits : holidaylonging.wordpress

Employee Engagement & Leadership

I came across this very interesting document on Employee Engagement

Obviously leadership has a big role to play in Employee engagement.

One crucial factor here is that in most cases employee engagement is perceived as an organisational problem to be sorted by fine tuning organisational systems.Sure, some fine tuning will help.

But, I feel a systemic response to employee engagement might not be the complete solution. Employee engagement has to come from the direct reaching out of the leadership to the employees. It is the leader who uses the organisational tools available to him to to engage the employee – heart and soul – get his complete buy in to the goals of the organisation.

What I would like to focus here is the fact that – employee engagement is at a much higher level than – say, “employee satisfaction”.

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill had their countries engaged , the populace was behind them ready to fight , give their life if required. We would call that an example of outstanding leadership resulting in exceptional levels of engagement of the people. But, such high levels of engagement happened at times when the respective countries faced a threat to their very existence. These leaders took advantage of the prevailing confusion and provided exceptional leadership.

Whereas in our smooth functioning systems driven organisations there are no such dire threats to be faced. Only when the companies face a real dire situation does the need arise for drastic measures. In such peaceful situation when there are no major threats to once job, where the profits are flowing and the career curve is a smooth upward helix – how does one keep the employee completely engaged.

Bill Gates said it well –

“Your Business will fail unless you are running scared all the time.”

So does that mean – to have engaged employees the leader needs to continuously keep the threats in focus.

Engage your Employee

There are times when you wonder if the employee is unable to do a certain task or is he/she disobeying.Either way, what I have found is that my earlier, impatient, task master style of work, does’nt pay off.

In a small business that I operate, rubbing off even one employee spoils the office environment and we can feel the whole office in a sulk mode. All because I couldn’t handle the one employee who did not seem to follow the plan.

Now, I have learnt that it just doesn’t help trying to force the issue. Patience wins. Whatever be the provocation , its only through patience and cajoling that we can bring the errant employee around. Displaying displeasure doesn’t help.The employee might get scared , might fear for his/her job and may get into an Overactive mode. But it isn’t activity that we after.

We are after results, which only comes by engaging the employee completely. Complete engagement. If we are able to get a complete buy in from our employees regarding the results that we are after and if we are able to continuously bring the focus of our team to this end result then engagement would be automatic.

I guess it has something to do with goal setting combined with continuous reorientations and course corrections which bring in employee engagement and team achievement.

Engage

I am reading the Book “Lincoln on Leadership” by Donald T Philips a fast paced book which consolidates some of the sayings and stories of Lincoln and views it in the light of modern management concepts.

One of the passages was –
Throughout the war Lincoln concentrated on the distruction of Lee’s Army as opposed to the capture of the Confederate capital.

In other words throughout the 4-5 years that the war went on Lincoln was continuously egging his generals to engage the enemy and defeat them, rather than pursuing a grandiose objective of taking the capital. I am an amateur in this stuff, but I felt here is a key lesson for us , applicable for todays concepts of Goal setting.

While going after our goals we need to engage our key deterrents as well as our protagonists because both ultimately will take us to our goals. Generally what we find is that we set a grandiose and ambitious goal but when it comes to the engagement we dither , we hesitate. Just like many of Lincolns generals who went about gathering “impedimenta” instead of going for confrontations and engagements. Those who did so Lincoln gave them his complete support.

For a sales driven organisation the engagement has to be with the customers.By giving them delightful service , or being willing to lend a true ear when they have some complaints or when they are in trouble.
But, in our pursuit of our goals more often than not – we forget the fact that it is that very customer who is in trouble will take us to our goals if we are able to engage him and give him quality service. In our pursuit our focus seems to be on the goal just like we are taught but we miss the boat that will take us there. I am not sure if I out this in a correct manner.

More often than naught our sales driven culture takes our existing customers for granted, though we hear a lot of lip service to the contrary. But, mostly the people who are able continuously serve their clients in a most delightful manner come what may – it is they who go on to truly successful.