Interview
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They went through a tough 15-week interview to “win” the opportunity of their lifetime to work with Donald Trump. Hear from their direct experience on what tips, ideas and strategies they can provide to you if you either are looking for a job or you want to excel in your career.
Written by Jeff Bosco with no comments.
Read more articles on Interview and Strategies and On the job and Video and Career Advices and Job Searching.
I’ve been working with more and more senior managers (and executive recruiters), helping them assess their CxO candidates (CEO, CIO, CTO, Senior VPs, you name it). By the time someone’s made it to the senior management level, they know how to make themselves sound good, so you can’t ask the strength/weakness question, even if you wanted to. But you do have other choices.
As with all jobs, the job description is key. Let’s assume you care most about strategic planning and the ability to turn those plans into tactics, succession planning, and general management style. Based on those qualities, preferences, and skills, here are some questions you could use.:
- “Tell me about your management style when it comes to strategy. Give me a couple of recent examples.” Strategic thinking is an ongoing issue for senior managers. If all they do is one off-site every 19 months, they are not managing the strategic direction of the organization. When you ask for a couple of examples, you’re allowing people to use last week’s Operations Committee meeting, where they readjusted the product roadmap plus the quarterly strategic planning meeting, plus whatever else they have up their sleeves as examples.
- Follow up that question with, “Tell me about a time you changed strategic direction. Why did you choose to, how did you choose, and how did you carry out the changes.
- “Tell me how you make things happen in your current organization.” Some senior managers work through groups of people, some give more specific direction to their managers. This question helps you learn whether this person prefers more group decision-making or one-on-one decision making. You’ll need to ask more questions to see if your initial assumption is correct. “So based on what you told me about working with your OpCom, you tend to work more with each manager to set direction, and use the OpCom to bring the group together for information?”
- Some very young senior managers haven’t had to do succession planning yet. But you can ask this question, “Have you ever planned for any management job’s succession? What did you do?” and follow up, if the first answer was a yes with, “Have you ever planned for your succession? What did you do then?”
- Asking questions about general management style can be a little tricky. Here are some questions you can consider. “Tell me how you prefer to manage and give me an example.” That’s so open-ended, you need to be more specific and ask about the particular functional skills, such as giving feedback, coaching, organizing the work, and so on.
When you interview senior managers, do you look for something else? Let me know and I’ll post more questions.
Originally
from Hiring Technical People
by Johanna Rothman
Written by Jeff Bosco with no comments.
Read more articles on Interview.
Over at Employment Digest, there’s a post called The top 10 ways to bomb a job interview, aimed at candidates. But hiring managers and HR folks can be just as likely to bomb an interview. Here are my favorite ways:
- Change your toddler’s diaper while interviewing a candidate. Yes, this happened to me early in my career. The hiring manager changed the poopy diaper during our interview. I like casual workplaces, but that was too much for me. (No, I was not a parent yet.)
- Interview a candidate in the lobby. The lobby might have been ok, but the traffic level and the interruption level was quite high.
- Interview a candidate in the stairwell. Yes, I sat on concrete stairs in an unheated stairwell, wearing a nice suit when it was below freezing outside. I was shivering about 10 minutes into the interview. When I asked to move someplace inside, my interviewer said, “I can warm you up,” and proceeded to hug me from the side. Ooh ick. (I extracted myself and ended the interview shortly.)
- When the HR manager starts negotiating about salary and the candidate doesn’t even know if he or she wants the job. One of my interviews started with the HR manager. The HR manager must have been under orders to keep salaries down. The first thing he said was, “You make too much money.” I said, “Not yet. I’m looking for a raise from you if I come to work here.” The conversation went downhill quickly. I left and called the hiring manager from reception, explaining I was leaving. He convinced me to wait 5 minutes, but it was hard to take anything seriously from those folks.
- Use a panel interview to interview an extrovert. I do love to speak, so when a group of 6 people tried to interview me in one hour, I took control of the interview. I had a blast. I don’t think they learned anything, but I sure did. I interviewed them.
- Ask the candidate to sit in an uncomfortable or short chair. One hiring manager kept a short chair in his office, for other people to feel uncomfortable in, because they had to look up. I’m five feet tall; I look up at everyone. I complimented him on his choice of chairs and I thought he was going to have a stroke. (I actually meant it.) I’ve sat on lab chairs (good luck doing that in a skirt), and plenty of chairs that were too high.
- Take the candidate on a walk around the facility without warning that you’ll be going through manufacturing areas. Back in the days I wore nice suits and shoes, one hiring manager decided to take me on a plant tour. I was not dressed for the tour, and requested we postpone it. “But we always take people on a plant tour the first interview.” “But I’m not wearing the right kind of shoes. I’ll destroy my shoes if I walk in here.” “What’s more important, the right job or your shoes?” “A manager who cares about my safety.” I left.
- Invite a candidate to interview from 9:30-2:30 and ignore lunch. At 1:15, I asked the current interviewer what the story was about lunch, and he said, “That’s not my job.” I suggested we talk while I got a sandwich from the cafeteria. He looked worried. “Don’t worry; I’ll pay.” I did, but decided these folks were too flaky.
- Making a candidate wait for your staff to interview. I agreed to an 8am interview, because that’s when the interviewers could start. I arrived at 7:50, and ended up waiting until 8:45, because no one came into work that early.
- Making a candidate wait in the hall until the receptionist arrives. Same interview as above, but not only weren’t the interviewers in at work, neither was the receptionist.
Have any more good bombs to share?
Originally
from Hiring Technical People
by Johanna Rothman
Written by Jeff Bosco with no comments.
Read more articles on Interview and Humour.
Employment Digest (one of my favorite oft updated blogs) has three great articles in a row about getting in front of more hiring managers. Granted, I don’t think sending out resumes and doing well in phone interviews is the best way to go about (networking and making personal contacts is better) but this is an incredibly popular route. Not to mention that in some companies, this is the only way to get in the door.
How long should your resume be? Long enough to cover your work experience so that the employer may make a balanced judgment of your competencies. How long shouldn’t it be? Eight pages. I can tell you that for sure. But the one page rule is unnecessary for seasoned professionals who have more experience to cover. I will always recommend people err on the side of short with higher impact (tangible results, major accomplishments, etc…).
Do you have a high impact resume? If you are asking your question, the answer is no. Adding pop to your resume involves invoking phrases that make sense in any business. When you say you added $15 million in sales over three years, I understand that. When you say you met your goals for the last three years (even if those goals were to hit 15 mil), that doesn’t speak to me. You’re a great employee, don’t make me work harder to figure that out or someone else will show it to me. Go for tangible results. If you don’t know them, start tracking them.
How do you get past the phone screen? The phone interview was invented by a person who didn’t want to meet too many people in person for interviews. So they do these phone interviews to get to the cream of the crop. Those 5, 30 or 60+ minute conversations are typically a yes/no conversation. It isn’t the time to hold back. Go for it. Sell yourself. Make the choice obvious. Many people feel that the phone interview is just a formality but that is becoming less and less the case. Respond appropriately.
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Originally
from YourHRGuy.com
by Your HR Guy
on Apr 4, 2007, 12:48PM
Written by Jeff Bosco with no comments.
Read more articles on Interview and Job Searching.
Millions of dollars are spent annually on marketing research by savvy companies aiming to maximize their marketing dollars when showcasing their products and services to their prospective clients. They recognize that to capture the attention of a potential customer and successfully elicit a subsequent purchase, their wares must be targeted specifically to their clients’ needs. Unprepared companies that lack thought and consideration in their marketing research and going in blindly with their promotions are often left feeling disappointed at the lack of response their advertising campaigns receive. (more…)
Written by Jeff Bosco with no comments.
Read more articles on Interview and Strategies and Career Planning and Job Searching.