The Savvy Professional: Competence

I’ve been asked to write more about the relationship between professional confidence and competence. I was challenged by the following question: “how come the less competent people on my team rate their competency level much higher than it is?” This is a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Research findings indicate that poor performers tend to overestimate their competency level (being overly-confident), and to a lesser extent, high performers tend to underestimate their abilities and score themselves lower. In my previous article about confidence in interviewing I didn’t mean to imply that confidence beats competence. The key to professional success is the balance between confidence and competence; accurately evaluating knowledge, abilities, and skill levels and being aware of improvement potential. Success lies in the difference between empty confidence and actual confidence.

Successful people tend to be more confident, in large part because they are competent. Competence breeds success. Success begets confidence and further success. If you struggle with confidence, work on gaining competence. Think about driving. Have you had the experience of teaching a teenager to drive? Trying the freeway for the first time? With experience and practice new drivers build competence, become more comfortable, and gain more confidence (as do the passengers riding with them.)

It is human nature to value confidence and be attracted to confident people. Competence is also valued, but it is much harder to discern during an interview. While not the perfect tool, competency tests such as whiteboard tests or case interviews and behavioral/experiential questions are the most common method to assess competence. Key competencies are identified as benchmarks to assess and evaluate candidates. The STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, & Result) is typically used to gather information on these key job competencies. Interviews are not the time to “fake it ‘til you make it.” Faking it will only lead to failure. It’s best to be honest about competency level and demonstrate aptitude for learning.

Employers are looking for candidates who are RAW:

Ready: to apply their knowledge and skills to the job

Able: have the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to do the job

Willing: to go above and beyond to deliver 

Our goal as professionals is to equip ourselves with the skillset needed in our chosen career and advance our competency levels along the continuum of performance from novice to master.  Competence is acquired through knowledge and practical experience. Professional competency is based on our knowledge, experience, skills, and abilities used to successfully perform job duties, produce outputs, and deliver desired results.

In discussing confidence and competency, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule. In his book outliers, he maintains that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery, or achieve world-class expertise in any skill. 10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness. I’ll add one caveat; to reach mastery, you need to engage in deliberate practice. Repeatedly performing the same task wouldn’t yield much improvement over the long-run. True mastery is achieved when we push ourselves further each time we tackle a task and as we handle new challenges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBob67xwuGk

Competency Practice: Analytical Skills/ Problem- solving

1. Tell me about a situation where you had to solve a difficult problem. What did you do? What was the outcome? What do you wish you had done differently?
2. Describe a project that best demonstrates your analytical abilities. What was your role?
3. Tell me about a time when you had to analyze information and make a recommendation. Describe your approach and thought process. Was the recommendation accepted? If not, why?

I invite you to record your answer to any of the questions above and share with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to providing detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow the savvy professional series for job search and interviewing tips and offers for free feedback and critique. 

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com

The Savvy Professional: Facing Challenges with Confidence

Work life is full of challenges. Employers are looking for those employees who’d be able to meet every challenge with confidence. Interviewers ask about past behavior to try and predict future performance. To shine, it’s best to have a good sense of what you have to offer and have a few compelling stories detailing good examples to share.

To gauge whether a job seeker would be able to deal with any challenges on the job in a calm and confident manner, a typical question would be: “Describe an unexpected situation you encountered in the past. How did you face it?” or any of its many variations:

·        How do you handle a challenge?
·        Have you ever made a mistake? How did you handle it?
·        Have you handled a difficult situation (with a co-worker/supervisor/client?) Tell me about it.
·        Tell me about situations that demonstrate your confidence to do this job.

These questions provide an opportunity for you to communicate your problem-solving and critical thinking abilities as well as your ability to confidently work under pressure and handle difficult situations. We tend to be more resourceful and make better decisions when we are confident in our abilities. The key is having the right balance to be confident in meeting challenges without giving way to doubt and fear yet having a realistic view of our abilities and limitations. Confidence is feeling comfortable in your own skin, believing that you have a lot to offer, and trusting your abilities to do things and be in charge of choices, decisions, and actions. When you exude confidence, others will have confidence in you. But being confident is also recognizing limitations and development opportunities. Confident people continuously work to perfect current skills, learn new ones, and stay on top of work and industry trends.

The tricky part in answering this type of behavioral interview questions is that different managers have a different tolerance level for risk-taking and a different approach to managing difficult situations. However, everyone appreciates confidence when being confronted by unexpected challenges. And everybody loves a happy ending. Successful outcomes tend to go unchallenged; why argue with success?

Employers are looking for candidates who can turn challenges into opportunities. When you think about your answer, focus on how you made the most out of a difficult situation and what you’ve learned from it and applied to future challenges. Here’s a framework for you to come up with an answer to job interview questions about challenges and confidence: 

1.      Context – background on the situation
2.      Specifics – approach & actions demonstrating strengths & skills
3.      Outcomes – results & growth

Consider a significant challenge in your career (or school/internship) that had a positive outcome. Be prepared to describe in details the situation, your approach and though process, actions taken, and how you were able to meet the challenge successfully. Best: talk about a challenge most relevant to the role you are interviewing for.

I invite you to record your answer to any of the questions above and share with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to providing detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow the savvy professional series for job search and interviewing tips and offers for free feedback and critique.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com

The Savvy Professional: Confidence

We’ve established that confidence is the magic word when it comes to interviewing skills and career advancement.

But what is confidence? Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, but in a professional work context it is the belief that you can do the job and succeed. As with any trait, you need to develop and master a healthy balance; too little confidence will prevent you from taking risks and seizing opportunities. Too much confidence will make you come off as arrogant.

Confident people inspire confidence in their bosses, their co-workers, and their customers. Gaining the confidence of others is a pre-requisite to career advancement and success.

The good news is that self-confidence can be developed. It can be built in two key ways at work:

1.      Mastering job competencies and achieving goals in job functional areas. When we work hard in a particular area and acquire and master job skills, we'll succeed. We can then build upon the initial success to accelerate learning, growth, and future success.

2.      Believing that we can cope with any workplace changes and challenges; any unexpected curve balls. It is a belief that we can compete successfully to keep our jobs and get progressively better jobs.

Building confidence in 3 steps:

Step 1: Foundation
Define who you are, your strengths, your passion/values, and what you’ve achieved (experience, skills, and accomplishments.)
 
Step 2: Destination
Articulate what is really important to you and set yourself targets/ goals.
Set small goals and achieve them.

Step 3: Commitment
Get in the habit of setting goals, achieving them, and celebrating that success.
Recognize and celebrate your successes!

Commit to changing your thoughts and taking purposeful actions. Positive thinking followed by positive actions will result in positive outcomes. Success is the best way to build confidence. The more you achieve, the more confident you’ll become.

Interview Question (Confidence):  Describe an unexpected situation you encountered in the past. How did you face it?

Tip: Your level of self-confidence can show in many ways: your behavior, your body language, what you say, and how you speak.

I invite you to record and share your answer with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to providing detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow the savvy professional series for job search and interviewing tips and offers for free feedback and critique.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com.

The Savvy Professional: Tell Me About Yourself

Why do hiring managers ask this question? Do they really want to get to know you better?

Unless you are an acclaimed author or a Nobel Prize winner, the answer is “no.”

What they want to is to get a feel for what you think is important relative to the job you are interviewing for.

There are five essential elements to the answer:
1.      Your personality: convey who you are professionally, let your personality shine and showcase your unique characteristics.
2.      Your primary selling points for the position: highlight experience, education/special training and the technical skills.
3.      Your interest in the role: why is this role the best next step for you?
4.      Delivery: it’s not about the answer but rather the confidence, enthusiasm and passion with which you answer.
5.      Pace: reasonable – not too fast as to seem rushed or rehearsed and not too slow. Rumbling with a lot of pauses might be interpreted as lacking confidence.

Confidence is the magic word.

And keep it short- 60-90 seconds at most.

This is not easy to do gracefully on the fly. Practice makes perfect. Make sure it comes naturally (not sounding rehearsed.)

Four exercises to help you articulate your authentic response:

Exercise I: 5 Words –
Use five words to describe yourself.
Recommended: ask 5 people (boss/colleagues/friends/family) what words they would choose to describe you.

Exercise II: What object are you?
If you could represent yourself with a single object, what would that object be? Why? 

Exercise III: Find an inspirational quote you live your life by
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/28/inspirational-quotes/#52da84b46697

Exercise IV: 5 Questions – Answer each question briefly in one sentence.
1.      Who are you?
2.      What do you do? [love to do/qualified to do/offer]
3.      Who do you do it for?
4.      What do those people want/need? [1-3 words]
5.      How do they change/transform as a result of what you give them? [your gift/s]

Even if you are not preparing for a job interview, the above exercises will help you focus on what you have to offer in your chosen career. The more you can talk about yourself – your brand, your “product” - the better you will become at “selling” it.

I invite you to record and share your “Tell Me about Yourself” answer with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to providing detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow the savvy professional series for job search and interviewing tips and offers for free feedback and critique.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com.

The Savvy Professional: “soft skills” for success

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of continuously enhancing our employability skills and increasing our marketability, our unique value proposition. I challenged you to consider what makes you uniquely valuable to your current or potential employers. If you followed my previous posts and implemented a solid job search strategy, you should be receiving invitations for job interviews. The biggest mistake in interviewing is failing to adequately prepare.

As a Human Resources professional, business leader and a career coach who has hired and coached hundreds of people to either get their dream job or advance to their dream role, I am always asked what employers are really looking for.

While the answer would vary from one employer to the next, the short answer is that beyond the core job competencies, employers assess the “employability skills, those intangible “soft skills.” These are the personal attributes that go beyond credentials, qualifications and experience. Your education and experience would make you a qualified candidate, for example, having the coding experience and skills to perform as a software development engineer; however, it is the “soft skills” that will make you stand out from the crowd and will land you the job. In a 2014 Career Builder survey 77% of employers responded that soft skills and hard skills are equally important:

http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?sd=4/10/2014&id=pr817&ed=12/31/2014

Soft skills are the new hard skills of today's workforce. It's just not enough to demonstrate the technical competencies of a job without the interpersonal skills to communicate and collaborate effectively. These are the skills you really need to add value to what you do to get noticed. These skills are the building blocks of career advancement and success.

Do you convey your soft skills effectively?

Each of my following blog posts will include a behavioral question you should be ready to answer.
A behavioral question aims at learning about your past “behaviors” in specific work situations to predict future behavior in similar situations to determine cultural fit.

You will need to define the unique qualities you have to offer and be ready to tell your story in an articulate, compelling and succinct way.

Are you ready for the first question?

It's one of the most frequently asked interview questions: Tell me about yourself. 

Even if you are not preparing for a job interview, I hope you take the opportunity to take stock of where you are in your career and create your 30-second marketing message.

Tip: in a job interview or career development discussion context, what the hiring manager wants is information pertinent to the role you’re interviewing for or working toward.

I invite you to record and share your “Tell Me about Yourself” answer with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to providing detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow the savvy professional series for job search and interviewing tips and offers for free feedback and critique.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com.

A Winning Job Search Strategy

Thanks to all who have contacted me and shared their job strategy. I hope my input would help set you on the path to multiple job offers and a wildly successful career.

Anything is possible, you might get lucky and land a job with minimal effort simply posting your resume online or submitting your resume to those openings which seem like a good fit for you. However, if you want to maximize the outcomes, diversifying your job-hunting strategy is likely to yield better results. It’s hard to predict where your next job will come from. I’ve had clients who spent hours crafting targeted application letters only to find a job following a casual conversation with another parent at a little league game. When you take a multi-pronged approach to explore several sources of job leads, the more opportunities you will have at hand, and thus you are more likely to find and land the job you really want.

4 steps to a successful job search strategy:

1.      Focus

Job search is definitely not about the joy of the journey but rather about having a clearly defined destination, where you aspire to be. But it’s also imperative to recognize your starting point. Before the days of GPS, I used to get lost all the time. Yes, I was the annoying person calling my family and friends asking “how do I get there?” The first response was always “where are you now?” Starting your job search with a comprehensive analysis of where you are is the fastest way to get to where you want to go. In the words of Kofi Annan:

 “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

So start with a mastery assessment listing your knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) and any special qualifications and personal attributes; anything you have to offer potential employers. Then ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I want to do next?
• What is important to me in my next job?
• What industries, companies & positions are of interest to me?

2.      Prepare

Make sure you have a lot to offer to prospective employers. Always seek knowledge and ways to enhance your skillset and utilize your expertise to bring more to the table, your value prop. Think of it as marketing and selling a product, except you are the product. There are many applicants competing for the best jobs available. Are you the best product on the market? How can you set yourself apart and stand out?

Challenge: create a basic marketing message. In 20 words or less/30 seconds or less, answer the following question: what makes you uniquely valuable to potential employers?

Then continue to create your marketing materials: your LinkedIn profile and a basic template of your resume and cover letter (to be customized to each job opportunity.) Collect any materials that affirm your qualifications and accomplishments, your own work portfolio, such as presentations, documents, etc. Put in place a tracking system for your networking leads, target employers, opportunities, and communications sent and received. Analyzing the data would provide insights as to which elements of your job search strategy are working and which need to be tweaked: do you have enough job leads? What is the ratio of resumes sent to job interviews?

 3.      Engage

Build a solid pipeline of leads, a minimum of 50 leads at any given time. Identify contacts, preferably hiring managers, at target employers and start putting the word out there. According to Lou Adler, LinkedIn Influencer, most jobs are filled through networking.

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-jobs-filled-via-networking-lou-adler

It’s true; it’s not what you know, it’s who you know!

Generally speaking, networking is simply talking to people to identify helpful contacts or learn about opportunities that may not be publicly posted. Start by talking to your own family, friends and acquaintances. Let everyone in your life know you're looking for a job, and give them an idea of what type of job you want (your marketing message above.) Proactively seek opportunities such as networking events and professional associations. Cast your net wide. Get out of your comfort zone and meet new people to grow your existing network; mix, mingle, and share your story.

 4.      Apply

Following your targeted research, run your own target-market campaign to selected employers. Apply directly to companies that interest you. Visit target companies’ career sites regularly to keep up with news and opportunities. Distribute your resume to select recruiters.

Following the above steps will result in invitations for job interviews. Next step would then be preparing for your interview. The biggest mistake in interviewing is failing to adequately prepare. Do the research. Be ready to answer typical interview questions and tell your story in a compelling way.

More about interviewing skills in my next blog posts. Be sure to follow my job search series for tips and offers for free feedback and critique.

Email me at info@choicefulpath.com.

Job Search: The Hiring Dead Zone Myth

I’ve had some concerned clients ask me about their job prospects with September gone and November looming ahead, and with it the presidential elections and then Thanksgiving, which historically marks the beginning of the 6-week hiring dead zone. Before I address the myth of the Dead Zone, let me just remind everyone that October is a good month for job seekers. So there’s still plenty of time to round up interviews and receive multiple job offers in 2016. Yes, there may still be seasonal variations in hiring with peak activity in late September and October and late January and February when more interviews are scheduled. However, in our 24/7 world of connectivity and the speed of doing business, hiring managers typically remain up-to-speed and ready to make quick decisions as needed and when out of the office. The job market is hot and the war for talent is on again and very real. Even if you don’t have a job line-up by Thanksgiving, you could still land your dream job during the upcoming holiday season. And a hiring slowdown can be an opportunity to get a leg up on the competition if you are well prepared.

It is important to remember that the best time to look for a new job is when you are ready to make a big change in your life regardless of the time of year. Launching a job search based on a date on the calendar isn’t a sound strategy. Ideally, you should start a job search when you have the time to do the work and are emotionally available to manage this time-consuming project. When possible, it’s recommended to start a job search when there are no other major projects lined-up or any big responsibilities requiring your time and attention (no home renovations, wedding planning, or a long distance/multiple weeks trekking trip.) You really need the time and energy to find the right job. Through my work with clients trying to make career changes, I’ve found that tackling multiple changes at once often results in being over-extended and overwhelmed. When your focus is spread too thin, it’s easy to get distracted. Focusing on one change at a time, you’ll achieve better outcomes.

Making the job of your dreams your reality comes down to your job search strategy and the investments of your time and efforts. A detailed action plan will help focus your efforts. No one is going to serve you a job on a silver platter. Whether you are looking for your first job, a new job, switching industry or careers, or re-entering the workforce, you will need a plan. Your job prospects depend on the actions you take. You have to be ready to move up to the starting line if you want to successfully cross the finish line.

But whether or not you are looking for a job, you should always be networking. Get active on LinkedIn and cultivate good contacts. The holidays are a great time to be practicing the art of seasonal schmoozing at the holiday parties, family gatherings, and community events. The holidays also provide an opportunity to master the art of sending e-cards. Well-crafted thoughtful messages can go a long way toward fostering and maintaining strong connections year-round. And be sure to send the appropriate holiday message to the right people; you don’t want to alienate anyone. Most people appreciate a nicely written message and are happy and willing to be of assistance. I certainly appreciate the Rosh Hashanah messages and well-wishes I’ve received over the past week. And I always welcome opportunities to help others succeed. Helping others creates good karma.

In the spirit of good karma, if you are ready to explore new possibilities and look for a new job, I invite you to create a job search plan, up to 2 pages or a video up to 3 minutes, and share it with me via Google Drive, Dropbox, or your favorite collaboration platform. Email me at info@choicefulpath.com. I will respond to everyone within 3 business days but can commit to provide detailed feedback only to the first 5 who contact me.

More about job search strategy in my next blog post. Be sure to follow my job search series for tips and offers for free feedback and critique.