Once again, a Monster newsletter strikes again with what appears to be good advice:
Answer Briefly
When it comes to talking during an interview, sometimes less is more. As a general rule, you should speak one-third of the time and definitely no more than half of the time. The best interviews have a give-and-take atmosphere. To do this, you need to ask questions and try to draw out your interviewer rather than talking about yourself nonstop. When it’s your turn to speak, don’t hesitate to tout yourself — just remember to stop talking after you do.
– Dona DeZube
If you talk concisely and can realy pack important information into a tiny space, then by all means do it. I’ve discovered that some of the better interviews I’ve been party to seemed more like conversations than an interview, and I definitely talking for at least half the conversation.
I think it’s important with this advice to focus on that last line. Don’t feel the need to keep talking once you have made your points. If the interviewer is intrigued by something you said and is worth their salt, they’ll ask you to fill in any holes that they feel they need to fairly consider you.
There’s nothing worse than sitting in an interview where you feel you’ve ept your talking inside the boundaries, and yet feel that the interviewer is feeling like you aren’t saying enough. Sell yourself, but don’t monopolize.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 10:16 AM EDT
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This week’s post will be a day early since tomorrow will be an interesting day for me. It will start with my last day at my current job, and end in the wee hours of Saturday in a strange new state with strange somewhat new people. I’m quitting my job, leaving on vacation, and working on the launch of my rather unusual business all at the same time. It’s quite frightening and invigorating at the same time.
My background is education, specifically museum education. I teach. I love to teach. However, museum teaching jobs being sparse in this city, I decided to try a poorly thought-out career change. It turns out that my creativity and my need to teach were just too strong, and now I’m bravely stepping out on my own.
I am a private tutor for tutor.com, offering tutoring in math, science, and computers. I am showing off my budding graphic design skills at my CafePress store. (I’ll be working on some new items for the store while I’m on vacation.) Once I get back from my vacation, I’ll be putting some of my jewelry-related items (necklaces and kits) on eBay. After I move, I’ll also be looking for craft stores to teach jewelry-making at.
I’ve even got a partially-finished website operational.
Hopefully, if I work hard enough and get the word out, all of these together should bring in enough to at least pay my rent. The student loans…that may require a staffing agency, and I’m preparing a great packet to take to them!
There is a certain joy to pursuing a job made up of several mini-jobs rather than a corporate ladder and a desk job.
Originally posted at cybergrrl.blogspot.com on 17 June 2004
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 9:51 AM EDT
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Here’s a great article on setting rates. It’s from storyteller.net, but as usual I find that information from one industry can be completely relevant across many.
I think I’m going to consider this as I’m trying to determine my own rates.
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing at 10:54 AM EDT
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I am fascinated by people. Absolutely fascinated. Not that this is news, but the past month or so has really been an interesting experience. Apparently, it is really an odd thing for people to go looking for a job. I have in my life two people who should be working. They both could be working in fairly decent jobs if they wanted. Both choose to just sit and wait for their phone to ring, thereby not getting a job.
The Backstory, Candidate A- He had a career that was exactly what he wanted to do when he was five years old. Some things beyond his control happened and he lost that career. That was nearly ten years ago. He’s gone from job to job, not really going anywhere, ever since. Last year, he received some training to go into an adjacent career path. He spent his non-class time volunteering in this area, gaining practical experience. However, when the time came to get a real job, he ran into problems from that lost career. He now is stumbling through yet another job, hoping to be noticed.
While he was in class, he had the chance to work at this job in the evenings, which would have put him in a very nice position now, but he decided he just couldn’t do anything after class. So he sat, as he does now, every night and read for a bit and then worked on a craft that he sells randomly. We have a house full of these crafts because he keeps making them without selling off what he already has. He’s understandably bitter and discouraged. Then he looks at my life and wonders how I got so lucky.
The Backstory, Candidate B- He has spent the past four or five years working at a job that I don’t think he ever actually intended to make a career. Worse, he was fired for not actually doing his job, but instead focusing on a special job that he had ben given because he had demonstrated enough responsibility and maturity to handle both his job and the special assignment. He left college because it really wasn’t his style. He’s threatened to try for a few different career paths, but has yet to carry thorugh on any of them.
He now spends his days at home playing games on his computer and chatting with some girl. I’d really hate to explain to him that girls don’t find certain traits attractive. What really kills me with this guy is that his father is this incredible self-employed man, or at least has been self-employed on and off. He’s constantly doing things. We’re often told that we tend to practice what we see in our own upbringing. I saw a lot of entrepreneurial projects because of both of my parents, and now I’m heading off to start my own entrepreneurial project. Candidate B has always seen his father working on some project for somebody, yet has no drive to find or create work for himself.
I look at both of them, and I’m just amazed. Candidate A has always been convinced that some dream job would someday just fall in his lap. Because he never puts himself out there, it’s never going to happen. He’s networked himself into black holes, and he’s not looking for fresh leads. I’m not sure what the deal is with Candidate B. He has so much potential, and he doesn’t do anything with it. Comparing Candidates A and B is like looking at an older/younger image of the same personality.
Am I crazy? Are there a lot of people in hiding, hoping that someone will just appear out of nowhere and offer them their dream job?
Originally posted at cybergrrl.blogspot.com on 4 June 2004
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 9:38 AM EDT
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This is just a great article that any of us who interact with customers needs to be very mindful of. One of the biggest problems I see today is that customer service is not promoted by many corporations, especially the big ones. What we all need to keep in mind is that we all have competitors. If we can’t treat our customers well, then they will go elsewhere, even if they can’t get exactly what they want from that competitor.
Good customer service can even go a long way toward repairing a bad situation. Coupons and discounts on future transactions are nice, but a brief, honest explanation can do so much more. You’re actually becoming involved, and that human touch says a lot about you and your business, that you actually value the customer instead of just their business.
As a last thought, taking the time to provide good customer service is never a reasonable excuse for firing someone. My father works for a rather large shipping company. He has been threatened repeatedly with losing his job because he doesn’t meet the expected call quota on a daily business. Of course, my father is taking longer because he’s trying to make sure each customer gets exactly what they from him before he lets them off the line. His customers generally note this, but his company doesn’t care. They just see that his calls are too long and as a result he isn’t hitting their magical number.
Customer service is first and foremost about quality and relationship-building. Promote good customer service, and it will impact your business positively. The reverse is also true.
Found via Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Blog
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing, Skill building, Entrepreneurship at 10:27 AM EDT
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I work in a cubicle farm. I’m sure many of us do. I work in a cubicle farm where we have company values that we’re all supposed to be supporting and personally displaying. One of our values is a truly noble one: innovation. In fact, we had a very large kick-off celebration today where those behind the product being launched were praised for their innovation. My company prides itself on the innovation of its employees.
However, innovation relies on two things: creativity and communication. These two concepts are often linked in a corporate setting, as it is often a brainstorming session that leads to some of the most creative ideas implemented by corporations. My company loves team meetings, so we have all sorts of organized time to brainstorm and create and innovate.
We also have a lot of non-structured problem-solving time, though. This takes place in our cubicle farm, in our own rows, in casual conversations with each other. The way my particular department is laid out, you may sit near a few of your own projectmates or teammates. You sit near more people who have nothing to do with either your project or your departmental team, and it’s a really great thing. I didn’t initially agree with it, but it’s amazing how often someone will be beating their head against a wall and someone will come at it from their own project/team worldview and help solve it. It’s a boundaryless (see, another company value!) brainstorming solution. Because our cubicles are so small and squished together, we often don’t go directly to the person, we just talk a little bit louder to be heard through the thin walls.
Apparently, this is a problem. We are routinely reminded to use our “inside voices”, often by uncreative people who talk loudly bout little or nothing. To bring down the noise is to cut my department (and the department that makes up the other part of our division) off from an invaluable resource: each other. (Ironically, we have a company value called “Valuing our people”. Doesn’t sound like we’re meeting that value, does it?) If we are forced to go and whisper to each other about things, we’ve shut out everybody else from benefiting from a possible solution to a problem affecting many of us. We also reduce the socialization factor that is a nice by-product of the cubicle farm. I don’t know that we’d all know each other on my row if we all kept to our projects and our teams.
It defeats the mixture that accidentally happened in my department. It defeats the human spirit. It defeats our company values.
Originally posted on 30 April, 2004 at cybergrrl.blogspot.com
Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation at 10:35 AM EDT
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I subscribe to a couple of the Monster.com newsletters, and over the past few months, there has been an interesting teaser in one of them. It links on to the book written by the gentleman, but I have found myself really offended by the teaser. It’s a teaser for a book filled with tips for finding and pursuing careers. Monster runs several rotating teasers for this book in these newsletters. Sounds like a great book, but the teaser I keep seeing that just bothers me no end has completely turned me off from ever wanting to acquire the book.
The teaser reads:
Overqualified?
In most job interviews, the phrase “overqualified” means “overpaid.” Like a good sales rep, counter this argument by focusing on your value rather than your price. Mention qualities like judgment, insight and experience — especially if you’ve seen mistakes and won’t make them. Learn more interview tactics in my new book [book title omitted] which can be found [web link to purchase book online] or in bookstores everywhere.
Let’s start with the fact that I have never seen the word “overqualified” show up in a job interview. I can’t imagine any question that might appear during an interview that would lead to a candidate saying, “Well, you know, I did this job, but I was really overqualified for it.” That’s just arrogant, and could pretty much assure that the candidate wouldn’t get the job.
I also can’t see an interviewer during the course of an interview saying, “Well, I see here that you worked at this job you were overqualified for,” or anything to that effect. When they call back to reject the candidate, that’s a different story. I’ve been on the receiving end of that phone call far too many times in the past few years. My young looks have not been enough to save me from the “We like you. You have excellent skills, but we feel you would get bored here very quickly.” phone call.
That’s where my problem with this teaser comes in. I’ve been rejected from a number of jobs, and I’ve been frequently told I was overqualified for the position. It’s never been about my previous salary. In fact, my previous salaries have never come up. I’m sure if it had, my previous pay of “volunteer” or “barely minimum wage” would never have been labelled as “overpaid” or “overqualified”. “Overqualified” has always related directly to my skills and experience.
I’ve been “overqualified” and “ambitious”. I’ve never been “overpaid”. Draw your own conclusions.
Posted by Rebecca as Warnings at 9:24 AM EDT
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Lately, I seem to be posting articles related to my desires to formally start my own business or consulting firm. This article from Monster is a natural addition to that series.
The article lists some of the issues to consider when building an ethical consulting business, important when you consider exactly how easy it can be to go off-course when no one is looking over your shoulder. Some of the points made include:
- Avoid conflicts of interest.- Seems simple enough, but I’ve heard too many horror stories about professional decisions that had to be made because of a perceived conflict.
- Discuss subcontracting before the fact.- From everything I’ve read, subcontracting can add a lot to a client’s bill. It can also reflect badly on you if you said your firm was doing everything in house, and then you suddenly farm something out for whatever good and plausible reason.
- Be reasonable and honest about your expenses.- As I read this, I couldn’t help but think of that one scene in Independence Day where the president asks how they got the money to fund the alien research lab and David’s father responds, “Well, you don’t really think they spent $20,000 on a hammer 0r $30,000 on a toilet seat.”
- Be forthright in your reports to clients.- In this day and age of saying nothing that might contradict the client’s worldview, I think this is so very important. It’s always bothered me to see or hear about contractors who shift facts a little just to avoid the potential confrontation of telling a client their worldview needs to be reshaped. The name of the game here shouldn’t be omission. Any kindergarten student will tell you omission is still lying. Instead the name of the game should be tact.
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing at 9:20 AM EDT
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Now that I’m settling in Seattle, I finally have time to turn my attentions toward setting up my business, or at least setting myself up for freelance opportunities. I have done quite a bit of research over the past several yeas in preparation for being mentally ready to take this step and still feel like I don’t know enough to take the first step.
Then, I discovered this article that covers some of the basic legal issues necessary to need to be addressed as one is starting up.
Just another useful link for the collection!
Link found via Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog
Posted by Rebecca as Entrepreneurship at 9:30 AM EDT
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Due to a cross-country move, the author will not be updating here this week. She is due to return to her blogging activities on October 11.
Thank you!
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:00 AM EDT
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