Monthly Archives: September 2015

Invert the Interview: 3 Tips On How To Turn The Tables On HR Managers Everywhere

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Scott Maurice image of interviewThis particular scene to nearly every working adult in the United States. Two people, on opposite sides of a desk, facing each other. One, a hiring manager, asks questions – first about information that can be found on the resume in front of him or her and then, perhaps, a few more difficult (but predictable) ones. The other person, the candidate, answers them with the same canned answers he or she has spouted since they started their job hunt this time around. Some variant of this scenario plays out every single day. It is the cultural norm and the industry standard. It’s also entirely wrong.

An interview, whether in-person or over the phone, does not need to exist in that age-old power paradigm, where the HR person with the clipboard is calling all of the shots. In fact, it should not. The best applicants are able to do so much more than just knock a question out the park. They’re disrupters and know the hard truth – an interview is not about the company. It’s about you.

The System Is Broken

As an individual who has worked through a number of extensive Fortune 100 trainings to be the one asking the interview questions, I can confirm that there’s a common framework at play that is ineffective and inefficient. Companies are searching for certain core competencies, and shape the interview according to certain domains to peek into your critical thinking and depth of knowledge. However, the typical interview format just does not produce a rich enough experience to reveal all of that. Should the candidate answer all those questions, the hiring staff still fails to completely grasp whether he or she is a good cultural fit and can actually do the job. The best they can hope for is an impression.

So, to set yourself apart from the pack, you need to go deeper. Be targeted. You should not just be interviewing for that company, you should specifically be interviewing the company itself. As the representative of the company, the hiring manager is therefore your interview subject. One of the first things you should do when you walk in is set the tone by communicating that you have questions of your own and getting them answered is just as much a priority as responding to theirs. Ask if they would prefer you ask them upfront. These questions typically occur as an afterthought, once the hiring manager has gone down their own checklist. By offering to lead with them, you make it clear you are more than prepared, willing, and qualified to take the reigns of the conversation itself. This disrupts that traditional power dynamic, flips it on its head, and puts both you and the hiring manager on equal footing.

Change the Rules

This candidate-first perspective alone can be deeply powerful and truly freeing. Be confident in your value as a candidate – human capital is the most critical resource in any industry, without exception. Act like it. The hiring manager may be acting as the face of the company, but he or she is also a person. So, an interview is so much more than just a employment-centric interrogation. This is your chance to connect on a personal level with someone qualified to tell you everything you would need to know about whether this position is even the kind of opportunity you want to pursue.

Open yourself up and be a little vulnerable to earn trust. Be honest and direct about the kind of position you are looking to procure. Coax them out of the elevated position and linear back-and-forth to which they likely have become very accustomed; engage in a sincere conversation. You want to be two humans having an honest discussion. Once you have built some trust in your dialogue, you can uncover what is really valuable to you. Of course, you will need to define exactly what that entails beforehand.

What do you need out of this job interview? Regardless of whether this position is a great fit for you, what value can you derive from this investment of your time? You can invite some excellent career advice from an interview situation, as well as feedback regarding how you perform as a candidate. You can even tease out information about the competition, which may well inform whether you end up applying there.

Beat Them at Their Own Game

It’s the hiring manager’s job to know the role that needs to be filled and do some research into the kind of person best suited to do so. So, if you are serious about controlling the conversation, then the old adage rings true – “knowledge is power.” Look at the company’s competition and be well-informed about their industry and how they are performing therein. Where the company is going is to impact your potential job. How does this specific role factor into resolving whatever the company’s current challenge is? Claim the advantage and ask the hard-hitting questions.

Tailor those to your precise needs. “Do you enjoy working here?” (or any of its many different permutations) is a waste of time because it leaves too much room for the hiring personnel to decide what warrants enjoyment and to fall back on canned company responses. Figure out what you would need in order to enjoy working somewhere, and ask about that.

Starting Strong: Ditching Cereal for a Breakfast of Champions

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Bowl of CerealEveryone has heard the idiom – we widely laud breakfast as the most important meal of the day. However, as any parent can confirm, there is not always time to craft the kind of perfectly balanced culinary experience you might see in a TV commercial. So what does that mean for those of us with little ones? More often than not, the easiest thing to do before a day jam-packed with school and activities is to let the kids chomp down on their favorite colorful breakfast cereal. They think it tastes great, you know that it’s easy, and everyone seems to be happy. It might be an excellent short-term fix but, if you take your family’s health seriously, you might be setting yourself and your loved ones up for some serious long-term trouble.

Most breakfast cereals, and almost certainly the sweet kinds that come in colorful boxes designed to make your kids go bananas for them, are obviously loaded in sugar and artificial additives. They might be marketed as wholesome, but a simple glance at the nutritional facts will make it clear that breakfast cereal tends to have more in common with many desserts than anything else. For some people, that might be okay. Many of us indulge in pastries as a breakfast option – dessert for breakfast is not an entirely unfounded concept. Unfortunately, there is even more to consider before you pour the family a bowl.

Breakfast cereals are extremely dense in carbohydrates, surprisingly so. Although the branding often implies that these are mostly minimally-processed whole grains, that is almost never the case. Instead, they are loaded with high-glycemic index carbs which are widely acknowledged as a direct contributor to obesity. The science is fairly straightforward. When grains are highly processed, as they nearly always are for goods as mass produced as breakfast cereal, our bodies absorb them incredibly quickly – too fast, in fact – as blood sugar. This leaves you hungry after a few short hours and craving another sugar fix. Low-glycemic carbs like, for instance, sprouted grains take much longer to digest because much more “processing” occurs within our body organically. So, you’re left feeling full and benefitting from all the healthy nutrients that didn’t get stripped in the production process.

However, good luck convincing your child to give up a breakfast rich in colorful marshmallows for one rich in fiber without a fight. So, what are your options? The best thing to do is gradually transition away from packaged food as a general rule. This hold especially true for breakfast, where you are setting yourself up physically and mentally for the rest of the day. The closer to the earth you can get, the better. Our bodies are designed specifically to run off whole foods, so they are the best source of fuel. Kids tend to enjoy things like fruit, for instance, which packs enough sugar to please their palate but also delivers a healthy dose of various vitamins. One the best characteristics of a truly balanced breakfast is protein. So, you can also try a breakfast built around eggs or lean meats (the scientific community has made great advancements in the realm of turkey bacon!).

Everyone wants to make their kids happy. From time to time, breakfast cereal as a treat is more than fine. Just remember that the habits your family members build today will be the lifestyles they are living tomorrow, so prioritize empowering them to make positive choices.