Describing Yourself During An Interview

 

They’re going to ask you about your experience during the job interview, they’ll ask you why you want this job in particular and they will ask you to describe yourself. Those questions are guaranteed.

 

Don’t wing it

With everything else you have to think about, you might be tempted to ignore the question about yourself and just wing it when you get there – after all you’ve lived with yourself your whole life. You that should be the easiest question to answer. That’s about the worst thing you can do. If you’re not prepared you’re as likely as not to sound like a robot rattling off a list of attributes that sounds like just about every other robot going through a similar list – I’m hard working, punctual and I’m good with numbers. Or you might go off on a tangent, without explaining exactly how this ability you have to tame numbers saved your last employer thousands of dollars over the past three months.

 

Make a list

Do yourself a favor and make a list of short descriptive sentences you would use to express what you’re like both personally and professionally.  This is just for you now. Show off your skills, what people like about you, what they’re impressed by. How those skills made a difference in other people’s lives. Now find the adjectives that reflect those sentences.

 

Meticulous might be an example. An adjective like meticulous indicates an attention to detail to the hiring manager. That you care about the details and are not one to sit back and let someone else do all the heavy lifting. Give an example of how your meticulousness caught a small mistake before it became a big one or ensured that the job got done right -the first time.

 

Have five examples ready

 

Come to the interview prepared with five strong adjectives that describe you, the impact you have had in other workplaces and what you can bring to this new one. Great examples are team player, imaginative and driven.

 

The last thing you want to happen is to have all great ways of describing yourself pop into your head on the trip home. By taking this question seriously before every stepping into the interview you can ensure the interviewer sees you as the fighter you are.

You Can Either Run or Learn

 

What happens if you don’t get the job you were going for? Do you stop applying altogether and resign yourself to a jobless life?

 

What about if your forever partner breaks it off? Do you decide the best course of action is to hole yourself up all alone in a cabin in the woods forever?

 

Or if you fail the last exam before your degree? Do you walk away and leave the degree unfinished?

 

Never let your past determine your future

Hopefully you did not decide on a jobless/loveless/degreeless life and realized the only way what happened in the past can stop you from achieving your future, is if you let it.

 

Of course it’s heartbreaking when things don’t work out the way you want and sometimes it feels like they never will, but as Rafiki says, you always have a choice. “You can either run from it, or learn from it.”

 

Choose to learn. Make the world your kingdom!

Coming Together With Open Hearts and Minds, Happy International Peace Day

Get Ahead of Procrastination

Unless you’re some sort of mental warrior you’ve probably found yourself dealing the procrastination issues from time to time. (For some the problem runs more along the lines of – all the time.) Whether you’re a sometimes procrastinator or an always procrastinator there are a few things you can do to put procrastination in its place.

 

Start with the hard stuff

You may find that the hardest thing on your to-do list is the thing that gets pushed forward day after day. That hard thing is probably one of the things at the root of your current bout of procrastination, so get it out of the way first. Tackle hardest thing first thing in the morning when you have the most energy and brain power. Meet the enemy head on so procrastination can’t hide behind it. Even if you don’t finish that’s okay. Getting started on it is important.

 

The Zeigarnik effect has shown that starting a task and leaving it unfinished causes your brain to keep on working on the task even after you’ve stopped giving it your full attention. That means when you get back to it (first thing the next day) you’ll have an easier time of it because your brain never completely let it go. You won’t even have to battle so hard against procrastination!

 

Remind yourself how capable you are

You have succeeded at many things before. Remind yourself how capable you truly are. Take a couple of minutes to sit with your breath. Full deep breaths where you feel past successes in your body.

 

Turn your phone off

Give yourself dedicated time without interruptions. Turn your phone off. Don’t check your email. Have a block of dedicated time where the only thing you are going to think about is the task at hand. (Our natural body rhythms work on 90 minute cycles that’s an deal amount of time to give yourself.)

 

Challenge yourself

It may sound crazy to make the task even harder than it is, but sometimes if you have to work harder at something it forces your attention and makes it easier to concentrate on what you’re doing and stick with it!

Higher Salary is a Negotiation Away

Find The Opportunity In The Problem

 

Problems get in the way of us doing things. They create stumbling blocks or insurmountable mountains. They make us feel like we can never get where we need to go.

 

It’s true if you wait for a problem to go away or hope it will go away or decide there’s nothing you can do about it and give up, then yes, the problem will definitely stop you from achieving your goal.

 

However, what if you decided to think of each problem as an opportunity. An opportunity to try a different approach. To talk to different people. To learn something new.

 

So often things that start out as problems turn out to be inspirations. They lead to things and situations that are better than our original plan.

 

Life and how you feel about it and what you get out of it are all a matter of perspective. When you run into a problem. Instead of worrying about how you’re going to get around it, search for the opportunity buried inside it, like buried treasure.

 

Make Sure You Are Prepared For The Hunt!

How Sun Tzu’s Art Of War Is Relevant To Your Career

How, you might think, is a book about waging war relevant to your career? Here are a few things everyone can from “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.

“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”

Imagine if you prepared for every situation, job interview, resume writing, discussion you’re your boss, conversation with your co-worker as if your life and the lives of the people around you depended on it. That means you should go into every situation, having thoroughly researched what’s going on, and armed with a meticulous plan. If that was the case, you would never find yourself in trouble because you would be prepared for all contingencies. Knowledge is power and always has been.

 “To be prepared beforehand for any contingency is the greatest of virtues.”

 

That means exactly what it sounds like. Always have a backup. When pure knowledge isn’t enough, have a way around whatever problems that the world flings at you. Never be caught in a weak moment of not knowing what to do. Always have a plan A and a plan B and if necessary, a plan C

 “When one treats people with benevolence, justice and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders.”

This is advice for someone in a position of some kind of power, but it is a good reminder for your professional life in general: always treat people with respect.

If you show faith in the people around you, they will work harder to deserve that faith.

“Be prepared, have a backup plan, treat people as best you can.”

Essentially you should prepare for life and your career by educating yourself, having a backup plan and treating people in the best way possible.

These three tips just barely skim relevant wisdom in an ancient book The Art of War is one of those books everyone should read at least once.

 

You Are Doing Better Than You Think!

Energize The Solution Not the Problem

The difference between black holes and problems

Black holes have such a strong gravitational pull, absolutely everything in the vicinity gets sucked into them. Not even light can escape from inside. You may not realize it, but problems can act like black holes in your life.

 

The more you focus on your problems the more time and energy they suck out of you. They wake you up at night and keep you from giving your full attention to the things that have absolutely nothing to do with them, like the fact that there is fresh air and sunshine just outside your door and you only need step outside for a few minutes for a new perspective.

 

Change your focus

You have problems though. You can’t just ignore them and hope they will go away so the first step to keeping problems from turning into black holes is identifying them. For example the problem might be you don’t have enough money to cover your expenses month after month. Worry about rent and food is sucking up all your energy. By focusing on the problem you actually make it bigger. Focus acts like a magnifying glass on the PROBLEM. So what you want to do is switch the focus of that magnifying glass to solutions.

 

Get specific

How much are you short each month? Where can you cut back? Is there a way to create income somewhere else? By working toward solutions the problem itself loses the capacity to suck your energy because that energy is being diverted into what you can do to solve it.

 

We’ve all heard the problem isn’t the problem. The problem is our attitude toward the problem. If we have a woe-is-me there’s nothing I can do about this I should just give up now attitude, then we’re sucked into the black hole. If we have a let’s fix this thing attitude, with a little time we will find ourselves back in the light.