Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

The Right Questions to Ask in an Interview

Obviously, an interview is a chance for an employer to ask questions of a candidate that will determine if she is a good fit for the company and the position.  However, candidates often forget that interview questions are a two-way street.

Smart candidates absolutely use the interview as the opportunity to better assess if they will be able to do their best work at a particular organization.  They know that one spends more time at work than anywhere else, and they aren’t doing themselves or the employer any favors by taking a job in which they’ll be a square peg in a round hole.

Jot Down Ideas the Night Before

It is generally a good idea to prepare a list of 2-4 questions gleaned from your online research about the company after looking at its website and recent news.  This shows that you’ve done your homework on the organization and understand its business proposition and industry.  It also demonstrates that you are serious about the opportunity and savvy enough to take advantage of this additional opportunity to sell yourself.  When you ask these questions, listen carefully.  You’ll gain critical information not just from the direct answers, but also from what isn’t said.

For more advice on how to ask good interview questions, have a look at this post on the Fast Track blog.

Do You Know How to Hire?

Strategic hiring is a process – one that many managers would prefer to forget about but one that is necessary all the same.  And when you consider that replacing the average mid-level manager costs the firm double that person’s annual salary, it’s definitely worth the upfront investment.

In the midst of the panic of trying to fill a critical position, one of the first things that managers neglect is the first stage of the hiring process, or the job analysis.  This is because people tend to think that if the position has been occupied before, things like requisite skills, responsibilities, and performance criteria should be obvious.  In fact, many firms never take the time to detail out what a job specifically entails, relying instead on institutional knowledge and subjective opinions of what a person is supposed to do in a certain role at a certain level.  They also fail to take into account the possibility that a previously occupied job might need to be changed to meet the evolving needs of the firm or department.

Finding the right candidate is much easier when you take the time to carefully analyze the job you need to fill, and everyone who is part of the hiring process agrees in advance on a set of criteria.

What Do We Need and Why?

The first step is to determine your business requirements for the position, in the context of the overall company landscape.  What are the core products, services, initiatives, and financial circumstances that will impact this new hire?  In filling this position, what are you hoping to achieve?  What are the business problems the new hire will need to solve in the first 90 days or the first year, and what are the major projects he or she will need to complete to this end?  Who will be the key players in this new hire’s work life, including supervisors, colleagues, reports, other departments, customers, and partners?

For the rest of the steps you don't want to miss if hiring is a part of your job, take a look at my full post on the Fast Track blog.

Stop Being a Victim of the Re-Org

I was at a meeting in which a c-suite executive proclaimed that her organization had experienced too much tumult lately.  This organization had decided on a new policy: managers in new positions would now have to wait a full year before changing absolutely anything.

Halleluyah.

It is well known that in the business world, people starting a new job will try to make their mark immediately, and this inevitably involves many transitions that may or may not be in the best interest of everyone involved.  Since human beings are not big fans of change, this often causes quite an uproar.

A Fact of Life

It’s good news, of course, that senior leaders are becoming more enlightened, but this does not mean that re-organizations and management upheavals are going to go away.  They are a fact of life.  And how you conduct yourself in the midst of a transition says a lot about you as an employee.  If you think about it, you have two choices: 1) you can leave the company, or 2) you can stay and add value through the transition.

If you choose the latter option, it’s critical that you are perceived as flexible, capable, and supportive of the company’s direction.  For guidance on how to do this effectively, check out my post at the Fast Track blog.

Take Control of Your Career Today

Don’t you love it when the fates align? At the same time that I was writing a New York Times op-ed on the rise of the independent workforce, I had the opportunity to meet Nacie Carson, a twenty-something author and steadfast proponent of training people in her generation to be prepared for a world of temporary, contract work.

In her new book, The Finch Effect, Nacie warns professionals that instead of waiting for a recovery in the job market that is never going to come, we must take our careers into our own hands. Using a set of five strategies, which Nacie calls “the Finch Effect” (in honor of survival of the fittest Darwin’s avian inspirations), we can evolve productively in the years to come.

For Nacie's advice on taking your career into your own hands today, check out my post on the Fast Track blog.

Is a Career Coach For You?

From humankind’s earliest days, mentors and coaches have been a significant ingredient in the careers of many accomplished individuals.

As they reported in Fast Company in 2006, Jim Bolt and Brian Underhill conducted a study that found that 56 percent of surveyed companies emphasized coaching as a major learning method, and two years later, 51 percent of the same organizations said that the use of coaching had increased.

The investigators also discovered that coaching was no longer a “fix it tool” for leaders with problems and was instead being used to help high-potential leaders get even better. In fact, at the time of the second study, 43 percent of CEOs and 71 percent of senior team members in the surveyed organizations has worked with a coach. Sixty-three percent of the companies said they planned to increase their use of coaching over the following five years, and an incredible 92 percent of coached leaders said they planned to engage a coach again.

For advice on whether or not hiring a career coach would help you, check out this post on the Fast Track blog.

Be the Idea Man (or Woman)

I blog several times a week, and have been writing in the career advice and leadership development space for almost eight years.  How many ideas have I had to brainstorm to write about?  You do the math.  It’s a lot.

Some days I’m feeling especially creative and can generate insights from all sorts of places, but other days it’s a struggle to put forth a single interesting thought.   To generate new ideas when the well is dry, I’ve developed some helpful strategies.  Check out these six ideas on the Fast Track blog and let me know if you have others.  I welcome any and all suggestions!

 

Burned Out and Biding Your Time?

A burned-out reader recently got in touch with us at Fast Track:

I’ve been at my job for two years, and I’m getting bored. The things I’m working on are repetitive, and I’m starting to get increasingly annoyed with day-to-day nuisances. I’m essentially having to restrain myself from biting my coworkers. About a year ago, my direct manager left, and was never replaced– instead, they removed his position and shuffled his responsibilities to me and a coworker. In addition, over the last year, the product I work on has grown a lot: we’ve had some success, which is good, but it comes with a lot more work and responsibility. I’m the only one working on that project, and things keep getting dumped on me, from big tasks to administrative details that someone else really should handle, but which end up on my plate as “I’m the only one who knows this project.”

My boss meanwhile seems to want us to keep growing, and wants more results, faster, with tighter deadlines and more elements. I’m starting to feel a bit burned out. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even really manage to take a sick day properly — there’s too much to do, and all the eggs are in my basket, and can’t be left unattended even for a minute. Most troubling, I’m bored with the work I’m doing: so more’s expected of me, but I’m feeling pressured and lethargic about producing the same stuff over and over again.



As I’ve felt the burnout approaching, I’ve tried to halt it: I’ve spoken to my boss about getting some help and she’s made sympathetic noises, but nothing has come of it, other than to actually add more work to my plate. I’ve tried to find ways to get excited about my tasks again, trying new things and new ideas, but they all tend to fizzle in this general funk of gloom. So, I think the time is coming for me to move on. . . only I can’t. I’m planning to go to grad school next year, to help get me to the next level of my career which will excite me again. In this economy, I can’t imagine finding another job that pays as well as my current position, and I wouldn’t want to take a job for the nine months between now and school, only to leave so quickly.



Any advice about not hating my job as much as getting through till May? I’d really like to get there without stabbing a coworker with a pen or crying in my shower on a daily basis.

For my take as well as terrific advice from three other career and workplace experts, check out the full post on the Fast Track blog.

 

Happy Election Day: Worst Political Gaffes

Reuters journalist and ShortFormBlog contributor Matthew Keys compiled a hugely entertaining list of the worst political gaffes recently made on the job, which incredibly, did not include anything from Obama OR Romney:

Rick Perry’s Brain Freeze at CNBC’s Republican National Debate

“It’s three agencies of government, when I get (to the White House), that are gone: Commerce, Education and the — what’s the third one there? … I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Oops.”  Uttered in November 2011, this line became the hallmark for the rest of Perry’s presidential nominee campaign.

Joe Biden’s Foot in Mouth Moment with the Affordable Care Act

As Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the vice president dropped an F bomb on live television, enthusiastically stating that the passage of the bill was a “big f-ing deal.”  It was, of course, the line heard round the world.

For others, please check out the full post on the Fast Track blog.

Would You Work With Your Spouse?

If you want to know the future, your best bet is to ask Weiner, Edrich, Brown (WEB), one of the world’s top futurist consulting firms. WEB, a four-person operation founded in 1977, identifies and analyzes long-term trends that impact business. The direction of the firm is guided by two dynamic co-vice presidents who happen to be husband and wife.

Erica Orange and Jared Weiner met at the University of Rochester, and several years later, Erica began working for Jared’s mother Edie at her firm Weiner, Edrich, Brown. Edie gave Jared the ultimatum that if “things don’t work out between the two of you, I’m still keeping her.” Fortunately, it did. The two married and eventually Jared joined the firm.

The pair lives in an apartment in Manhattan and works in the same office two feet from one another. Incredibly, they don’t drive each other crazy.  To learn what makes their unique arrangement work, check out my full post at the AMEX Open Forum.