Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: interviews

  • Interview Tips: 100 Ways to Prepare, Participate and Be Present

    As if looking for work wasn’t stressful enough.

    Interviews can be nerve-wracking affairs. No matter how mutual you try to make the exchange, there is no getting away from the fact that the hiring person has the job and you don’t.

    As a result of this power differential, we can easily feel that we are the only one on trial, the only one being evaluated, the only one with much at stake.

    Mike King is someone I keep my eye on. He has put together an almost overwhelming list of 100 interview tips. You can find it at: “100 Ways to Ace an Interview” on his web site Learn This.

    Suggestion for benefiting from King’s list
    Read quickly through the list paying special attention to your initial responses as you do so.

    1. Which three tips seem most immediately helpful to you?
      Decide how you will incorporate these three ideas into your next interview.
    2. Which three tips were brand new or surprising thoughts for you?
      Reflect on what you might be able to learn from these three tips.
    3. With which three tips do you disagree most?
      Disagreement is often a clue to an important value of your own. What underlying values of yours do these three tips violate?

    We want to be playing at the top of our game when interviewing. Playing at the top of one’s game, though, does not mean play-acting. It means showing up fully yourself and comfortably yourself.

    Click here for Mike King’s “100 Ways to Ace an Interview.”

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Keeping it Real: It’s Easier to be Yourself

    I am the world’s foremost expert on being me.

    I am a novice at being someone else. Anyone else. Even someone else from whom I might have a lot to learn.

    Yet so many consultants, coaches and career counselors are advising us that we need to be someone other than ourselves.

    “If you want the job.” “If you’re serious about the promotion.” “If you want to negotiate well.”

    I find myself over-thinking interview and sales situations. I am managing both a conversation with the person I am with as well as a conversation with myself about how I am going about the conversation with the other person.

    How can I possible be fully present with someone when I am preoccupied with talking to myself?

    I’m not! is the answer I pretty consistently receive from those willing to tell me.

    Key for me has been realizing that I am an incredible expert on being myself. The task doesn’t require any more thinking. I can give my full attention to the issue on the table and the people I am with.

    When I let go of the need to impress, to appear unrealistically competent, or to artificially mirror the qualifications of an attractive job description, I am free to come alive in the skin within which I am most comfortable—my own.

    I make a very attractive “me.” Even if I’m not a fit or match for every client, job or interview, I will come across infinitely better as myself than any image of competence I might be tempted to put on.

    It’s simply much easier to be oneself.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Keeping It Real is the column where I share what I myself am learning. Beware of the leader who is not always learning themselves!