Preparing for an Interview

It is important to do some preparation prior to an interview. You do not know exactly what questions will be asked, so it is important to do some general preparation about you and your abilities. The preparation will give you the ability to quickly recall information when answering questions.

Depending on what you are used to you could prepare in different ways. You could write lists, or brainstorm. You could also sit down with someone you know really well and do some 'mock' interviews to practice your interview technique.

Some people are better than others when it comes to selling themselves but what you must be able to do is show self-confidence; that you are sure of whom you are and your ability to do the job.

Think about the following points and take your notes: -

1. Research the company
1. Mission statement
2. Long term objectives
2. Read and dissect the job description (look back at the tips for preparing your application)
3. List your strengths & how they apply to the aspects of the role
4. List your weaknesses and what you do to overcome them
5. Who you are as a person
1. Your behaviour
2. High standards
3. Friendly
4. Honest
5. Approachable, etc
6. What motivates you
1. Quality
2. Adding value
3. A challenging role
4. Doing something fresh; something new; something innovative
7. Have a clear understanding of what the expectations of the job are
1. Again, back to the job description - make sure you understand what the expectations are
8. Why you think you are the person for the job
1. Be honest - sell yourself!
9. Think about your experience
1. What have you achieved?

Example interview questions

You have to consider the role and the requirements. For example, if it is a management role or leadership role, then expect questions and your answers to contain elements of leadership; if it is a technical job, then expect questions and your answers to contain examples of your technical ability.

I have listed a few 'closed' questions here (i.e. questions that can be answered with 'yes' or 'no' - do not fall into this trap, always elaborate on your response with examples).

About you: -

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your work experience
1. Tell us your best moments/not so great moments
2. What are your strengths & how do they apply to the job?
3. What are you weaknesses and how do you overcome them?
4. What motivates you to achieve; what drives you?
5. Are you a reliable person?
6. Are you flexible in your approach to work?
7. Do you feel passionate about what you do?
1. What is your favourite part about what you do?
2. What is your passion?
8. What are your aspirations?
1. 1/3/5 year plan - where do you see yourself in 5 years?

The role: -

1. What can you bring to this role?
2. Why should we hire you for this job?
3. What challenges do you think this role will bring?
4. What do you see as being the main challenge in this role?

Your development: -

1. Tell us the last training course you attended.
2. Do you actively pursue personal development opportunities?

Team Work: -

1. What are your strengths as a team member?
2. Do you have the ability to encourage and maintain good working relationships?
1. How do you do this?
3. What role do you play in a team environment?
4. Have you ever worked in a poor performing team? How did you cope?
5. Give me an example of when you had to be particularly supportive to others in a team.

Innovation: -

1. Give me an example of when you have shown creativity.
2. Give me an example of a time when you used a less common approach to work.
3. Do you feel that your ideas are always listen to?
4. Do you feel that you have good ideas?
5. Are you creative?
6. Can you provide a situation where your ideas have been criticised? How did you deal with this? Did you feel it was unfair?

Time management: -

1. Give me an example of when you had to work to an important deadline.
2. How do you manage your time effectively?
3. Describe a situation where you have had to deal with a high degree of pressure.

Policy and procedure: -

1. Can you tell me about a time when it was essential that you followed clear policies or procedures?
2. Are you capable of following policy & procedure?
3. Do you think it is important to follow policy and procedure? Why?
4. Has there ever been a time where you have not followed policy/procedure? What happened?
5. In your experience, have you ever had to complete paper work or reports as part of your role? How did you cope with this?

Communication: -

1. Do you think communication is important?
2. Would you define yourself as a good communicator?
3. Tell me about a time when you found it difficult to build an effective working relationship with a customer or colleague?
4. Describe a situation where you had difficulty persuading someone around to your point of view.
5. How do you manage difficult people?
6. Can you deal with conflict? How?

Performance: -

1. How do you measure your performance?
2. How do you know that you are successful?
3. Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it.
4. Give an example of a goal you didn't meet and how you handled it.
5. Have you ever made a mistake? How did you handle it?

Quality: -

1. How do you determine quality?
2. Do you believe in delivering the best quality?

The customer: -

1. Define excellent customer service.
2. Are you comfortable speaking to people you don't know?
3. What is the best way to deal with a customer complaint?
4. Give me an example of a time when you had to satisfy a particular customer or client need (this could be an internal or external 'customer').

Other questions: -

1. If you know your boss is 100% wrong about something how would you handle it?

Prepare some questions for the panel

1. Try to stay away from terms and conditions…
2. What are the future prospects of this role?
3. Who will I be reporting to?
4. Who will be setting out my objectives?
5. Can you describe the team culture
6. What are the organisations long term objectives, and how do they apply to this role?
7. How does this role fit in with the rest of the organisation?

Other tips: -

1. Listen to the question and make sure you understand what it is that is being asked.
2. Respond appropriately. Pause before you respond.
3. Think about projects that you have been involved in and what you achieved. What learning's can you apply to this role?
4. Some more info can be found at About.Com.

Click here to read 25 questions you probably won't get asked...but worth reading anyway!!

I hope this helps you to prepare for your interview!

Thanks,

Chris

Maximising the tweetdeck search facility

I really wanted to find a way to utilise Tweetdeck to find out what people were talking about in a specific area. For example, I live in Leven and I wanted to know what people were saying about the town. A simple search using Twitter or Tweetdeck will give you the result you are looking for, although unfortunately Leven is also ‘Life’ in Dutch! I desperately needed to find a way to control the search by location in order to cut out irrelevant chat.

Using Tweetdeck you can search for a term within a certain radius of a specific location using a Geocode. I had to do a small amount of research in order to do this and I cannot remember what the references are.

Using this technique effectively will allow you to refine your on-line reputation management for your business

Geocodes are not easy to come by although a simple search on Google will provide you with one.

• St Andrews - 56.33555119444445, -2.796599861111111
• Kennoway Area - 56.22,-2.98

The term you should use in the search column is this: -

[term] geocode:[value],[value],[radius]

An example for the term ‘Leven’: -

Leven geocode:56.22,-2.98,100km

Result is anyone mentioning the term ‘Leven’ within a 100km radius of the Kennoway area. This proved to be VERY useful and now I can quickly see the relevant chat, thus saving me time and effort from weeding out the irrelevant chat.

I also have searches for 'St Andrews' in the St Andrews area, 'New Hall' in the St Andrews area and many more.

Please feel free to comment on this post.

Thanks for reading,

Chris.

Creating a Winning Team

As a manager and leader you really want your team to be empowered to make their own decisions, but that does not happen overnight. One of the first things that has to be done is to sit down with the team and agree the team operating values.

I used this technique with a newly established team just recently. It really helps to get the whole together in one room and chat about what they consider to be important in a team environment.

The flow chart below highlights the main areas of discussion when discussing team work: -

This exercise can be used along with the previous values/motivators discussion which will allow the team to think about why they are here and what they feel is important to them as individuals; setting the scene for this next discussion about team work.

Facilitating a discussion

If you have read my previous posts you will know that what I tend to do when facilitating group discussions is ask a lot of questions and use what the team come up with to steer the discussion, whilst ensuring the discussion is kept relevant and going in the correct direction. This technique will allow for open discussion. Just remember to listen and ask the team members to elaborate on points made; sometimes it is far too easy to spout out one word answers.

What you need

1. Your team all in the same room
2. A flip chart to capture everything
3. Motivation and energy
4. A positive attitude
5. An open mind

1. Identify your team

Spend time discussing with the team who they consider to be their team members. It is important that the whole team agree and that you as the manager are happy with the result the team come up with.

As the facilitator you should already know what answer you are looking for. Think about the bigger picture; there will most likely be sub teams within larger teams. It will be interesting to see what the team come up with and will highlight how each person thinks.

2. Agreeing Team Values

Make use of one of my previous posts about getting to know your employees which will help you facilitate discussion about team values and motivators. The result will allow the team to think about why they are here and what they consider to be important about working in the team. This will allow the team to really understand what their team is all about and why they do what they do. Again, it is vital that everyone agrees with what is discussed.

3. Operating from the bottom-up

By hosting a focus group like this you are allowing the bottom-up approach to take shape; allowing your employees to make decisions and influence the future of the organisation and how their team operates.

I feel that it is vital to open up the communication channels from the very start and show the team that their ideas are listened to and considered. The worst thing you can do is shut them down; you will find that a lot of good ideas will come from your team and you have to give them the platform to expresses themselves and try out new ideas, without the fear of getting into any sort of trouble.

4. One voice

A very important factor in teamwork is to ensure the team are all delivering the the service with the same message; they use the same language, they behave in the same ways.

Again, this forum setting will allow the team to start to form a message and agree on the values of the team.

5. Having a friend at work

Some may think this is not all that important but I have found that having at least one person you can confide in at work is very important. If anything, it allows those who are having a bad day to get things of their chest and know that the person they are confiding will not take it personally and not discuss it with anyone else.

It is important to highlight here that not everyone will have that one person. As a manager you have to pick up on this, it may be that you can be that person.

6. Have an overriding goal

A fairly obvious point; the team must have an objective, something to focus on - quite high level in this case.

Examples could be: -

• "To deliver the best service"
• "Get it right first time"
• "Have no customer complaints"
• "To be better than everyone else"

Typical Questions

• If you were able to create a team, what values would you expect?
• What makes a good team a good team?
• How should a good team operate?

This is a great start for discussing team work with your team and is the start of many posts about team work.

Thanks for reading,

Chris

The Ethics Matrix

Ethics Matrix

	Ethical	Unethical
Legal	Can and Should	Can but Shouldn't
Illegal	Can't but Should	Can't and Shouldn't

Something can be quickly learned from this ethics matrix. I came across this in an article that I was reading about ethics in business. Upon discovery of this simple model I related to it straight away and it totally fitted into what I was learning and experiencing at the time; it really reminded me of failed businesses, such as Enron, which I was studying at the time.

The basic idea is that we all know that we should be operating from the top left quadrant, but how many organisations actually operate from here all the time? You may find that some or most of the time we operate form the top right quadrant; where we believe that by following the letter of the law automatically indicates, and provides intrinsic comfort, that we are acting ethically...but this is often not the case; acting legally DOES NOT automatically result in ethical practice.

So what the best way to find out if you are acting ethically?

• How do your staff feel about working for you? Give them the opportunity to express their feelings and you will get an indication of how your workforce feel.
• Introduce a human element into your decision making; "How will this decision affect the employees, the surrounding community and our customers?"
• Do you feel like you are doing the right thing? Or does it feel wrong?
• Put yourself is the shoes of others; how do you think your workforce feel about what the organisation is doing?
• I guess a big indicator will be if you find yourself awake at night, thinking and worrying about what your organisation is up to.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Annual Performance Review

In every organisation there are performance reviews and there will be informal and formal checking and monitoring of performance.

The information below is a guide or set of tips for managers who chair performance reviews in their organisation and this is how I get the most out of the review meetings (basically by asking A LOT if questions).

Traditionally managers would be used to looking at WHAT you have done at performance review. It is just as important, if not more important, to consider HOW tasks have been completed and WHY; thus assessing the workers behaviour along with performance and results.

The Aims

1. To engage with the employees, find out what they are thinking and how they feel about their job.
2. To discuss past/current/future organisational objectives and how they impact upon their role.
3. Discuss personal performance to date (ties in nicely with the Octopus development tool from earlier).
4. Discuss the future of their career and personal development.

Tips
Do not give away information...the chances are you will know the answers to the questions, but it is better to get the employee to think about the answers and respond.

Pre-setting

When arranging performance review meetings it is a good idea to give the employee some advanced warning. This way you have given the employee the opportunity to prepare for the meeting. Give them a copy of the notes from their review from last time so they can take time to figure out what they have achieved versus what was agreed previously.

The setting

You need to break down the formalities to make everyone feel comfortable.

1. Sit side by side...don't have the traditional set up where the manger sits across from the employee;
2. Get a drink or water or a cup of tea/coffee;
3. Give the employee some paper and a pen in case they want to write notes;
4. Explain that you are going to take notes about your discussion;
5. Give the employee an indication of how long the review will last.

Introduction

Describe the process to the employee and the structure of the meeting including the aims.

Starting off - the past

Go on to talk about the period between now and the last review (refer to notes from previous review)

1. How has your job changed in the last 6 months/1 Year - is this a positive change?
2. What do you feel you have achieved in the last 6 months/1 Year?
3. Have you met your objectives? Why/why not?
4. What challenges have you encountered?

Talking about now

1. Describe the job role that you fulfil at the moment.
2. How does your job fit in with the rest of the team/organisation?
3. What do you like the most about your job?
4. What do you like the least about your job?
5. Currently, what would you say are your main objectives?

Go on to focus on the objectives for the next period and provoke thought by asking questions, which may include: -

Customer Focus

1. How do you think your role impacts upon the customer service?
2. What do you currently do, in your role, to enhance the customer experience?
3. What would you say your strengths are with regards to customer service?
4. Do you have something unique that makes you stand out from the rest?
5. In your role, how do you think you can improve the customer service?
6. Do you feel that you really know what the customer wants?
7. Comment on the recent survey...why do you think we were rated as we were...do you think this truly reflects our service? Why/why not?
8. What kind of challenges do you face when trying to be as customer focussed as possible?

Meeting Targets

Rate your own performance from 1 to 10 - What are you measuring your performance against?

1. How do you motivate yourself?
2. How do you get things done?
3. Who measures your performance?
4. How do you make sure you meet your targets?
5. Are you an organised person?
6. Is there anything you feel that you could be doing better?
7. How do you organise yourself?
1. Do you prioritise your own work or does someone do that for you?
2. How is your work prioritised?
8. What challenges to you anticipate in meeting your objectives?
9. What challenges do you face in your day to day routine?

Behaviour

When we talk about be behaviour we are talking about professionalism and how that behaviour is tailored for people working inside and outside of the organisation; the customer and the people you work with.

1. If someone was to ask you what you do for a living...what would you tell them?
1. Do you promote the organisation outside of work?
2. What if I said to you "Act professionally"...what would that mean to you?
3. Do you enjoy your job?
4. Are you proud of what you do?
5. Are you enthusiastic about your work?
6. How do you feel about your job?
7. Why is it important to be professional ?

The working environment

1. How would you describe the current working environment?
2. Can improvements be made?
3. Are you doing everything you can to make sure there is a good working atmosphere?
4. Who's job is it to maintain a good working environment?
5. What do you think we can do to improve the working environment?

What about the future?

1. What do you see your self doing in the future?
2. What are your aspirations?
3. What do you feel passionate about?
4. What do you think you could be doing to improve your job?
5. Is there something that we do already that you would like to get involved in?
6. How do you see you career progress in the
1. Short term
2. Medium term
3. Long term
7. What kind of support do you think you need?

Tips

1. Follow up appropriate questions with 'why'
2. Do not give away too much...get them thinking by asking a lot of questions, for example: -
1. How does that make you feel?
2. Why is that?
3. What could have been done to improve that?
3. Normally with any question you ask you should have a good idea of the response you are going to 3. get. It's best if you know what you are looking for when you ask the question, then you can comment on anything that is missing, or elaborate on specific parts of the answer.
4. Feedback your opinion on performance with <em>constructive</em> comments.

Closing the meeting

1. Give an overview of specific areas including the agreed objectives for the following period;
2. Give praise where it is due and comment on areas that require improvement;
3. Make sure the employee has something to think about when they leave the review meeting;
4. Agree your next meeting date/time.

Managing the process

As before it is important that the manager is well organised.

1. Make sure you organise your notes
2. Make sure you read over your notes from the last meeting so you know what you want to cover
3. A day or so later, feedback to the employee with minutes of your meeting, detailing current objectives and agreed actions for both employee and manager.

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Writing a Management Report

As a manager there is a good chance that you will be asked to write a performance review report for your relevant department(s). I have listed a few tips that should help you to structure and present a report in a professional way so that your report will be taken seriously and, if you are lucky, it will actually be read by your manager!

There are several benefits to writing management reports: -

• Over time a collection of reports will prove as a great portfolio and growth measurement tool;
• It's a great opportunity to show your manager what you have achieved.

Report Preparation

The following considerations should be made prior to, and during, report writing: -

1. Who is the report is for?
1. How much do they already know about what you are writing about?
2. Why do they want this information?
3. Who else may possibly read it?
4. What do they want to use the report for? (Consider any economic or political influences)
2. Appeal to the stakeholders best interest, for example: -
1. Profit
2. Revenue
3. Productivity/Achievement
4. Sales growth
3. Appropriate formatting should be applied
4. Spelling and grammar should be checked
5. Keep the report professional & factual as possible
6. Keep the report as concise as you can

The Report Structure

Here is an example of what should be included in a management report: -

Front Cover

Title, author and date

Contents Page

Summary of contents

Summary/abstract

Contains a summary of the report. Briefly comment on how you feel about the performance of the department to date. A Small paragraph, enough to let the reader know the content and relevance of the report.

Expectations vs Reality

Include a comparison of your initial expectations and the most recent time frame (if it is a 3 month report then you would consider your objectives from 3 months ago and weight them against your current state)

Unit Performance

Provide a brief outline of the department/unit performance over the time period and provide reasoning for unexpected growth or decline/excellent or poor performance, etc. Provide charts and graphs if appropriate to illustrate your points.

Projection of Performance

Project performance for the next 3 months (or time period agreed by line manager) – provide reason why you believe this to be the correct projection. Provide charts and graphs if appropriate.

Current Objectives

With reference to the last three months and achievement to date, what are your current objectives and the course of action toward achieving these objectives.

Ideas and Concept Proposals

Give indications of what changes you would like to put in place and include proposals and structured ideas/concepts, based on factual data and information. Provide a SWOT analysis of any decisions that are to be made. Provide charts and graphs if appropriate.

Conclusion

Provide a summary of the main report and link into recommendations. No new information or data should be included in this section.

Recommendations

Recommendations based on previous analysis of objectives and concept proposals contained with report. Your recommendations should be clear and concise; a summary that can be read quickly and understood.

Acknowledgements

Reference to other published work and credence to personal assistance. Location of where data and information was obtained from.

Line Manager Comments

Allow your line manager to make comment and feedback on contents of report and recommendations you have made.

Important considerations

Providing factual information and data to make your recommendations look concrete is vital, it must be obvious where this data was obtained and that it is from a reputable source.

I hope this provides you with a starting point for writing a management report!

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Employee Personal Development

I'm sure that in your organisation you will have some sort of internal review process/performance review, although sometimes it is not enough to just have a meeting once per year or to just focus on the goals related to the role the employee plays within the organisation. This development tool focuses upon the individual with reference to their PERSONAL objectives, on an ongoing basis.

I have designed a development plan that can be used for all team members and I have made them available for download as .pdf documents ( Stage 1 - Self Assessment and Stage 2 - Agreed Objectives).

I personally really enjoy spending time with people and get them thinking about the future and what their aspirations may be. I want to support them in whatever it is they want to do and this tool helps me to do that in a structure way.

A planned development strategy will allow you to: -

1. Spend structured, formal and regular time with individual team members.
2. Constructively recognise employee strengths and weaknesses.
3. Agree objectives and work on areas of development.
4. Give them more exposure and room to develop.
5. Monitor their performance and give them direct and constructive feedback.

There are many advantages for the employer and the employee: -

1. A skilled, knowledgeable and engaged workforce
2. The individuals know that you care about their personal development
3. High team morale
4. The team begin to really enjoy their job
5. Everyone feels involved and that they are achieving something

Remember to use questions to get information and facilitate discussion.

Stage 1

( .pdf)

Using this form you can either choose to sit down with the employee and discuss or send them away with the form to complete the questions and get back to you...then discuss at a later date. The main idea here is to get them engaged in thinking about their career path and what development they require in order to get what they want. Question 7 "Do you have someone at work that you would consider your best friend" is really just about finding out if there is someone that the employee can fully trust, which I think is important in the workplace.

As far as development is concerned, the main areas to concentrate on are questions 2, 3 and 8. Question 8 is a good place to start you will be able to get a good picture of what the employee is working towards, which will than allow you to approach the areas of development required in order to meet their goal.

Stage 2

(.pdf)

The stage 2 form is then used to break down the goals into smaller chunks, perhaps even tasks that need to be completed in order to develop. You use one form for each objective and you may end up with 4 or 5 which may all be of different time scales.

Remember to make the objectives SMART and give the employee a clear deadline for things to be completed.

When you come to review progress you can use the section at the bottom of the form to take notes.

Building a Portfolio

After you start 'ticking boxes' and making progress you find that you start to build up a nice portfolio of achievement for the employees. This could possibly be used as a tool for promotion.

Adopting the correct leadership style

You have to be prepared for things to not go the way you planned. Also, there will be some who require little coaching and guidance to meet their personal objectives, and some who require much more attention. You won't know until you start the process and find out who needs what attention from you and what style of leadership you will need to adopt.

Managing the process

As the manager it is up to you to check progress and organise the meetings; you are the key support in their development. You will find that if you do not keep on top of it things will not be achieved, although it very much depends on how engaged the employee is. Remember to follow up on any agreed actions; organise a training course, send someone an email or schedule another meeting, for example.

Take the time after each meeting to review your notes and jot down what you think is next and schedule the next meeting in your diary before you forget.

Thanks for reading,

Chris