I was absolutely blown away by the energy and engagement at yesterday’s workshop. Again big thanks to the amazing ladies on the panel:
- Jennifer Chan – Co-Founder, CEO @ Preview Careers
- Danielle Barkley – Career & Professional Development @ UBC
- Charina Cruz – Career Coach & Growth Consultant @ Charina Cruz
- Teresa Duke – Former Head of Recruitment @ Unbounce
- Julie Tremblay – Chief People Officer @ RED Academy
There were so many amazing insights I just had to summarize them all in a blog post.
Uncovering and understanding your personal values
Don’t only focus on professional development, focus on personal development too. Some methods shared by the panel on how they uncovered their personal values.
- Value Card Exercise.
- Finding friends whom you can them ask you
thought- provoking - Paying attention to what frustrates you.
- Paying attention to Peak Moments where you feel most fulfilled.
- Going through a company values exercise to reflect on personal values.
- Tony Robbin’s Value Exercise.
A general observation that many of the exercises start with having you list/reflect on multiple values that you resonate with -> Filter and rank to wean down to the top 3-5 core values -> Reflect on how opportunities/decisions are evaluated based on these values.
Securing Interviews
- Instead of asking for referrals, ask for introductions or ask them who you should speak to.
- Leverage informational interviews as a side door into an organization. Here’s my process:
- After finding a company I really like, I’ll look them up on LinkedIn to find a few people that work for them who I would like to interview.
- I can either reach out to them via LinkedIn (lower response rate
), or try to find out their email address and contact them directly (I use https://hunter.io to figure out their company’s email structure, try it out, enter Hootsuite’s website in). - In the outreach message, highlight why and how you found them, keep your intro to under 2 sentences, and simply ask for an interview to learn more about what their experience is like working for that company.
- You can ask for an introduction or suggestion for next steps if the interview was a good experience for both of you.
Navigating Behavioural Interviews
- Don’t be afraid of the silence, it’s ok to take time to think of a good response.
- Asking good questions
show’s sincere interest in the company and highlights that you are also trying to understand how you can fit in and add value:- What are some challenges that the company is currently facing?
- What keeps you up at night in your role?
- What makes an ideal candidate for you?
- What are some new projects in the pipeline that get you excited?
- Not bad questions (these questions are important and can be discussed later but should never be raised in the first interview)
- Compensation.
- Work hours.
- Saying you have NO questions.
- Balance “We” and “I” statements to highlight acknowledging team effort, ownership, and personal responsibility
- Use STAR (Situation. Task. Action. Result) or CAR (Context. Action. Result) as a framework for answering. Most people leave out the result. Don’t speak in hypotheticals talk about what actually happened, even if the result is negative, and what you learned from it.
Other High-Level Takeaways (in no particular order of priority):
- Values can shift over time but your personal mission is often more stable.
- Culture and values shift with companies too. Typically the first 50 hires shape the core culture that they will build upon.
- Culture encompasses many things in a company:
- Work ethic: Rah rah 24/7 or good work-life balance
- Values
- Mission: Why the company exists
- Vision: Where the company wants to go
- Attitude
- Personalities
- etc.
- Culture and values
come from top-down and is a good reflection of the CEO/leaders of the business. - Businesses are run by people too, and people are messy. Your interviewer may sometimes not know how to best dig out your qualities so be mindful of how you can highlight the areas that you’re passionate about.
- Get the biology out of the way, Power Pose! Watch Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk here.
- We are thought to make decisions based on weighing Pros and Cons. What we don’t realize is that one person’s Pro might be another’s Con, what defines how we view something as a Pro vs. Con is related to what our personal values are.
- The education system was designed to tool us up with skills, without much thought to supporting us with personal development. That has lead to an abundance of people who are talented and qualified but have no idea where they would like to best apply their skills. This has resulted in an opportunistic approach to
career seeking because people are applying for jobs based on skill fit rather than values/mission alignment. - Millennials, or more appropriately, future generations, are raised in an environment where they are lacking for want – we have a roof over our heads, food on our table, and are one of the highest educated generations. With the lower levels of Mazel’s Hierarchy met, more of us spend time reflecting and are more
self-aware of our areas of passion/purpose. If we highlight these as strengths, these traits will help us stand out to recruiters and companies. - The job market is increasingly competitive, with more and more people having the same qualifications and skills, it’s
ever more important for you to stand out by highlighting your values and why you’re authentically excited to work for a company. - Be persistent without being pushy, it’s worth it. Would you rather spend 6 months trying to get into your dream company? Or only
1-month job seeking but finding out 6 months to a year later that you hate your job and need to go back to job hunting again?
I’m sure there were many other amazing tidbits that I