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“Tell Me About Yourself” – Why It Is Hard and What To Do About It
Frequent flyers in the job market already know how this easy question could sometimes become quite daunting. During an interview coaching, I ask the clients to answer it first. Interestingly enough, even the expert interviewers have difficulty talking about themselves. Some of the common patterns are: Pattern 1 – They walk through the resume chronologically. Example: “I received my BS degree from the University of Kentucky, then I joined x company, worked there until 2002 as a junior software engineer, then I moved to y company and worked there until 2007, got promoted to a supervisor position. After that …” (At this point, my brain starts hurting ) Pattern 2 – They…
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Women In Tech – Let’s Tap Into Our Own Greatness
[Look for a special discount code inside -Sharmin] Background Story – Last year I attended a global conference in Warsaw with a few hundred International Coach Federation (ICF) leaders from across the world(140 countries to be specific). The trip was very significant for me on many levels including the opportunity to meet some very talented and passionate leaders in the coaching industry. Kelley Russell-Duvarney was one of them. Although our personal backgrounds had very little in common, we found ourselves in an extremely engaging conversation as we sat in the last row of a tour van for several hours during our group trip. We quickly appreciated the similarities in our thinking as we…
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Nervous About Networking? Find Your Own Sweet Spot
During my corporate career I once attended a class on “how to show up confident”. It had quite a few tips I don’t remember those exactly. But today I remembered about it when I noticed that I was feeling very confident and at ease during a networking event. In particular I was standing exactly the way it was taught in that class, standing with the feet in a V-shape and hands on the sides! In that confidence class when the instructor taught us about the standing poses, it didn’t make too much sense. It felt awkward, not only that, my analytic mind had lots of why questions. But today I…
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“What do I Want” is a Hard Question
A few weeks back I was giving a talk at a big tech company about focusing on the vision. As usual, someone asked this basic question- “I don’t know what my vision is”! I am not surprised. This was my question only a few years ago. Over the years, by resolving my own dilemma and by working with my clients, I found a few ways to address this. Why it is hard? While growing up we were given standards to meet, tasks to accomplish. We were rewarded to achieve hard challenges, to score higher than others. Things we did for our own pleasure (if any) was a privilege and was not…
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Job Interview : How to Avoid Negativity about Your Employer
Everyone knows this interview tip: “Don’t bad mouth about your employer”. But interesting enough this happens quite often. I got some clue when I was talking to my client Tom a few weeks back. Specifically, he wanted to learn how to avoid falling in the trap of talking negatively about his current employer. Apparently he made this mistake in a recent one. To get his perspective, I asked him about his genuine feeling about the current employer/job. What I heard was that he had been looking for growth in certain areas that were not available in his job. This company’s priority (to fix legacy code issues to quickly unblock the…
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Align with Passion – What, Why and How
“I don’t get it, how do people mix passion with their career? I do love to paint but I can’t even think of taking it as a career and doing it all the time. That would be too much for me” – Katherine snapped at me and dismissed my own motto – Align with Passion! This is not the first time I got such a comment, and Katherine is a good friend, so I could see where she was coming from. She was referring to a commonly known definition of passion – mapping it to some particular hobby or an established career/profession. Metaphorically it is like buying off the shelf solution for…
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Why Do You Do It? 3 Steps to Clarify Your Commitments
Common wisdom goes as we do paid work for money and volunteer work to fulfill other needs. Whatever we do, paid or volunteer work requires some commitment from our part. Sometimes we get so much fun that it doesn’t feel that way, but there are times we need to renew our vows – why am I doing it again? It is more productive and rewarding when we have some clarity for it. Here are three ways to get there. 1. What does it give me – Alignment with my longer-term goal How does this particular involvement align with your bigger purpose? For example, your three-year goal is to become an event organizer.…
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Alignment with Passion-Why it is important
A client of mine is in the job market for a while. A bit frustrated by the lack of success, he called me this morning wanting to find more ideas. To get a grasp of where he is, I asked him a typical interview question, “Why do you want this job”? Quite prepared, he replied in an upbeat manner showing his credentials and skills relevant for the position. So, what is missing from his response? You may have guessed it right; “passion” was the element I was after. When done with passion it makes a job or a task more exciting and meaningful. With learned skills, most of us can…
