1. Tips For Keeping Your Resume Fresh Kristy encourages job seekers to clarify common resume themes, such as Team Player, Communication Skills, Customer Service and Management Skills. One or more of these concepts that show up on almost every resume. She encourages candidates to personalize these concepts for maximum impact. She provides an excellent example for “Customer Service.”
2. The Awesome Power of Face-to-Face Networking James Lee reminds us of the power of networking and how your social network (inner circle) drives success.
3. The Hidden Question in All Job Interview Hiring managers are always looking for ways of reducing their risk of hiring the wrong candidate. Hunter Nuttall tells a great story about the importance of verbalizing your interest in the position. His assumptive close, “Can I meet some of the people I’d be working with” is a jewel.

Over the next two to three weeks, I will be pulling material together for the series. Please send your specific questions or areas of concern. The four sessions will be tape and made available later this year.

Thanks for your participation, Mitch

1. Traditional interviews demand time from multiple parties, impacting production activities
2. Most managers would rather do ANYTHING other than interview someone they have never met
3. Many managers have little to no training in the interview process
4. Many hiring decisions are seen as a 50/50 crap shot, no matter how much time you spend trying to analyze the candidate
5. Many hiring managers believe their intuition is the most valid measuring stick to make hiring decisions

The article supports the point of psychologist John Gottman, whose research in the dynamics of snap decisions and first impressions is discussed in Malcom Gladwell’s best-seller Blink. Gladwell explains how “thin slicing” videotaped interactions between married couples provided Gottman the ability to predict, with 95% accuracy, the long-term outcome of the marriage.

While Gottman is able to rationalize a relationship in a matter of seconds, Dr. Sullivan’s approach is more akin to speed dating, and suggests setting a time limit between 5 and 15 minutes for the interview. This caught my interest, because when I was conducting research for InterviewRX I found a study that concluded most hiring decisions are made between 4 and 10 minutes into the interview. This coalescing research suggests speed interviewing may be valid for some companies.

Sullivan points to several advantages of speed interviewing:

1. It provides for an immediate comparison between candidates. In the morning you can interview the slate of candidates and have an offer ready that afternoon.
2. Less time is spent with people you know you will never hire.
3. If available, you are able to interview more than 2 or 3 people with the best resumes.
4. Hiring managers are more willing to interview people if they know they can get in and out and on with their day.
5. Most hiring managers don’t enjoy a formal behavioral interview and prefer to go with their gut. Hiring managers are proud of their ability to ready body language and understand emotional nuances. They don’t need an hour to figure out if they can work with someone.
6. Speed interviewing appeals to college students and recent graduates.
7. Because of the time constraints, overly prepared candidates have to abandon their canned answers and respond off the cuff, providing the hiring manager with a truer assessment.

While speed interviewing is not yet fully embraced in HR and recruiting circles, there are enough companies using or experimenting with the concept to rethink your interview approach. From the hiring perspective, committing to a hiring decision after a ten-minute conversation is pretty gutsy, but one most of us do internally, even if we don’t make our decision “public” that soon.

Sullivan mentions that IBM, Abbott Labs and Texas Instruments are using Speed Interviewing, though no specifics are given. My personal opinion is that companies will be reluctant to embrace a snap judgment platform, but may follow the pattern used by Tower Consultants. An employee from Tower shares the company speaks with as many as fifty prospective candidates in a day, allotting about 5 minutes with each one. The speed interviewing is the first step. A more rigorous technical and behavioral interview follows before a hiring decision is made. In my own experience, initial phone interviews have become considerably shorter over the years. Today, I allow 5 to 7 minutes to capture essential qualifying information. From there, face-to-face interviews are scheduled.

The bottom line for Tower and a growing number of companies is that the “speed interviewing works” and I believe it will be a trend more and more people in job transition will experience.

Katherine continues her passion for helping others in defining or redefining themselves as they move forward in their career. Being that we share common ground, we got our heads together to explore the idea of providing an interview boot-camp. The forum will be a three week mini-series.

Over the years, I have found that introducing too many topics in one presentation either confuses or frustrates the audience. Usually both. Rather than trying to cover as many topics as possible, the goal of the boot-camp will be to provide more in-depth information on a few high impact topics. While a dozen different topics come to mind, I’ll have to spend some time narrowing it down to a few that compliment and build on each other. The mini-series will begin in late August and be on consecutive Wednesday nights over a three week period. Additional information will follow. Suggestions are welcome, or if I can answer a question, just ASK MITCH.

The DiSC assessment measures one’s bias in the four temperaments:

D – Dominant. A High ‘D’ is extroverted, hot-tempered, quick thinking, active, practical, strong-willed, and easily person. Archie Bunker, Lee Iacocca

I – Influencing. The High ‘I’ is an extroverted, fun-loving, activity-prone, entertaining, persuasive, and optimistic person. Lucille Ball, Robin Williams

S – Steadiness. The High ‘S’ is an introverted, calm, unemotional, easygoing, never-get-upset, person. Mr. Rogers, Jimmy Carter

C – Competence. The High ‘C’ is an introverted, logical, analytical, factual, private, depression-prone, let’s-do-it-right person. Spock, Albert Einstein

While looking at each temperament independently is a good starting point, it becomes even more interesting when we look at the natural combinations we have. The assessment provides a dominant temperament and a secondary temperament. That is not to say that the other two temperaments are excluded from our personality. In fact, we each have, at least some, of each of the four temperaments. Our particular personalities will determine the final blend.

The DiSC is primarily suited for increasing self-awareness in a setting where the individual can decide how to use the information to build relations with others. Understanding your own bias is a good beginning to self-awareness. If we can successful make passage through the Self Awareness door, then many other doors related to interpersonal skills and success will be available to us.