Management Training – Page 27 – STL

For starters…

We all know the basic prep needed… Research the company, the role and the person who will interview you. Refresh your CV and make sure it fits the role. Collect your interview suit from the cleaners and do a dry run travelling to the place of the interview. And don’t forget to set your alarm!

But what else can you do to make sure you really stand out?

Here are 4 techniques to raise your preparation to the next level:

Prepare the 3 main things that you want your interviewer to know about you before the end of the interview

Identify 3 skills and experiences that show your value to the organisation and the role. This is where your research on the organisation comes into play. Link your 3 things to their culture, strategy, growth pattern etc.

For example, you could highlight your interpersonal skills and your ability to get things done efficiently; or perhaps your record of consistently completing projects ahead of schedule.

How about that time when you generated revenue and increased productivity with your innovative approach? Use examples to support how you did it and why and remember to link your successes to their needs in the future.

Hold back from discussing salary too soon in the interview

Do you really know enough about the role to understand what value you would bring to it and the organisation?

The later in the interview that you talk about potential salary, the more opportunity you will have had to demonstrate your worth and value.

If you have shown success in previous roles in your personal examples of skills and experiences, you will be in a stronger position to negotiate the value that you will bring to them!

Prepare to negotiate by attending a Negotiation Skills course.

Be honest and positive on why you want a career move

Honesty is always the best policy; however, you don’t need to share all information if it is not relevant. Prepare to share the positive reasons for the move, not the negative. Your interviewer will be looking for someone that wants to succeed and invest in their new role. Not picking up the pieces from a previous bad experience.

Prepare your responses to questions on your reasons for changing jobs, keeping them brief and to the point.

Self-awareness and self-improvement are positive reasons to strive for success in your next role.

Be yourself

Prepare to give your interviewer a glimpse of the real you. In many organisations, attitude and personality are equally as important as experience and qualifications.

If you have acted a part to get the job, you will be expected to be like that when you start work. Your performance will not be on point and you will soon struggle.

It is important that you are the right fit for the organisation and that they are the right fit for you!

Conclusion

Spend time to consider your approach and examples for discussion during the interview. Your interview should end with the opportunity for you to ask questions.

Use these final moments to leave a strong impression with the interviewer that confirms you are the best person for the job!

In fact, many questions!

One key role of a leader is to help those around you to be the best they can be. To empower people, they need the skill and the will to do their jobs. What happens when someone has the will, but the skill level is lacking? They need some learning and development! There are different ways of helping people – let’s focus on coaching.

If we’re going to coach people effectively, we need to understand how it really works – many people don’t! They’re probably training, teaching, explaining, advising, guiding or mentoring (you may want to check out our mentoring training courses London), but these are not the same as coaching.

So what is it then?

If you really are coaching someone, all you do is ask questions. In a training or mentoring relationship, the assumption is that at least one party has knowledge or experience to share with the other – in these cases, it’s the trainer or mentor. However, when we coach someone, the assumption is that the coachee has the knowledge or ideas buried somewhere within them – the coach’s role is to ask thought-provoking questions to bring this information to the surface.

The coach helps the coachee to realise that they know more than they think. In a coaching conversation, who should be doing most of the talking? The coachee! If not, or the coach is both asking and answering the questions, then coaching has ended and a different method is being used (training or mentoring?)!

The GROW coaching model

A popular coaching model for you to try is called the GROW model – it’s all question based:

Goals

What do you want to achieve?
What is important to you right now?
What areas do you want to work on?
What do you want to achieve as a result of this meeting?

Reality

Where are you now in relation to your goal?
On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you?
What skills/knowledge/attributes do you have?
Describe your current level of knowledge regarding this topic?

Options

What are your options?
I’d like you to come up with 5 options.
How have you tackled a similar situation before?
What might you do differently next time?

Will/Way forward

Choose your best options.
What actions will you take?
What will be the first step towards achieving your goal?
When are you going to start?

This coaching model is very flexible – at each stage, ask sufficient questions and when you feel you have learnt enough, move on.

A final thought

The assumption when coaching is that the coachee has ideas and knowledge which the right questions should bring out. But what if the assumption is wrong, and after a few questions the only answers have been ‘dunno, dunno that either, please just tell me!’

Perhaps coaching isn’t the right approach here and it’s time for some training or mentoring? If the individual leaves knowing more than when they arrived, then you’ve helped them to learn and develop. Who cares how you got there?

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