节目资讯
刊物:职场秘诀
日期:2009-10-09
难易度:Low
关键字:nail, pack, articulate, regurgitate, set off
Advanced Studio Classroom is on the air.
Are you ready for that big interview?
Read this article!
Hello, listeners, welcome to Advanced Studio Classroom.
This is Bill Quinn.
Today is October 9th, 2009, and we have a BUSINESS article titled Mastering the
Interview.
We’re talking about a job interview, and everybody loves job interviews.
They’re one of the funniest things that you ever do, right, Brandon?
You could say that, Bill. You could say that.
Aren’t they awful?
They are horrible.
They really are.
They are...
It’s so intimidating to go into an interview.
It’s just tough.
It’s intimidating.
And I don’t know anybody that really likes to talk about themselves.
It’s really kind of awkward, uncomfortable thing, right?
Very, very awkward.
That’s a great point.
You go into an interview, just talking about good things about yourself, but you
don’t want to, like, say a bunch of horrible things about yourself.
Yeah.
It’s such a fine line.
Yeah.
Listeners, that was Brandon Bryant.
And I’m interviewing him to work here at Mega Computers.
So Brandon, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Well, Bill...
Why should we hire you here at Mega Computers?
Ha... That’s good.
We just do a feature right now.
Why should we hire you?
I’m a great guy.
That’s why.
Right.
Now, I went through so many interviews... when I was graduating from university.
And of course afterwards when I was working in the business world, don’t worry,
people, you’re uncomfortable, they’re uncomfortable.
I also interviewed people when I was in the business world.
I was a sales and marketing manager, and I actually had to go on campus,
interview university students, and also I interviewed people that were working
in their respective fields.
Not only in sales and marketing but for a while I was interviewing data
processing people when I was working as a recruiter.
And being on the other side of the desk was not much fun either.
It was really not a lot of fun for me to interview people.
But, you know, just one of those necessary things in life.
So, we have to tackle and we got to try and make the most out of it, and there
are ways of getting better at it, being comfortable.
That’s about the best we can hopeful... is being comfortable with the whole
process.
And we’ve also got two other panelists here joining us today that um, hopefully
they’ll help us be comfortable with this interviewing process.
Dawn Day, are you gonna help us become comfortable?
I hope so.
Hi, everybody, hi, listeners, it’s good to be back.
Do you like interviews?
Honestly, I don’t.
I... I don’t. They make me very, very nervous.
And so sometimes I go in, not knowing what to do, and so it’s... it’s tough.
Yeah, yeah, it’s really unknown . It’s so unknown, you don’t know how it’s gonna
turn out.
Yeah.
And also joining us, Steve Hsia.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, Bill, great to be back on the show.
OK, and you’ve uh... you’ve had a lot of fun with interviews, right?
You bet. The best part is when... when they’re over.
Ha... when they’re over, yeah, when you can walk out, right?
You bet.
There’s a tension leading up to it. You’re just like... It’s stressful and
you’re tense... you know, just the whole thing.
You’re just sitting there.
Yeah.
They call you in, right?
You feel butterflies in your stomach all the time when you walk in. And then
when you walk out, they’re gone.
Butterflies in your stomach.
What... what does that mean? That’s a great uh, idiom or cliche for our
listeners to know.
It just means that, you know, you feel a little kind of twitch in your stomach
and just can’t get it out.
Yeah.
And they stay in there and they just fly all around.
And then when you’re out the door from the interview, they’re gone.
Yeah.
So...
Yeah, your stomach is really...
Yeah.
So... Yeah.
Well, I want you guys to think about something here that I’ll come back to later
in the program, maybe like your worst interview experience.
So today or tomorrow when I ask you guys about what your worst interview
experience was, so...
I can... I’m gonna think about some myself both when I was the interviewee and
the interviewer.
I’ve had some real classics, so...
But let’s get into our article: Mastering the Interview.
Listeners, it is on page 20.
(Music).
Mastering the Interview.
Job interviews are crucial, so take the time to prepare and practice.
Jobs are scarce and competition is fierce.
Nailing the interview is key to separating yourself from the pack and landing
that next job.
Making sure you’re ready for the big day is important.
”Never go into an interview winging it,” said Kristin Mortensen, who is a career
coach in Sacramento, California.
People who do ”often regret that decision.”.
And many who think they’re ready fall short.
Experts such as Jess Bushey, a marketing director for a Sacramento employment
agency, have seen it all too often.
Some job seekers ”think they know what they’re going to say, but they haven’t
articulated it out loud,” Bushey said.
”Preparation. People still don’t do enough of it.”.
OK.
Well, you know, when I was graduating from university... Penn State University,
my senior year I interviewed with over thirty companies,
and I was just an interviewing fiend,
and this thing just went... lasted all year long and I had multiple interviews
with companies, and I really don’t know what I was doing.
So I wish I had Mastering the Interview at that time.
Would have helped me, so...
But it was a difficult time economically, much like it is now.
So that’s why I did so much interviewing. It was a real...
We’re in kind of a recession when I graduated, so people were fighting and
scaping for jobs, and job interviews are crucial.
So what does that mean if I say up there in the deck, Dawn, they are crucial?
It just means they’re very important and they play a big role in people’s lives
and...
So job interviews are crucial, meaning that they are hard to do sometimes but
they’re important.
Right.
So we need to take the time to prepare and practice.
So jobs are scarce and competition is fierce.
What does that mean: ”competition is fierce,” Brandon?
That means it’s intense.
That means a lot of other people are trying to get a job too, so it’s just a lot
of people going maybe for the same job.
Sometimes I hear of maybe a company’s only taking in a few positions, may be
fifty, but thousands apply.
So that means it’s fierce, very intense.
Right, right.
Fierce is an adjective we might use to describe like an animal too, right?
Right.
A fierce animal.
Right.
Maybe they’re very... you’re very afraid of them or they’re uh, very scary.
OK.
And it is true, uh, sometimes companies might have three or four openings and a
thousand people will apply.
So it’s tough just even getting your resume uh, through that whole process to
where they even actually wanna talk to you.
So then if they get a thousand resumes, then they’ll talk to fifty people or
maybe a hundred people.
So it’s really hard when they whittle down all the numbers.
Now... in that next sentence there, nailing the interview.
Uh, what does that mean: nailing the interview, Steve?
Well, Bill, there’s no more satisfying feeling than just taking a hammer and
just nailing something to the board and just having that nail just go right
through.
In the same way, when you nail an interview, that is when you walk out the door
with satisfaction that the best you could possibly be and you feel that have
been showed to the interviewer.
OK, so you nail it; you’re very successful; you hit it right on target.
We might say Kobe Bryant nailed a jumper, right?
He hits a three point jumper and it just hits nothing but net.
He nailed a jumper, so...
But nailing the interview is key to separating yourself from the pack.
I love that. I underlined that ”separating yourself from the pack,” Dawn.
Yeah, separating yourself from the pack just means that you’re trying to make
yourself different.
You’re differentiating yourself from all your peers and you’re trying to be
special amongst them so that the interviewer will like you.
OK, and we might say uh, we think of pack sometimes, like a pack of animals,
pack of wolves or something, but this... do we mean animals here?
Right. No, we’re talking about people here.
Maybe.
In a way.
In this fierce environment and they seem like just a bunch of animals.
But we’re talking about people here uh, separating from the... the pack,
because if you think about it, like we talked about a minute ago, a lot of
people are sending in their resumes.
But what’s gonna separate you from everyone else is going to make you stand out
from all the other people, or the pack as it says here.
OK.
So making sure you’re ready for the big date is important.
Let me go back to just something you mentioned as far as we’re talking about
sending in resumes.
Now with the Internet, it’s become I think even crazier because now these
companies are even receiving more and more resumes, and... they are...
Do you have any key tips or anything... any suggestions?
Um, one thing I can think of is that they will use computer programs to scan
resumes a lot of times.
They’re looking for key words.
I don’t know if our... people know that.
But these companies will receive a thousand, two thousand resumes for a
particular job.
They actually use a computer program that will scan the resume, looking for a
handful of key words before they even look at the people.
So you don’t have them, they aren’t gonna look at you.
Right, and I think it’s important not to include too much information,
unnecessary information in a resume,
and also, you know, get it down to what the facts, what’s really important and
make it short and concise.
Right.
And one other note on a resume I just wanna tell people is that I’ve seen too
many resumes that are just way too much.
Mmhm.
University graduates should have maybe one page.
And after that, a professional, you can go up to two pages.
Do not go over two pages.
No matter what experience you have, you... anything beyond two pages, it’s...
forget it.
You know, because then it’s just... it’s just way too much information to
process.
Yeah. And I think also the layout of a resume is really important too.
The spacing and knowing what to put on your resume and what not to put on.
I think a lot of times interviewers tell me,
”You know, your resume could look a lot better if it were laid out a little bit
better,
like, OK, you have a column here, maybe you have a column here, and so kind of
aligning your words and stuff,” so...
OK. Good point, Dawn.
All right.
Now we are talking about the interview and in line 6: Never go into an interview
winging it.
”Winging it,” Steve.
Yes, ”winging it” means going into the interview cold and just doing your best
on the spot without any preparation.
You’re doing it, per se, on the fly.
OK, so, on the fly, winging it, you’re not prepared and sometimes you’re just...
We might wing it maybe if we’re just asked to stand up at a meeting sometimes
and just say something for two minutes.
”Well, I’m not prepared but I’ll wing it; I’ll get up and speak.”.
And sometimes, Bill, you do have to wing it, and that’s OK because you didn’t
maybe know about the situation.
And so we need to be prepared for those types of things.
And maybe our listeners are familiar with the impromptu speeches that they...
you know, they don’t know the subject matter maybe even,
and so you had to be prepared for those situations.
But in this case, you do not need to improvise; do not need to wing it. You need
to be as prepared as possible.
Right, because you know about it.
This is not a surprise.
You’ve got this thing scheduled.
Well, you’d better be prepared for it.
What happens we see there in line 9, Dawn, if we are trying to wing it?
What happens to people?
Well, sometimes people often regret their decision of winging it.
So you can be prepared to some extent of wingng it.
But, you know, you really do regret your decision, going in there, not knowing
what to say sometimes.
Regret means...?
Regret means trying to... I guess regret just means if you were to go back, you
would do it a different way.
So in this case, you’re going back and you would probably be more prepared and
not going in... going into the interview room winging it.
You’re just saying what’s on your mind.
Yeah, we don’t like what we did and we would change if we had another chance.
We regret something, so...
And many who think they’re ready... you might think you’re ready, but sometimes
they fall short.
Fall short, Steve.
”Fall short” happens any time you set a goal for yourself but you don’t achieve
it.
You might come close, but in the end you still fall short.
Yeah. OK.
So a lot of times we think we’re ready, but we do fall short.
Right, you maybe prepare as much as you... you want to or you think you should,
but maybe you really don’t realize the extent of the situation; you really don’t
understand everything that’s involved.
Maybe you didn’t do... you didn’t study the company enough or whatever, and they
ask you a lot of questions you’re not prepared for.
But if you do your best, I think maybe that’s OK, you’re gonna learn from that
situation and do better the next time.
But just try to do your very best to study up and do well in the interview.
Well, and we hear from this expert uh, Jess Bushey, who is a marketing director
for a Sacramento employment agency.
And Jess has seen it all too often, which means that... that uh, Jess has come
across the situation many, many times:
many job candidates going in on job interviews and falling short - not being
prepared.
And then Jess Bushey goes on to say what about some job seekers, Steve?
A lot of job seekers think they know what they’re going to say, but they haven’t
articulated it out loud.
OK.
And what does that mean: articulate something, Dawn?
Just means saying it out - practicing it, saying out loud verbally.
And sometimes I articulate my interviews or my speeches in front of a mirror
sometimes, and so I see myself, and so it helps me practice sometimes saying out
loud.
And ”articulate” can actually mean two things:.
one, saying it out loud as you say, Dawn but also... put together our thoughts.
It’s one thing to say something, it’s another thing to make sense, right,
Brandon?
Right, and to say it clearly.
Yeah.
And I think of maybe I go back to like presidential elections and I see people
that articulate their ideas.
That means they say it clearly and people understand them and they connect with
people.
That’s a very important thing to do when you’re in an interview to connect with
the interviewer.
Right.
OK.
So speaking uh, our answers, a spoken word, is just like a good letter.
We need to prove it and we need to edit it and we need to change it.
And if you can articulate it, do go through that process - you’ll be much more
effective.
And Bushey finishes this column by saying: Preparation. People still don’t do
enough of it.
Nextreading.