Category: Work

Interview questions

by MAÔ, posted in Work

“Think of a time that you were in a stressful situation at work, and tell me how you handled it.”

“What do you consider to be your weaknesses?”

“Tell me about a time you had to choose something else over doing a good job.”

“If you were an animal, what kind would it be and why?”

The interview question. I don’t even know what to say about the interview question. Does it matter? Can you gauge a person’s aptitude, willingness to work, good behavior, ethics, attention to detail, etc. off an interview? Human Resources departments would say yes, undoubtedly.

I’m not convinced. I’ve seen some slick monkeys give amazing answers to these questions. You know what slick monkeys use their slickness for in the workplace? Sliding out of responsibilities.

What’s an animal in the trenches? An elephant? A donkey? That’s not a sexy animal to be. (I didn’t mean to take the animal thing and run with it. But I grabbed the metaphor and it grabbed me back.)

But seriously – how can you gauge talent? It has to come down to a feeling. Sure, sometimes something slick will slide by you, and you won’t catch it until you’re undoing some mess  that’s been made. And, more often than not, you’ll be passing on honest-to-goodness qualified talent, because you just can’t hire everyone that would do a great job. You’re going to watch them get away, and you shouldn’t even give that a second thought.

I like the Google example in The Internship. In deciding whether to admit to seasoned (nee, old) out-of-work salesmen into the internship program, one of the reviewers asked, “Our final judgment is always based on the layover test, right? Who would you rather be stuck next to at an airport bar for a six-hour delay?”

Maybe that person is the next golden goose for your company, and that’s no bull… (I’m done, I swear.)

A matter of principle

by MAÔ, posted in Work

Every now and then you may be asked to do something you don’t agree with. It could be small, or maybe something much larger. But how do you adhere to your principles when maybe it’s your job on the line.

The workplace should have an open forum for that kind of discussion. Something that doesn’t devolve into a shouting match. You shouldn’t have to choose to defend your principles or to keep you job.

But if you are asked to choose, maybe it’s time to find a different employer.

Developing your business plan

by MAÔ, posted in Work

What is it that people need? What can you offer that isn’t already out there? Or what can you do better than someone else already is?

These are the thoughts when sitting down to work on your business.

  • Do you have a product or service that will fill a need? One that isn’t already being met.
  • Do you see something that can be improved upon? By how much? Is it an incremental improvement, or exponential?

All products and services come down to that. Filling a need. Savvy marketers know how to create the need, but it always comes back to need. 

So what is it that you need? How would you fill the need. And, then, do you think others may share that specific need?

If so, then you may just have a business in its fledgling stages.

Working a job with no name

by MAÔ, posted in Work

That makes me think of Yojimbo, or A Fistful of Dollars. One of the gigs I work is a cash-only business, and I’m just Mike. No last name, no past. I couldn’t tell you the surnames of any I work with, save two or three. And that’s a weird sensation.

You hide out at work like that. Someone on the run. Someone looking to reinvent themself. Someone covering up the outside life.

With a little digging, it’s easy enough to find a last name. It’s not witness protection. But it’s not the usual work either. It was just a little oddity in a world full of oddities.

On Becoming

by MAÔ, posted in Work

When we’re born, the whole world is open to us. Every new day brings new discovery. What changes?

School. Rather that look to the world, we are conditioned to look to our educators – our supervisors – for instruction. That’s where new things are to be found – in the wisdom of those leading us.

I’m quite fond of teachers, and most do the best that they can, within a broken system. But education now is set up with industrial processes in mind. All cogs must perform equal tasks. Outliers will not be tolerated.

There is an outcry against teaching to the test for this very reason.

The environment today resembles more the environment of learning in the 15th century – the period directly following the creation of the printing press. Knowledge is democratized, and the industrial complex is no longer guaranteed work.

ED vs. ING

by MAÔ, posted in Work

I was working a job last night, until after 11, and I started thinking about what I wanted to do when I got home. Did I want to turn on the tv, and watch some more Grimm? Did I want to continue listening to Something Wicked This Way Comes? Did I want to write, or clean, or some other variation?

And in my notebook as I stood there waiting, I wrote “ED vs. ING”. ED is passive. You are entertained. You are fed. You are pleased. You are relaxed (verb relaxed, not adjective).

ING is active. Creating. Thinking. Hell, even eating. (Oddly, I did a quick Google search and found this article in the LA Times, from 2014.)

And I believe much of our time we waste in passivity. We are entertained by the television. Rather than thinking about what we’re doing, we become the object of someone else’s sentence.

And so I decided to be creating, rather than merely be entertained.

Doing the work

by MAÔ, posted in Work

You do what you do until you can’t do it anymore, and then you do something else.

It’s that simple. I’ve switched jobs often over the past few years, and am considering doing it again. Because it’s all about doing that which you can do, until you can’t.

Find the off switch

by MAÔ, posted in Work

It’s exhausting to be constantly “on”. In extreme cases, I can think of comedians who privately battle depression, but while in public maintain their irreverent persona to the joy of others.

It can be similar in business affairs, in keeping up with the Jones’s, or even in maintaining a functioning household. If there’s no time for full relaxation or decompression, then you’re just “on”, and eventually you’ll burn out.

Effective management

by MAÔ, posted in Work

What does a manager do? How does one motivate employees? When does a supervisor make the leap into leadership. These eight steps are hallmarks of leaders:

  • They asked, “What needs to be done?”
  • They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?”
  • They developed action plans.
  • They took responsibility for decisions.
  • They took responsibility for communicating.
  • They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.
  • They ran productive meetings.
  • They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”

Last week

by MAÔ, posted in Work

Last week was a hard one. It never seemed to coalesce into something resembling free time. It was two days of training, followed by three 11-hour workdays. After a weekend that was filled with more work, volunteering, and an awards banquet, I didn’t have a chance to work on much actual work – the creative stuff.

I’m looking at my spreadsheet, and realizing that I need to be better. But, we all have that week sometimes, when nothing seems to go the way it’s planned. So pick it up, brush it off, and start over. Now is better than later.