Catherine Preston . com

Well today I’ve revamped my CV as the recent discussion I had with my representative at Right Management stated that I needed to rewrite from the perspective of ‘achievements’ instead of responsibilities. So I did half and half, a short description of the job role and what I achieved from that job. You can see this update on my LinkedIN profile.

In addition I’ve been reading a lot of articles on job hunting, job descriptions and salary checkers to see what I should realistically be earning. It’s a lot of information to take in!

In my efforts of learning and improving my CV, interview techniques and all that razzmatazz I came across a great article: How to Hire – and Get Hired – in a Recession by Jason Calcanis.

So I’ve taken inspiration from Jason and written down my responses to his guidance interview questions that he likes to ask.

1. Do you live to work or work to live?

For me it depends on the job being applied for, some work is clearly ‘work to live’ in that it pays the bills, however the majority of the time I aim to ‘live to work’ in the kind of work that feels like play. When I’m passionate about the job and the lifestyle then it no longer feels like work but instead like play. I’m all for work / life balance but sometimes there has to be give and take. However I’d rather be passionate about what I do and can’t wait to get into work and problem solve until solutions are found. To innovate and challenge why things can’t work a certain way, to understand the ‘what’ of what the data is that a decision is based upon and to challenge the quality of the date to ensure its trustworthiness.

2. Do you consider yourself a workaholic? Do you think there is anything wrong with being a workaholic?

Am I a workaholic? I wouldn’t say so no. I work because I love to work in teams, the problem solve and find ways to improve the quality of our lives. I would classify a workaholic as someone who creates work, just to be busy. Who works to avoid other circumstances or has a limited perspective on priorities. I’m a person who will sacrifice personal health in order to get the job done, as it doesn’t make sense to have an unhealthy member of staff who cannot continue working in the long run and instead burns out due to stress and over work.
Yet I wouldn’t say being a workaholic is necessarily bad. Every person has a style of working, if they continue to do well for the business, have no personal issues with working longer hours and has the time to do so, then that is their decision.

3. Are you able to turn it off at 6 p.m. and on Friday for the weekend? You don’t get obsessed by work, do you? (Trick question!)

Heh, well .. it may be a trick question but even so a trick answer can be applied. Just take what I say below and think of the reverse!

No of course I can always turn ‘it’ off at 6pm and go home without a worry in my head, I’m blissfully ignorant of the business requirements of what needs to be done and why. *Riiiiight*

Well as always it depends on circumstances some jobs are one that require you to be conscious of what’s required to do the job and that spills over at times. I am known to perseverate at times but knowing this, I make sure that I’m organized and accept that not every business driver needs to be a personal driver at evenings and weekends. This is why it’s called Business and not Life.

4. Do you consider yourself a balanced person?

On the whole I am a balanced person, a healthy sense of humor helps ensure that the dark and light times of life are treated equally as a moment in time. The Cadbury brothers gave a great quote once: Life is made up of crazy paving and you lay it yourself. This is to me is a truism.

5. How would you feel if we all needed to come in on the weekend to make a deadline?

At the moment I don’t have the same kind of personal commitments like having a family to consider when being asked to work weekends on occasion. However I do feel that there should be respect on both sides; that business can ask for help in reaching deadlines and that business respects a persons right to time off in lieu of helping that business over a weekend. So in short, I would be okay as long as I can take my ‘weekend’ at other days of the week within a reasonable amount of time.

6. How would you feel if this happened two weekends in a row?

Again this wouldn’t bother me too much as long as it didn’t stretch to entire evenings and weekends continuing for weeks upon end. I understand the cycle of supply and demand and that allowances need to be made, so two weekends wouldn’t bother me. A month of evenings and weekends however would start to be a bit much over a long time of repeating episodes say 3 or 4 months in a year in total.

7. It’s a tough time right now, and we’re super short-staffed—how would you feel if I asked you to cover for [insert job lower than candidate's experience] when they’re on vacation?

I consider this part of business, if it is expected of everyone and its part of the culture of helping to do business then that’s fine. Its about respect and courtesy, everyone is entitled to vacation and should not have to worry about the job falling apart around their ears when they go on vacation, regardless of a junior or senior position .. its called teamwork for a reason.

8. Speaking of vacation, do you bring your BlackBerry and laptop with you to check in? Or do you like to unplug completely?

There are some vacations that need to be completely unplugged, however I always take the policy that on vacations in the UK I try to take my computer and mobile with me so that if an emergency arises I’m available within a few short hours. However there are some holidays where I will take the stance of having no office related items with me but will leave my personal mobile number with one individual, usually the direct manager for emergency contact. That way I’m available by phone for real emergencies but will not be able to do more than verbally coach through a problem.

Still that’s not to say I’m completely unplugged, I’m a geek after all, I have my own technology with me .. just not for the office, but for my own reasons like phone and a camera, maybe in the future a little netbook too

. . .

The second part of the article for people hiring and needing Interview questions, followed with hiring ‘high impact players’.

1. Who are the top three clients you’ve worked for? (This could be internal or external.)

The senior management & marketing departments at an Oil & Gas company.
The students while working on the university IT elpdesk.
Global quality assurance within a healthcare company.

2. What problem did you solve for these three clients?

Oil & Gas – to much print media of flyers, brochures etc were wasted at exhibitions, generating many duplications of flyers in numerous languages. I created a prototype solution of replacing print media with CD media holding the brochures electronically allowing exhibition attendees to read any language or product family they wished from the same disk. This reduced print waste and volumes of CDs were less in cost and environmental impact than print waste.

Students at University – I always enjoyed working the Saturday shift with the library computer labs as the questions asked were always varied. Some students had basic word questions, others an excel graph, or printing / network / virus problem that needed help to find a solution. Each problem was addressed directly with a solution catered to their needs at the time.

Quality Assurance – had problems with documentation control at a business wide level, how could we ensure that all documentation entering in a validated document repository were correct and how could we clean up incorrectly placed documents. I helped in leveraging a team of volunteer document controllers to enforce a documentation structure and built a network of trusted individuals who worked well with others. Creating a communication channel that shared information freely, and reported findings back through to QA.

3. How long did you work for these clients?

For the Oil & Gas business I worked for 1 year, as a student IT Helpdesk worker I worked for just over a year part time and with the QA department I worked a little over 3.5 years.

4. Can I have the names of these clients as references?

Sure, look on my LinkedIN profile to see references and I’ll provide you with additional names.

5. What was the best product/service you ever created/sold and why?

The best product I built was the print media to CD media prototype switch because I could anticipate a business need, had the required business analyst skills to understand the requirements of the market and exhibition customers, the computer skills to develop a prototype. After winning funding to develop this prototype into a full product to replace and supplement print media I followed through with sourcing suppliers, creating tenders and outsourcing the work. Thereby, initiating a project with tangible financial improvements until the student placement year ended.

6. What was the most disappointing product/service you ever created/sold and why? What did you take away from that?

The most disappointing service I ever created was a student project working with a team mate to product a coding project. I can’t remember specifics of the task but I learned a valuable lesson. That is to work with and select team members who are as equally motivated and if not able to select team members to inspire and work on sections of a project together. To listen to the areas they are uncertain in and to support and voice the concerns and areas I require help with. The balance of team work is a difficult lesson and one that is constantly being learned with new scenarios. Learning to listen, to have an equal voice and to be respectful of our limitations and areas of expert abilities.

. . .

So all in all I thought the article was good about how to question future hires and what to do as a future hire. I’m a hard worker, I like being challenged and I’m pretty innovative and resourceful. Professional, reasonable and above all respectful of the business and the people who make up that business.