Remote Meetings

After days of staying up until past midnight working on our consulting project, my team conducted our remote meeting by holding a conference call. We had already been using Google Docs throughout the semester for all of our group work, so it was very convenient to be able to access all of our materials while on the call. Conference calls are great. They can be easily accessed and can be arranged at a moments notice. I think that the most important aspect of any conference call is to have a designated leader of the call who is able to guide the conversation to hit the desired points. I use conference calls frequently for my work and there are many times where calls are completely unproductive because there is no clear direction and no designated leader to ensure that the call will be productive. Fortunately, our conference call for our project actually was productive.

Concise Writing

While I was working on my business article this week, I came to the conclusion that I may be the only person who has ever written on the topic of business skills in the health profession. Relevant sources were few and far between, and very few were useful. However, thanks to the vast amount of information and resources available to BYU students, I was finally able to scrape together enough information to signify a valiant research effort. While writing the article, I kept thinking about what Mark Twain said about writing a short letter. Being restricted to one page with citations included would have been the most awesome thing ever as a teenager, but now I found it to be a real challenge! I must have changed my font, headers, and graphic 31,495,789 times before I got it right. It was a good experience to force myself to be as concise as possible while writing about a topic of interest to me. Moral of the story, it really is harder to write a short message than a lengthy one.

Interview or Interrogation?

Questions. As an interviewer, your role is to ask the right questions in the right way to get the right results. The desired result is to obtain an accurate idea of what the individual would be like as an employee for your company. However, this is the tricky part. Because questions require a response, they tend to trigger a reactionary type of behavior (similar to defensiveness). As an interviewer, it is essential that you possess the ability to put the interviewee at ease, so that you can have the most genuine interaction with them as possible. This can mean the difference between an interaction coming across as a friendly interview or a hostile interrogation. How can you find the balance between professionalism and friendliness while conducting an interview? I'm not an expert, but I believe that as a general rule if you are real with a person, they will be real with you.  

Subject change. I think that as the interviewee, the most important thing is to be prepared for the job you are applying for. You need to have experiences that you can reference while being interviewed. In class this week, I think that probably 90% of the questions asked in the mock interviews were questions that would benefit from giving an example as an answer. It is very important to get experience in the types of skills that your future employers will be looking for so that you will be prepared to give spectacular answers to those types of questions. 

Networking Luncheon

I attended a BYU Management Society luncheon this week where David Bradford was presenting. The subject that he presented on happened to be - wait for it - NETWORKING! So I attended a networking event where we talked about how to effectively network. Double-whammy. It was great because I feel like networking is an area that I am weak in. I understand the importance of networking, but I have never really put very much effort into it. I typically tend to put my money on my own ability to excel in the work environment. However, this event was a good wake-up call to remind me that I need to be putting forth the effort to network now because in the future it may make all the difference.

The meeting started off with a buffet style lunch. I had the opportunity to meet several successful business men in various fields. I enjoyed talking with them about their experiences in school and their early careers and comparing their experiences to my own. Before David Bradford was introduced, the audience was asked to participate in a networking activity where we were to talk about an impressionable interview experience we have had with the other people at the table. There were some fantastic stories of blunders and successes while interviewing. It was a great opportunity to get to know the other people at the table. 

When David Bradford finally took the stage, I began to critique his presentation as we have done in class. I noted several pros and several cons. 

Pros

• He was an energetic speaker and he came across as very friendly. 
• He effortlessly connected with the audience as if he were speaking to each person individually. 
• He established credibility for the subject matter by using effective story telling to convey his experiences in an interesting way.
• He involved the audience and used those interactions to emphasize his points.

Cons

• He frequently stood in front of the overhead, which blocked the slide he was talking about. 
• He frequently looked at his laptop during the presentation.
• He had a definite home-base (clasped hands) that he returned to consistently. 

Overall, I thought the presentation was very well done, and the advice that David gave was fantastic. The luncheon was a great experience and I may even go to more of these types of things in the future!

The Dread Pirate Home-Base

GoREACT is pretty cool. You might even say its the bees knees of the presenting world. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but I've never watched myself present before (come to think of it, I'm not sure I want to ever again!). It was definitely enlightening to watch my mannerisms and see what I am doing right, and what I still need to work on. The biggest thing that I noticed is that I have a very noticeable home-base. Watching myself on GoREACT, I noticed that as I presented I repeatedly returned with my hands clasped in front of me. It was distracting to me as I watched, so I can't imagine how distracting it was to the audience! Anyway, I do think that it is awesome to find out these sorts of negative habits so that we can work on eliminating them. How do you stop yourself from doing something involuntary? I haven't a clue. Tying my arms to my sides seems like a good idea. I will keep you posted with results.

People Don't Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in hosting a job fair for the company I work for (vivint.solar if you are interested). We had a great turnout, and conducted many rounds of group interviews. Previously, I had only ever conducted interviews with one applicant at a time, so this was an enriching experience for me. I was able to merge my knowledge of the company, my passion for what we do, and the communication skills that I have learned in class in order to capture the attention of the applicants and sell the position for which they had applied. The same skills are essential while being interviewed. I think that a universally applicable rule to live by is voiced in the video posted below. In the video, Simon Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This is a powerful statement. When being interviewed, it is important that you present yourself with confidence, that you show that you are knowledgeable in your field, and that you speak eloquently and professionally. However, no matter how competent you are at what you do, if you are unable to sufficiently sell the interviewer on why you do it, you will not be considered a strong candidate. You need to be passionate about what you do (or want to do). There needs to be a correlation between what you do and how it interacts with something you truly care about. I love my job not because I think that solar panels are awesome (which they are), but because by providing our services to our customers we are saving ordinary people money and are increasing the quality of life for those we serve. I am passionate about helping people live the best life they can possibly live. That is my why. What's yours? 

Networking, networking, networking

One of the coolest things about this blog assignment is the opportunity to have a glimpse of what is going on in everyone else's heads during the semester. It is fascinating to be able to track patterns such as areas that we are all weak in, or common sentiments, and also to see the contrast in the different ways that people view the same scenarios. There are so many different styles of writing and different ways of thinking in even the very small sample size of our classroom! A lot of people have brought up how networking is awesome because it opens up doors and opportunities for you (and I agree with that), but I think that the most impressive thing about networking or interacting with other people in general is the exchange of ideas that can occur. I am currently reading a book about polio virus in the U.S. and the over 50 year process to develop a vaccine. For the first 40 years or so of research, very little progress was made towards developing a vaccine or learning much about the virus at all. However, one man in particular united the efforts of all the top specialists in the country and the resulting exchange of knowledge quickly led to a safe and effective vaccine. Although it is not very likely that if you network you will save thousands of lives, it is likely that if you network effectively you will dramatically increase your opportunities and capabilities.