Here is a configuration:
-AMD Ryzen 5600G with built in graphics (this allows me to delay GPU purchase)
-Asus B550M-A AC motherboard
-Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB RAM
-EVGA Power supply
-Cooler Master MasterBox MB311L Case
-monitor/hard-drive/keyboard/mouse (taken from my old PC)
Total cost: ~$600 (monitor/hard-drive/keyboard/mouse not included in price)
Bought on Newegg and Amazon.
Congratulations, out of the frying pan and into the fire! You have a job interview now. You worked hard to find the job, now it’s time to work harder for the interview. By consulting my clients on interview prep, I have come up with a short list of what needs to be mastered for the interview. Hope it helps you too.
The Sandwich answer:
Interviewer: “So tell me about your strength.”
You: “I believe we all have strengths and weaknesses that are part of our personality. One of my core strengths is my organizational skills. [Insert a specific story that proves this.] Being aware of my strength, I leverage it where I can and try to share this skill with my colleagues.
Stories:
People remember stories. Story answers are the best answers. The components of a good story are three-acts:
Act 1: background, establish the hero, their motives, the who, what, where, why.
Act 2: define the problem, something that causes distress.
Act 3: the solution, restoring status quo, what is the lesson learnt.
Pace and lead:
Match and mirror your interviewer’s personality, appearance, speaking speed. If they talk slow, you talk slow, if they are sitting cross legged, you sit cross legged, of they smile often, you do the same. You can then lead with your answer and they will listen.
Answer what they want to hear:
Always put yourself in your interviewer’s shoes and ask what is the right answer in their mind. Don’t lie, but be aware of what you are saying and what they are hearing.
I believe these are some of the core interview skills and should me mastered with practice. Be yourself, but align yourself with what your audience is expecting. You have a good story to tell, make sure you are heard.
Good luck!
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did it make a sound?
The sound of your voice tells a lot about your personality. Are you someone who is confident, in control, or are you someone who needs to be told what to do. It might seem unfair that when you meet someone for the first time, you are judged based on your voice first, then other parameters. But, you do the same to others. It is one of the many mental heuristics put in place by evolution.
Our ears are different from our eyes in that there is no “lid”, or an “off” switch. Our ears are always on. They must constantly deal with Signal to Noise problems. Realizing this, we need to make sure our audience is hearing what we are saying.
So the next question is, what can I do to make sure I am heard? Excellent question. I have put some thought on this topic, and based on what I have read, seen and heard, here are 3 things to help you be heard.
Have you ever seen a baby sleep? When they are breathing, pay attention to their bellies – they expand and contract like a balloon. This is the most efficient way to breathe. You pull your diaphragm down and allow air to fill up your lungs completely, then deflate using your diaphragm again.
Proper breathing is the first step to proper speaking. This will facilitate point # 2 below. There is an excellent article on diaphragmatic breathing here.
In addition to these conscious breathing exercises, a couple of additional things you can do:
As an added bonus, breathing from the diaphragm will passively improves posture, which will in turn improve confidence.
When you speak, sound waves need to first bounce within your body before you send them outwards. This can happen in one of three places:
Try this yourself, you can pick which of the above three areas your voice comes from. This will affect how authoritative you are perceived as.
Like any muscle in the body, your mouth organ needs to be exercised for optimal performance. There are numerous suggestions on this by the experts (which I am not), but here are a few that I like.
Julian Treasure has made a career out of this subject. He is an expert on this and has several TED talks and books written.
You may bot want to be a public speaker, or the next great military leader, but being conscious of what you sound like is something we can all benefit from in our daily lives.
Congratulations! You have moved on to the next stage. If you thought your struggles in college were over, think again – job search is another beast. The good news is that you can slay this beast.
I would like to share some practical ideas about job search. Having gone through this myself, and seeing others go through this, my article will serve as a summary on the process. The content here is a combination of things I have done myself, read online, and been advised to try. It is not easy, but it does work. I got a great job by following these principles.
First the basics:
Have fun with your search. Turn the “search” into a “hunt”. Once you get the ball rolling, it is only a matter of time.
You will know more about this section better than me, as this is very industry specific. But here are some basics. After you have identified what kind of job you want, list all the job search venues available to you. Some of these may be: job search engines, the company’s job postings page, head-hunters and hiring companies, social media (LinkedIn), career fairs, word of mouth. Be creative and focus on ones that your competitors won’t think of. The more sources you have, your job search will grow exponentially – remember, this is a game of number.
Making a good resume is a daunting task. The best place to start is to look at what works in your industry of interest. Ask friends for their resumes. If you don’t have friends, then ask people in the industry you want to be in for their resume, or if they can have a look at yours. You can find these people by: LinkedIn, cold calling and visiting the company, networking events, etc. You will be surprised how easy it is. Most professional people appreciate sincerity and will do their best to help.
Now that you have a resume, you need more resumes. Have industry specific and job specific resumes, as they require different skill sets, or prioritize different skills in different ways. Have a bank of resumes to pull from. The tracking system below will be useful for this.
A cover letter is different than the resume because it is tailored to every job. You can have a handful of these letters and tweak them little by little as per the job specifics. Be creative in writing this letter. Don’t be overly formal in your cover letter. Make the reader comfortable and eager to meat you in person. If your resume and cover letter are overly long and wordy, that tends to put people who have to reading them off. Try and make it easier for them.
Keywords are extremely important. Identify these keywords from the job description and strategically implant them in your resume. Be subtle.
Final advice, keep these short and to the point. You wan the reader’s attention, not to make it a chore. Who knows, maybe your resume is such a delight to read compared to the others, that you get the phone call.
Creating these documents will take a lot of your time at first. Once you have good templates to work with, it becomes easier. You resume and cover letter are living documents – tweak and optimize them with every opportunity.
Invest some time in fixing up your LinkedIn profile. If you Google search on this topic, you will find lots of great information. LinkedIn has a good section on this topic. Your LinkedIn profile is like a second resume.
You can use LinkedIn to follow the companies you are targeting. This gives you visibility and you can cross-network to the connections within the companies being followed, as well as their networks. Connect to people in these companies and ask them for coffee meetings and get advice. The success rate here is low, but not impossible.
Use LinkedIn to do competitive analysis. You can look at profiles of people who you are competing with for specific jobs. See what they are upto and see their experiences. Think of ways to make yourself stand out.
Writing articles on LinkedIn is an excellent way to show your professionalism. Write on topics that are of interest to you. Not necessarily related to the job. This is another way to show you are better than your competitors. Share, like, and comment on posts periodically. You don’t necessarily need to do this every day, but once a week is good. You can even set time blocks in your calendar, for example, every Friday morning 7am-7:30am.
But please don’t get carried away. Your objective is to use LinkedIn as a job search tool, not a social media platform. Spend only the amount of time necessary to accomplish your goal.
Keep Facebook private. You don’t want your LinkedIn activities to be out of sync with your Facebook activities. Therefore, it is best to keep the two separate. Employers will look you up on both platforms. Try Googling yourself and see what shows up.
There are hundreds of online courses you can take to add to your skill set. Pick courses that are short and relevant. These are available free, for example on YouTube, or paid. The paid ones will give you a certificate at the end. Make them visible on your resume and your LinkedIn profile.
The obvious events to attend are job fairs. But the not so obvious ones are networking events. These can be seen on LinkedIn sometimes. You can also find them on websites that are the industry’s event organizers. These guys are not affiliated to any specific company, but in a way, harmonize the standards across this industry. They usually have networking events once a year. Google search to find out.
Meetups.com is another great place to look for networking events. Don’t spend too much time here, but if you see some event that is related to your job search in the industry you are interested in, then it is a good idea to attend.
I have found this single activity to be the most effective one of all. Tracking is a way to bring everything together. Having an overview of your process and all the moving parts within, makes it manageable.
“What gets measured, gets accomplished.”
Create an Excel file. At the very top, write down the “objective” – this is the goal, the desired outcome, the reasons you are doing this job search. What needs to be tracked: dates (of job search, application, interviews), industries, companies (industry specific), contact, the resume used, the cover letter used, interview notes, any other relevant information that helps in future. Most importantly, each line will have a “folder number”. This folder will contain all the associated files. Create a PDF of the job posting so you remember what it was when you get a phone interview.
I remember I was applying everywhere and when someone would call me back, it would be hard for me to remember who it was. After creating this tracking sheet, it was no problem. I would put this folders on could storage – I used “Box”, but others will do the same thing – to be able to look at it when I get a phone call and I was away from my computer.
I found this to be the most fun part of the whole job search process. I started with phone calls: list the companies in an area, call them up and ask to speak to the department manager. Be polite, but be direct. You will get a lot of rejections from the receptionist, and when you do manage to make it to the managers, you will get further rejections. But don’t worry, your competitors are doing the same thing. If you persist, then you have an advantage.
After you make your list of companies you called, follow up with a visit. This is practical if they are in the same city, or neighboring city. At this point, they are not really looking to meet a potential candidate, but that is something your competitor is also thinking. At the very least, you can drop off your resume. But if you get through to the department manager, they will be impressed with your dedication and retain your contact information for when an opportunity arises. Or perhaps even refer you to someone who is looking for a dedicated individual.
If you are hungry enough, you can offer to work as an unpaid volunteer. Your goal is to get experience, get contacts, get a referral. Keep a part-time odd-job to pay your bills while you are volunteering.
Why are you doing all this hard work? Go back to your tracking sheet and remind yourself of the objective. You have nothing to lose in doing this. I can guarantee that your competitor is not putting in this much effort
“You miss all the shots you don’t take.”
Now that you have made it past the application stage, congratulations, it gets more difficult. An in-person interview adds another dimension to your personality. So far, your interviewer has only read about you on paper, and perhaps heard your voice on the phone. Now you will need to add body language as well, and try to synchronize with what you have previously said.
Spend some time on these two very important topics:
Behaviour questions: we all hate them, but the interviewer loves asking them. It is an easy way to funnel the applicants. The best way to tackle these questions is to prepare ahead of time. Once again, good old Google search will give you a list of such questions. Practice them and after every interview, track how you though you handled them. Note the ones you struggle with and work on them. Before you know it, you will be a master.
Finally, track your progress back on the Excel sheet you created earlier. Remember, what gets measured gets accomplished.
The general theme here is building your “brand”. What are your values and objectives. If you don’t make it clear to your prospects, then how would they know? Think about what makes you unique. Be strategic and look at the big picture. Your brand will evolve with time and experience.
Just like the companies you are looking to work for have a vision statement, you too as a CEO of “You Inc.”, have a vision statement. Jobs come and go, but your unique brand will stay with you.