Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Tip for College Freshman…and No, It Isn’t Follow Your Passion
Here’s my blog that appeared last week in the Huffington Post:
Telling a college freshman to "follow your passion, do what you love and a rewarding career will follow," is usually as futile as encouraging them to begin saving for a retirement account. It may be good advice, but it's premature. Most of them have yet to discover just what it is they are passionate about, since up to this point their "passion" has simply been to graduate from high school and be admitted to their top pick college or university.
Yes, there are those lucky few who enter college knowing exactly where they want to go in life and are driven to get there. They certainly don't need to be told to follow their passion... they are already doing just that. In fact, it's dragging them relentlessly forward.
Other students had a consuming hobby or interest in high school but find that their passion is not going to translate directly into a lucrative career. Realistically, only a minute number will get a chance to enter the world of professional sports, or become A-list movie stars, or win multi-million dollar recording contracts. In the wider world of the college campus they find that their talent is not as great as their passion, and their goals must change.
Telling most students to 'follow their passion' won't work because they don't know themselves well enough to know what that passion is. My tip for students? Learn about yourself to discover your passions -- and that will be your path to success.
A good first step is to start with the basics. For example, this fall, all of our incoming freshman in the College of Business will be taking a talent assessment. They'll create a personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that will be a huge help in their self-awareness, and will be an invaluable tool in career planning. The fact is, not every student is right for every career. What they learn about themselves in this assessment can also give them another clue into finding a passionate direction for a career.
The goal is to try to expand their thinking and take them outside the box to find career options. Sometimes it's not about what they like, but why they like it. They may discover that the field they enter is less important than the type of job they do: a passion for "teamwork," or "a desire to work alone" can find fulfillment in many fields.
We also encourage our freshman to immediately take a course in a major they are considering. Many schools don't allow it until junior year, but we want them to know right away if it sparks an interest or not. Too often students will choose a college major not because of their interests, but because their best friend did, or because that's what their mother wants, or because they think they will make a lot of money. By letting them "test drive" a major early, they find out quickly if they have a genuine interest in it or not.
College is all about discovery. New facts, new knowledge, new skills. But to truly help our students find the path to success, we must go beyond academics, we need to also give them the tools and opportunities to discover the passion inside themselves.
Here’s the link to the piece in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-kruczek/college-freshmen_b_2481987.html
Monday, January 21, 2013
How Curious Are You?
I’ve been spending time with our students who just completed a Career Preparation class in the January Term, and talking with them about interviewing particularly for that first internship or job. So naturally, I’m looking in the press for things related to that topic that I can pass along to them as well as to our more experienced alumni. On that topic, take a look at yesterday’s New York Times, The Corner Office by Adam Bryant and his interview with Kon Leong, the co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an email and file archiving company located in San Jose, California. From the article:
Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?
A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”
Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”
A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.
Q. What other questions?
A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.
I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”
Q. What else do you look for when hiring?
A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.
Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?
A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?
Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?
A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.
For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/business/kon-leong-of-zl-technologies-on-encouraging-creativity.html
Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?
A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”
Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”
A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.
Q. What other questions?
A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.
I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”
Q. What else do you look for when hiring?
A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.
Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?
A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?
Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?
A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.
For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/business/kon-leong-of-zl-technologies-on-encouraging-creativity.html
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Red Flags and the Hiring Process
One of the great things about being at a University is that you get to consider issues and then discuss them with business leaders, faculty and students. One of the topics that I’ve been considering lately is the hiring process. Companies know that it is important to emphasize the hiring process; they understand the costs involved with hiring the wrong person, but often times, other than the screening of the resumes, it’s an entirely unorganized process. Often times, when you evaluate the hiring process, you find out that everyone in the organization gets to ask whatever questions they want to ask of the prospective hire, and there is little effort to make sure that they’re hiring the right person, versus the person we simply like the best. On that topic, below is an excerpt from Sunday’s New York Times the Corner Office column by Adam Bryant, in an interview with Dinesh C. Paliwal, the Chairman, president and chief executive of Harman International Industries. From the interview:
Q. What qualities are you looking for when you hire?
A. I want to know how hungry they are. Are you hungry to get to the next level? Every day you come in the office or wherever you’re traveling, you make progress. And the next day it starts from ground zero. That’s the No. 1 thing I’m looking for. Next, I’m looking for whether they will bring the best out of the teams — and not just the peer groups, but people below them and above them.
And I’m looking for people with courage. The higher up you go, courage becomes the No. 1 thing. If I don’t have courage to listen to my instincts and my colleagues’ critiques, I’m not going to make the right choices because generally the right choices are a little tough to execute.
Q. So what questions do you ask?
A. Everybody in their life has gone through the good, bad, the ugly. How did you manage the worst part? What did you learn? Then I’ll say: “If I were sitting with your boss over a beer, and I were to say, ‘I’m interviewing John for this great job and he’s fantastic. He seems to be great at this and this, but. ....’ ” Then I will ask, “What would that but be?” Some people don’t want to answer that, but some of them actually go on to tell me five “buts.” I’m looking for honesty. I’m looking for self-confidence and people who are secure in their own skin. Another thing I generally ask is, “What would your subordinates say about you?”
Once I have decided that I want to hire somebody, there’s a final step, where I’ll invite the person and their spouse to join my wife and me for dinner. It’s a social dinner. It is an interview but it’s a not interview. And I learn things that I couldn’t learn any other way. Let’s say I’m interviewing a man. I’ll watch how he interacts with his wife. I’ll ask some of the same questions in front of his wife that I asked him before. Is he afraid to say again what he said to me? It’s amazing what you learn.
Here’s another question I’ll ask: “Tell me about a time when you had to give an assignment to your team and it didn’t go well. What was the process? What did you learn from that?” They might say they didn’t give a clear explanation of the challenge, the problem, the difficult situation. Or maybe they didn’t have the right team in place, and didn’t get enough support. But I’m listening to whether they see the big picture. If they start talking about two or three fall guys, that’s a red flag.
Here’s a link to the rest of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/business/harmans-chief-on-how-to-reduce-office-politics.html?_r=0
Q. What qualities are you looking for when you hire?
A. I want to know how hungry they are. Are you hungry to get to the next level? Every day you come in the office or wherever you’re traveling, you make progress. And the next day it starts from ground zero. That’s the No. 1 thing I’m looking for. Next, I’m looking for whether they will bring the best out of the teams — and not just the peer groups, but people below them and above them.
And I’m looking for people with courage. The higher up you go, courage becomes the No. 1 thing. If I don’t have courage to listen to my instincts and my colleagues’ critiques, I’m not going to make the right choices because generally the right choices are a little tough to execute.
Q. So what questions do you ask?
A. Everybody in their life has gone through the good, bad, the ugly. How did you manage the worst part? What did you learn? Then I’ll say: “If I were sitting with your boss over a beer, and I were to say, ‘I’m interviewing John for this great job and he’s fantastic. He seems to be great at this and this, but. ....’ ” Then I will ask, “What would that but be?” Some people don’t want to answer that, but some of them actually go on to tell me five “buts.” I’m looking for honesty. I’m looking for self-confidence and people who are secure in their own skin. Another thing I generally ask is, “What would your subordinates say about you?”
Once I have decided that I want to hire somebody, there’s a final step, where I’ll invite the person and their spouse to join my wife and me for dinner. It’s a social dinner. It is an interview but it’s a not interview. And I learn things that I couldn’t learn any other way. Let’s say I’m interviewing a man. I’ll watch how he interacts with his wife. I’ll ask some of the same questions in front of his wife that I asked him before. Is he afraid to say again what he said to me? It’s amazing what you learn.
Here’s another question I’ll ask: “Tell me about a time when you had to give an assignment to your team and it didn’t go well. What was the process? What did you learn from that?” They might say they didn’t give a clear explanation of the challenge, the problem, the difficult situation. Or maybe they didn’t have the right team in place, and didn’t get enough support. But I’m listening to whether they see the big picture. If they start talking about two or three fall guys, that’s a red flag.
Here’s a link to the rest of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/business/harmans-chief-on-how-to-reduce-office-politics.html?_r=0
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