What shift do you have to make in how you view yourself to be create that presence?  What homework about the organization, the industry, and the interviewers do you have to do? What questions do you want to ask people that are in the know about this organization?

You know the answers.  Just ask yourself the right questions to create your own “star quality”.

What questions have you asked yourself that have helped you win an Oscar in the interview?

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• Can You Over Prepare for the Interview?
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Bertie (soon to be King George VI) made a few mistakes in his attempt to solve a persistent problem and to overcome the fear he knew would be disabling for him in his new role:

1. He thought he could maintain his façade (identity) and solve the problem.  What he didn’t acknowledge is that we have to be willing to give up our identity so we can be authentic.  At the end of the day, his willingness to recognize that he was just like other people and could be truthful with himself allowed him to get beyond some obstacles he had been stuck behind!
2. He rejected the “coaching” because he didn’t want to step out of his comfort zone. What he discovered was that when he allowed himself to do things he couldn’t imagine a “royal” would do, when he began to trust the coach, he began to get real results.
3. He kept his passions under control.  When he let out his passions either in anger (at his coach) or in love (with his daughters), he found his voice.  Your voice, kept under wraps, only has you appear ordinary!
4. He wanted to focus on the “mechanics” and not on the rest of his life.  When he was willing to work with the coach on looking at the whole person, he had some major breakthroughs in his ability to use his voice.

Having an effective interview or delivering an effective presentation is more about you showing up authentically, expressing what you have to express in your own unique voice, and trusting your ability to connect with others than about getting the mechanics right!   Practicing your response to questions is part of the “mechanics” you have to include in your preparation.  And when you go deeper in your exploration of what you really have to offer – of doing what even the future King George VI found he had to do – that is when you will win the Academy Award!

Contact Pegotty Cooper (moc.repoocyttogepnull@yttogep) if you would like to go beyond he mechanics and bring out your unique voice and authentic you in your career development efforts or in preparation for an upcoming interview.  Check out the free consultation link on the right side of this site – by the picture of the calendar. (http://bit.ly/PegottyCalendar)

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You are there to find out what they need. And when you find out what they need you can share with them what you have that will help them address that need and get the results they are looking for.

The key to finding out what they need is to ask questions.

In order to ask good questions you need to get a little insight into the context of the job, get a general understanding of some of the needs they may have and results they want to get – the homework you have probably already done to customize the resume you used to get the interview!

If you do days and days of preparation, and learn all about the company and about the industry and all about the issues they are facing – when you are in the interview you may be compelled to tell them how much you have learned, what you think they could be doing, and generally set yourself up for being judged and assessed for everything you say. Your time will be better spent on reviewing their materials and jotting down a few questions to ask them if you were talking to them as a consultant.

Keep the focus on the employer, listen to what their concerns are, ask questions from the perspective of the experience you have had in similar situations, and keep your consultant hat on asking “how can we work together to achieve the results you want?”

If you are stuck in your job process and not getting the interviews you want, or getting the results from the interviews, join my Career Strategy Group which meets every Tuesday morning at 9 am. Click here for more details.

Share your comments at Can You Over Prepare for the Interview? on Career Strategy Roadmap

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• Become a Believer in Asking Questions!
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Celebrate what you accomplished!

No doubt you left behind a long list of accomplishments. If you can’t make a list of 10 – 20 things you accomplished there, ask some of your former colleagues or look at your past performance reviews and make a list of all of your successes, both big and small.

Close the door on what you didn’t accomplish!

You also probably left behind a few unfinished projects, ideas that never got off the drawing board, or things you wished you had done but didn’t. You cannot be an architect of the irrevocable past, as my Dad used to say! You did what you did and you didn’t do what you didn’t do! That is the current reality. What can you learn from that reality? Take the learning and leave the regrets. Put those concerns out the back door and close it tight!

Be selective about continuing contacts.

Pick one or two people with whom you want to keep in contact and keep in contact. They will provide continuity for you over the next few months and can help remind you about your successes and the good will you left behind. Don’t maintain contact with those who want to grouse about the organization and gossip about what is currently going on. Who cares??!!

Take a break!

Give yourself permission to decompress and regenerate yourself. Do things which energize you – maybe projects you put off; or getting into a healthier regime; getting back to nature; or reconnecting with your family and friends. Decide how long you are going to be “on vacation” before turning to the work of creating a new future.

Break the elephant into smaller pieces.

When you find yourself confused or overwhelmed, maybe you are just taking too big a bite. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! The same applies to your job search. Assemble the first tool, make the first network contact, update your profile on LinkedIn – one bite at a time! Just be consistent with taking a bite, and then the next bite and the next one.

Create a routine for yourself.

When you are on shaky ground or lost in a fog bank, it is nice to have a little structure around you – something you can count on. The job gave you some certainty, regardless of how much or little you embraced the structures like meetings and reports, and updates and deadlines. Now you have to create that for yourself. Set up a schedule for yourself each day. Or better yet, join with others to support you in your mutual quest. Join a job search group which provides accountability, ideas, resources, and contacts. There are local groups where you meet face-to-face or groups which meet over a telephone bridge line.  And when you reach out for support from others, it becomes less of drudgery and more of a group project with all the camaraderie and people there to remind you to celebrate the small wins every day!

Keep things in perspective.
Be grateful everyday and every month for having what you need. Consider that some of your old wants were to give you a reward to offset the stress of the job.  Without the stress of the job, do you really need as much? You don’t have to keep feeding the question “am I doing enough” or  giving yourself what you feel entitled to after all of that effort day after day.  And now you can be satisfied with the joys of being a human being, gloriously alive and always imperfect!

Embrace the adventure
Keep exploring and experimenting with the things that stimulate and energize you!  Do it with some friends.  Take some risks. Be curious. Be OK in not knowing how it is all going to turn out in the end.  Remember,
“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. “  Rainer Maria Rilke

What do you do to let go of the old job and energize the search for the new job?

To join with other motivated career seekers in a small group for accountability, resources, contacts and collaboration, contact Pegotty, moc.pamdaorygetartsreeracnull@yttogep.  Two groups have openings now, one on Tuesdays at 9:30 am and one on Wednesdays at 9:00 am, both on a telephone bridge line.  You pay $99  monthly and can join anytime.

Share your comments at The First and Most Important Step in the Job Search: Letting Go of the Old Job on Career Strategy Roadmap

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• Putting YOU in Your Resume, Really!
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“The concept of being able to be ‘me’ in a resume was almost stunning. Didn’t think that was ‘allowed’. Wow!”

The response to the webinar was eye opening. Over 325 people registered in advance so the title obviously struck a note even before the webinar began.

The most telling responses on the post-event survey were all along the lines of the quote above. Over and over people implied that they thought that they had to fit into a box that didn’t allow their uniqueness and “specialness” to be expressed.

Are you hearing this anyone who is a manager or leader of people in an organization? I am willing to bet that that belief does not go away when the resume becomes an employee! How many of your employees are afraid to show their real talents and gifts for fear of not fitting in? Or perhaps out of fear of standing out?

Your Competitive Advantage

In Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin, he says “The only way to get to new levels of effectiveness is to have people to express not suppress their specialness”.

If you are a job seeker, if you don’t distinguish yourself , you will be a victim in the new economy. If you are an employer, if you don’t distinguish yourself and your team and your organization then you will be a victim in the new economy.

Hmmm! There seems to be a good argument for putting YOU in the Qualifications Summary and then appreciating the real you in all of your workplace engagements.

I will be coaching participants at the ASAE Annual Meeting in L.A. Click here to learn more about reserving a coaching session with me at the ASAE Annual Meeting in LA Aug 21-24.  I can help you to get clarity and confidence about putting the REAL YOU in your Qualifications Summary! Or contact me for a free Career Strategy Session. You can click here to pick a time from my calendar which works for you.

Link for calendar: http://bit.ly/PegottyCalendar

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Going for an interview or exploring some potential employers?

Ask open ended questions of people you meet who work there –What do you like best about working there? What is the prevailing management style? What is the average age (or most prevalent) age of employees? How long have people on staff been on the job?

How often does the leadership meet face to face with the employees? What is important to the organization? What kinds of goals do people have? Are there incentives offered for performance? Is information shared in all directions? Is there a focus on the mission of the organization? What would you change if you could?

Do more asking than telling in the interview.

Organizations will also put as much weight on the questions you ask in the interview as the answers you give. You want to know that the job and the organization is as good a fit for you as you are for them!

Asking questions gives you an opportunity to show the depth of your listening skills and the ability you have to synthesize the responses you get in the content of the homework you have done about the organization.

And more importantly, asking questions also builds trust because you present yourself as someone who doesn’t have all the answers, who is willing to explore someone else’s ideas and it allows you to step into the other’s world and to get a sense of what they are about.

Share Your Best Questions!

What questions have you asked that have opened up conversations or revealed some very interesting information? Share those here in the comments section below!

Share your comments at Become a Believer in Asking Questions! on Career Strategy Roadmap

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• Can You Over Prepare for the Interview?
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The chances are good they are not talking about a skills fit, an experience fit, or an accomplishment fit! Those are a given by the time you pass the screening for the interview – or they are close enough that the organization knows that what it needs to check for now is “fit”.

The questions that interviewers are trying to answer about “Fit” include:

• Do you have enough in common with and compatible with the people with whom you will be spending a lot of time?
• Do you fit into the image that the organization wants to project to its stakeholders, to its members, leaders and staff members?
• Do you share common personal and corporate values, educational background, work habits, work ethics, generational and cultural orientation, looks and outside interests?

People hire people and they view others through their preconceived notions of what make a “good fit” in their organization!

Do your homework. Keep your eyes open.

You can get a sense of what “fit” means by doing your homework –

• Reviewing materials generated by or about the organization and its leaders on their website or in the press. Checking out the bios of the key leaders and executives; review press releases and other media information about who gets rewarded for what;
• Checking out the conversations about the organization in places where employees might gather for lunch of after work. Or check with suppliers that you know provide the organization with a service or products. Is there respect among the various stakeholder groups? A good partnership between volunteers, staff and suppliers?
• Getting info from social media sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor.com, or mentions in Twitter. From LinkedIn to get information on some current AND former staff – You can learn a lot this way and it may also lead you to introductions to those with an inside perspective.

Even on the day of the interview you can notice details along the way, in the offices on the walls that give you some clues about what is important to the organization.

Passing three levels of scrutiny:

The hiring manager and interviewers are looking at you from three perspectives:

1. What you have done based on past experience, job activities, accomplishments and education.

2. What you can do based on potential and aptitude for different projects and activities.

3. What you can do based on personal and professional goals, preferences, interests, and cultural alignment – in other words “FIT”.

So the interviewers have been applying their perception filters to this process of scrutiny. It is fair for you to put this simple, direct question about “Fit” on the table at the end of the interview:

Based on our interview today, what would be your single greatest concern about my ability to be successful in this role?

This gives you the ability to address misconceptions that may have come up during the interview process and to correct those perceptions before they become full fledged reasons why you are “not a fit”.

Perception and Adaptability

Finding a “fit” is not about turning yourself into a pretzel, as one of my colleagues described it! It is about getting the discussion about “fit” out on the table so that the perceptions about “fit” of all parties can be part of the interview. If “fit” isn’t discussed, perceptions can never be visible. If they aren’t visible, then neither party has the ability to let go of their perceptions and choose based on other evidence.

The interviewers may perceive that experience, accomplishments, aptitudes and underlying potential can carry the day. Or they may decide that there is a culture into the candidate must fit because the culture is the culture and it ain’t changing! Or the organization recognizes the need to change and is going through the painful process of letting go!

One way to move that along is to open exploration of both perspectives. And perhaps the interviewer will see that adopting a stance of adaptability can create synergies out of the disparate talents, abilities, and cultural attributes that people bring to the table, making the organization better able to anticipate opportunities and respond to challenges of this rapidly changing environment in which we find ourselves!

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• Can You Over Prepare for the Interview?
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• Creating Star Quality in your Interview

Leading with heart takes courage and that “V” word – Vulnerability. Lencioni himself identifies invulnerability (the absence of trust – and a resistance to being vulnerable by trusting) as one of the Five Temptations of a CEO in a book by the same name. Lencioni challenges the reader to ask the following questions:

• Do you have a hard time admitting when you are wrong?
• Do you fear your direct reports want your job?
• Do you try to keep your greatest weakness secret from your direct reports?

There is no place to hide. While we believe we can put on a lot of bravado, our weaknesses are usually pretty evident to those who spend enough time around us. And our fear of being found out usually transmits itself without our permission through our “mirror neurons”. So it is better to accept one of the realities you will hopefully come to embrace – when you are your genuine self, warts and all, and lead with your heart (as well as your head) you will be a magnet for people. They will want to be around you and to follow you on whatever path you are taking.

For more information about either of the books referenced, go to the Resources page on and click on the book cover.

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You might also be interested in:

• Exploring “Fit” in the Interview!
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