Watch this before your next job interview to get an edge over others who may have more experience than you

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Tis the season for job interviewing!

 

Yes, it’s that time of year where companies are finalizing their budgets for next year and with that comes approvals for hiring new jobs.  Are you ready?

 

Check out my appearance earlier this year on the We2Me Divorce Decor Show – I use the metaphor of how getting ready to get back in the dating game after divorce can be just like interviewing for jobs.

 

On the show I share 3 tips for getting ready for job interviews.  You will definitely want to watch this before your next job interview to get an edge over others who may have more experience than you!

 

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BTW – here are some blog posts I wrote that will help you to understand my 3 tips even further:

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Still ready to quit? Want to be transitioned to a job you love much faster and easier? Then stop doing this to yourself …

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Warning:  this blog might be tough to read…

 

… but it can help you gain your power back in a job situation you just wanna quit.

 

Buckle up…

 

Identifying with any of the 3 scenarios in my latest blog series about quitting your job is living in agreement that there’s something wrong with your current job, employer, work environment, etc.

 

This erroneously identifies the problem as being outside of yourself leaving you powerless and in victim mode.  Still ready to quit? Want to be transitioned to a job you love much faster and easier?  Then stop doing this to yourself …

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Feel like everyone else’s agenda runs your day and you can’t get anything done at work? You can break this cycle – here’s how…

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Do you feel incompetent, insufficient, discouraged or powerless to get done what you need to or want to accomplish?  Welcome to inefficacy.

 

How much would you agree with these statements:

 

  • I accomplish the things that really matter every day at work.
  • I have the resources I need to get my job done.
  • I feel supported and encouraged at work by my colleagues.
  • I value my contributions at work.
  • Others value my contributions at work.
  • I feel qualified to do my job.
  • I feel I can handle anything that may come up in my job.
  • It’s ok to contribute to others in my unique way.
  • My job matters.
  • I play an active role in addressing issues that come up related to my work or workplace.

 

If your degree of agreement with many of the statements above is low, you may be at risk for experiencing a feeling of powerlessness at your job which can lead to disengagement and eventually burnout.

 

Feeling powerless at work is especially concerning because it can directly affect the quality of your work.  We all know when the quality of your work falls, we stand out – and not in a good way.  In my experience, management tends to tolerate a degree of cynicism from workers who are still producing strong results – and everyone can easily empathize with exhaustion because we all experience it from time to time.  But when you don’t produce – your boss isn’t producing – so it’s a problem that quickly gets noticed.

 

Although there is a lot an organization can do to improve an employee’s ability to recover more quickly from inefficacy – but often it’s left to the individual to “shape up or ship out.”  It usually goes down something like this “It might be a tough time/situation, but your _____________________ (fill in the blank with some negatively perceived quality you may have – i.e. anger, complaining, lack of confidence, unwillingness to participate, etc.), isn’t helping.”

 

The organization often sees feelings of powerlessness as the employee’s problem to fix – not theirs.  Organizations tend to do their part by starting performance counseling – a “talking to”, poor reviews,  written documentation, demotion, etc. or threats of those things come your way to put you on notice that you need to improve.

 

So, do you feel like everyone else’s agenda runs your day and you can’t get anything done at work?  You can break this cycle – here’s how…

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10 Secret Skills that Build Confidence and Engagement for Your Work…

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Continuing on in our countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build confidence and engagement for your work…

 

Remember, they are a countdown because these are a progressive set of skills that can be developed and practiced in your daily work to connect you to a more vivid sense of personal power – of confidence that what you do makes a difference for others.

 

As we practice these skills we not only build our confidence, we simultaneously quiet the noise (the self-sabotaging comments) that produces naturally from our brain/ego in response to anything that is expressed from our spirit – our higher self.

 

So let’s get on with the countdown of  “Secret Skills” – and practice, practice, practice away at them!  Here’s #2 and #1…

 

Drum roll please….

 

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Secret Skills that Build Confidence and Engagement for Your Work…

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Continuing on in our countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build confidence and engagement for your work…

 

Remember, they are a countdown because these are a progressive set of skills that can be developed and practiced in your daily work to connect you to a more vivid sense of personal power – of confidence that what you do makes a difference for others.

 

As we practice these skills we not only build our confidence, we simultaneously quiet the noise (the self-sabotaging comments) that produces naturally from our brains/ego in response to anything that is expressed from our spirit – our higher self.

 

So let’s get on with the countdown of  “Secret Skills” – and practice, practice, practice away at them!  Here’s #4 and #3…

 

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10 Secret Skills that Build Confidence and Engagement for Your Work…

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Here is #6 and #5…

 

Continuing on in our countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build confidence and engagement for your work…

 

Remember, they are a countdown because these are a progressive set of skills that can be developed and practiced in your daily work to connect you to a more vivid sense of personal power – confidence that what you can do makes a difference for others.

 

As we practice these skills we not only build our confidence, we simultaneously quiet the noise (the self-sabotaging comments) that produces naturally from our brains/ego in response to anything that is expressed from our spirit – our higher self.

 

Operating from ego is a state of being that requires effort in order to get something you want for yourself.  Operating from spirit a state of being that requires seemingly no effort in order to enable a benefit for another.  Quieting your will/ego enables your spirit to be the filter through which you perform your daily tasks – that is doing “your work”.  Doing “your work” enables you to easily experience fulfillment.  When ego is the filter through which you perform your daily tasks you are (at best) doing “your job”.  Doing “your job” is often not enough to sustain an experience of fulfillment – or happiness.

 

So let’s get on with the countdown of  “Secret Skills” – and practice, practice, practice away at them!  Here’s #6 and #5…

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10 Secret Skills that Build and Convey a Personal Sense of Power and Engagement for your Work

By Gina Calvano | 1 Comment

From now though March I offer to you a countdown of 10 Secret Skills that build and convey a personal sense of power and engagement for your work.  I suggest them as a countdown because I believe that they are a progressive set of skills that can be developed – meaning working on #10 provides a solid foundation that makes #9 easier to do and share with others.  In other words, I believe it’s going to be very hard to tap into Secret Skill #1 if you haven’t yet incorporated Secret Skill #10 into your daily work.

 

You might be wondering 2 things…

 

1.  Why should I value building a sense of power for my work?  Because when we feel that we have something unique to contribute to others it energizes us and makes us feel like we matter.  Do you want to tap into a greater sense of energy and fulfillment from your work?

 

2.  Why should I value conveying a sense of power for my work?  Because when others get a sense that we are powerful we inspire others (and stand out over other job candidates when we are interviewing).  Inspiring others connects us to a personal sense of mastery of our work.  (Check out what Harvard Business Review has to say about why inspiration matters).  Becoming a master often frees us from external factors (i.e. what others think, do and say) as contributing more to our sense of self-importance and value to others and shifts our source toward internal factors (i.e. what we think, do and say) as contributing more to our sense of self-importance and value to others.  We then become more intention-focused vs. (material) reward-focused.  That shift creates a more sustainable connection to happiness and (therefore), success from our work.   From that the materials markers of success flow more naturally and in greater abundance than we could imagine than when we were solely focused on collecting them.  They become an effortless by-product of our happiness and engagement at work.

 

Our jobs are one of the easiest realms of our life to make a difference because unlike in family dynamics there is no pre-context for others about what we are capable of – (or what might be appropriate for us to be capable of in relation to our elders or given some scale of privileged or tradition we were born into).  At work the people we serve are always welcoming and hopeful for us to give our best.

 

Boosting up the volume on the “secret skills” you already have can matter greatly to those who are served by you or work with you – especially if you…

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Two simple words that could tip the job offer scales in your favor

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So, even if you aren’t sure if you nailed it in the first 20 seconds of your interview, here are the two simple words that could tip the job offer scales in your favor…

 

THANK YOU!

 

Think about this – you basically have 3 opportunities in the interviewing process to convey that YOU are a good match with the job and company:

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The one ability you must demonstrate in a job interview to win favor over other candidates.

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” – Voltaire

 

That one ability is to ask “good” questions.  Do this one thing well and you can win favor over other candidates.  So that leads us to …

Interviewing Toolkit – item #7…

Have a list of “good” questions to draw from – about the company’s:

  • culture
  • view of success (for the company overall and for individual performance)
  • current business challenges

The questions you ask may be the most important part of the job interview for a few reasons:

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People who get hired win favor for employment offers in the first 20 seconds of their interview with this one strategy.

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

I bet you can’t get over the 20 seconds part to even start wondering what this strategy is – so let’s talk about the 20 seconds first – then I’ll share the strategy…

So – “the first 20 seconds” – really?  

Actually, no, not really.

It’s really in the very first second! – and there’s research to back this up …

Michael Bond summarized it well in a feature he wrote for NewScientist magazine  –  Come-to-work eyes: Secrets of Interview Success …

“Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov at Princeton University found that showing people an unfamiliar face for just one-tenth of a second is long enough for them to form judgements about the person’s attractiveness, like-ability, trustworthiness, competence and aggressiveness. Having more time to deliberate doesn’t change our opinions, it only increases our confidence in them.”

His article further explains that of course you don’t want to rest your laurels on that first second – keep oozing out that authentic charm and warmth especially through the next 29 seconds or so – here’s why…

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