<p>I had a look at the new unemployment claims report that came out this morning. Still well above 400K which is the line between slow recover and treading water (barely).</p>
<p>Cisco dropped an egg late yesterday afternoon stating that they’re going to cut costs by a $1 billion. Apparently they’ve had a net increase in employees by 6,000 over the last two years. Estimates of the number of employees from the announced cuts are that they will cut about 4,000 employees from their payrolls. Ouch!</p>
<p>My son sent me nothing about his interview this afternoon (normal operating procedure for young males). After the interview, he went to some kind of party related to his tutoring job (they had a barbecue last week - sounds like a fun place). He got back at 5 and had to work on a presentation and then ran off to give the presentation so I won’t hear from him until 9:00 tonight.</p>
<p>I asked our daughter how it went as she was with him during the phone interview. She said that he wouldn’t tell her but she thought that he looked happy. That may be a good sign.</p>
<p>I recall that he took a field trip attached to his internship last year to see a few big-name tech companies. One of the companies on the trip required the students to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. So I asked him about the trip and he told me about the other companies but he said that he couldn’t talk about the company that he did the NDA for. In general, if he doesn’t want to tell you about something, you’re not going to get it out of him and apparently he takes NDAs and secrets-stuff seriously.</p>
<p>Are all companies the same? Are there answers that fit every company? </p>
<p>It is obvious that the type of companies who recruit young graduates for the purpose of placing then in boot camps from which only people who accept years of indentured servitude will emerge will … applaud and reward an answer such as “I work harder.” There are companies that rely on a yearly fresh supply of hard workers and grinders to make the life of managers, senior managers, and partners easier. </p>
<p>The very few who also happen to work smarter as well as VERY hard might in a distant future end up joining the ranks of those who lure newcomers with promises of exotic travel and 40 dollars per hour overtime. Most find out that what appears to be too good rarely is very good.</p>
<p>Geez. The poster’s D gets TWO job offers over hundreds of other highly qualified candidates because she gave a good, common sense answer to a question. Why do POIH and Xiggi have to try to denigrate that answer. IT WORKED. </p>
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<p>I agree. Working smarter is a good thing, but saying “I work smarter” than a bunch of Ivy-ilk candidates sounds really arrogant to me, and the last thing I want is arrogant employees who think they’re better than their co-workers.</p>
<p>“Nothing works, unless you do.”~ Maya Angelou. Bet she would have liked “I work harder.”</p>
<p>Thanks, Lafalum. I asked my DH about the “I work smarter” line. His response was that it was not a good answer because it implied that the candidate wasn’t willing to work hard(er). Perhaps it is in the nuance of the language.</p>
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<li><p>Arrogance is rewarded if it can be backed up with the quality work. If you can say and deliver people will respect you. CEO’s who can say that the next quarter results will be 10% above the analysts call and deliver on it are not considered arrogant but true leaders.</p></li>
<li><p>Read this article posted in the other thread. Not having arrogance is considered a weakness in the asian children. Their timidness is considered not leader like. Arrogance is considered as leadership quality if can be backed by the delivery of the promises.</p></li>
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<li>I already indicated that saying in the interview that “I work smarter” is very difficult because without able to support your statement it will make you arrogant. But if you can follow it up with concrete example of how then it won’t be an arrogant answer but a real smart one.</li>
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<p>I indicated later in the post that I do understand not all jobs need smart worker some just need hard worker.</p>
<p>I’ve done some interviewing, although not recently for entry level people. My reaction to the answer was quite negative for the “I work smarter”, and positive for “harder”. I was trying to figure out why, and what came to mind was this: Saying you work smarter sounds like a put down of the other workers, to the extent that 1) I would infer you’re saying they’re not as smart as you, when you have not met them; and 2) it sounds arrogant, given you are interviewing for a job you don’t have. How do you know you’ll work smarter when you haven’t yet worked at the job at all?</p>
<p>Saying you work harder does not sound like a put down of future colleagues, it sounds like a commitment to the employer. But this was just my perception.</p>
<p>This is a myth. If someone work smarter doesn’t mean that (s)he smarter than all other. It just mean that the work ethics emphasize working smart. There is a difference between the two statements and both are not synonyms. </p>
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<p>Then what even if someone have not done some job that doesn’t mean that when they have to do it then they’ll do a crappy job. I think we are talking about the attitude, some people do the job just for the sake of doing it other might try to optimize every task prior to doing it. </p>
<p>I was talking about the attitude and some people can have the attitude to work smart.</p>
<p>Arrogance is not an admirable quality, even if it can be backed up with skill and abilty to deliver. There are plenty of smart people willing to work well with colleagues without strutting around with a cocky, arrogant temperment. There is a lot of room between deference and arrogance. Arrogant people are not good leaders because they annoy people. Good leaders are those who have people who want to work with them and learn from them, not ones who offend others and make them want to hightail it out of there PDQ.</p>
<p>I brought son home for the semester. He had a research paper to present this evening and that was it for the semester.</p>
<p>I asked him about the interview on the way home and he said that they want him in for interviews at two separate facilities on specific dates - he has to provide the times. They described the positions that they have open to him and they both sound like they cover quite complex areas. It appears that they only asked him one question - which would you prefer to do: a, b or c? He answered correctly: I would like to do a and b and am willing to do c. If you do a, then you’re going to have to do some of c. You can also do c exclusively but it’s far less interesting than a and b. They spent the rest of the time explaining the company and the positions to him. They also went over the allotted time. Never schedule phone interviews back-to-back.</p>
<p>We’ll see how the in-person interviews go next week.</p>
<p>He needs to reply to the Japanese conglomerate tonight as they want to do a phone interview tomorrow or Monday.</p>
<p>Could you have missed my point altogether? Did I say that one answer was better than the other one. In this case, the answer fits the MO of one particular company, and might not work at another one. </p>
<p>After all, didn’t I write, “Are all companies the same? Are there answers that fit every company?”</p>
<p>Fwiw, aren’t there dozens of better answers than “I work harder” or “I work smarter,” or what this a multiple choice to pick the less “poor” of two answers? One could find faults in either of those answers, depending on the expectation of the interviewer.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I could say i work smarter or I work harder in an interview, but I can see how either would work in that question. I work smarter doesn’t necessarily mean you are being cocky about your intelligence. It could mean you are a better time manager, you are more efficient, etc. I work harder could imply i don’t take breaks, I work overtime, etc. It just depends in what context you are using it.</p>
<p>I just interviewed for a job at work and unfortunately didn’t get the position. (cry) however, I know I nailed my interview… I’m great at interviewing. If you are not very good at interviewing, you might want to do some research ahead of time as far as what type of questions may be asked… like what type of interview is it? Behavioral? If so, Think of certain examples in your head of things that you have done that you can mold into different questions if they come up. I work for a fortune 100 and I have a copy of our interview guide that is used by HR. They don’t use all the questions in the guide but they do pick a few for each interview and then they adapt them to pertain to the job in which you are interviewing for. </p>
<p>I’m thinking about posting for another job at work. It’s a complete 180 from what I’ve been doing and in a completely different office building 40 miles away, but it sounds interesting and it might be nice to mix things up a bit… and I’d probably be able to telecommute a few of the days if I got it. I don’t know if I even have a chance at it since I’m not very experienced in that field however I do have a little bit of experience - the job description is very similar to what I did during my internship years ago… so who knows. I don’t know if I don’t try and it’s great to get your name out there.</p>
<p>Some companies do pay overtime to salaried employees. I’m salaried plus I get monthly bonuses. If I physically work any time in excess of 40 hours they will calculate out what my hourly rate would be including both my salary AND my monthly bonus added in and will pay me time and a half of that figure. So if someone makes 20 bucks an hour when they figure out what would be their hourly rate, and their monthly bonus over the course of the month adds up to say 5 bucks an hour, they will pay that person 37.50 per hour of overtime above 40 hours.</p>
<p>I frankly have no idea whether it was a good answer or not; all I know is that it was the one she gave (twice), and that it was a tiny part of one two-day round of interviews in the first case (where she sat silently through an entire “interview dinner” where, apparently, the other “smarter” applicants cut each other apart), and an entire day with six different departments the second. It made sense to me not in any hypothetical sense, but right FOR HER, given what she knew about the competition. There was (in both cases) no question that there were “smarter” applicants (in the traditional sense) than she is, and 95% had one more year of school than she did, and more applicable internship experience. And of course, came with schools with greater cachet. (The question was, oddly, “Why are you better than everyone else?” not “Why should we choose you over other applicants?” - I don’t know if that makes any difference - I doubt it.) </p>
<p>As to the job itself, from my perspective, Xiggi is exactly right. She’s cheap fodder until (or unless) she becomes one of the “chosen”. She doesn’t actually expect to make a career there, but to “cut her teeth” as it were. And she might end up hating it! (The job she turned down was more like a career opportunity.) But who knows? She is, after all, only 20, and life will take its twists and turns.</p>
<p>So what types of jobs/careers might you suggest for a kid who is off the charts in terms of Emotional/Social Intelligence so can ace interviews, but is (ahem!) rather unexceptional academically? I was thinking school principal, because the person has to juggle the needs and demands of students, teachers, parents, staff, and district. Of course, I think almost all principals have to first spend at least a few years as teachers, then probably go to graduate school part-time to become administrators.</p>
<p>I would have thought CEO, provided s/he can judge talent well enough to hire the intellectual firepower required. (By the way, my kid did GREAT academically - magna cum, Beta Sigma Gau, senior accounting award as best student, etc. - it’s just her standardized test scores - even after using Xiggi’s method - well, most folks on this site would likely laugh at them.)</p>
<p>just because someone goes to say a top 10 school doesn’t necessarily mean they are smarter or brighter or better educated then someone who went to a lesser known school which is off the charts somewhere. I’m sure your daughter is very bright and I’d definitely be super proud of her for landing the job!!! I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person and my standardized test scores weren’t that great at all! I hate multiple guess tests!</p>
<p>Mini, you did have one Bubble Queen who made the test look trivial. Can’t have it all … all the time! Your second daughter is a living proof that a SAT score represents a very small piece of the academic and personal puzzle.</p>
<p>I’m now officially considering an MA in educational leadership in student affairs, if I could get the financial aid to work. The program is pretty much tailor made for my interests and would qualify me for the kinds of jobs I want. I really don’t want to go back to school right now though, so that’s going to be on the back burner for a while.</p>
<p>Yup. There was a time when I thought it would be great (and not just in the SAT sphere) if each had a piece of the other one’s talents and skills. But then they wouldn’t be who they are. </p>
<p>I asked the older one last weekend whether she thought she could teach the skill, and she said definitely not, because, try as she might, she doesn’t know how she is able to do process of elimination even when she is clueless. But she can! The other one does fine - provided it is subject matter she has studied.</p>