What Was Your Weirdest Interview Experience

What Was Your Weirdest Interview ExperienceWhat Was Your Weirdest Interview Experience?What Was Your Weirdest Interview ExperienceMost of us have experienced something weird in a job einstellungsgesprch, either a question that came out of the interviewers backside or some personality quirk that was just odd. Or maybe the whole interview was bizarre.Hiring managers have more than enough stories about weird behavior from job candidates, but sometimes theyre just as guilty themselves. Here are four weird interview scenarios Ive either read about, heard about, or experiencedThe I Cant Seem to Grab His Attention Syndrome. The interviewer makes eye contact with you only about 10% of the time because hes too busy picking lint off his jacket, playing with his tie, or tapping away on his laptop.The Multi-Tasking Interviewer. Youre there because youre interested in a job. Shes eating lunch and checking her email while trying to determine whether youre a good fit for the job.The Idiotic Interro gation. After reviewing your resume and highlighting a few points, the hiring manager questions your judgment with something like Why did you take such an awful job with an equally awful company? Or, You were at this place for a year and at that place for two years. Do you have a problem with commitment?The Question That Comes out of Left Field. Something like How many blades of grass are in left field at Fenway Park? (pun intended), or Why are manhole covers round?

Intention Is the Third Stage in Managing Change

Intention Is the Third Stage in Managing ChangeIntention Is the Third Stage in Managing ChangeIn the Intention Stage, the change agents and senior managers weigh the strategies and alternatives available to move the needed changes forward in the organization. They decide upon a specific course of action that will bring about change. They formulate a vision for the organization. The Intention Stage ends with the selection of an approach for moving the organization through to make the changes needed. The options in change management strategies and tactics are also considered. Strategies that will accomplish the approach are also determined. Up to this point, youve done a lot of thoughtful consideration of the problems your organization faces. Youve identified the need to make changes. And, youve considered the options that you have for the change and making the change. If youre following the recommended course of action thus far, you have also assessed the readiness and the willingness of the employees in your organization to pursue the course of action and the needed changes. Stage 3 Intention In the Intentions Stage, change agents, senior leaders, and managers must do all of the following to ensure success. Assess the impact of suggested solutions and improvements on the organization.If you are using an external consultant, assure that the organizations goals and needs are clearly understood and agreed upon in a written contract.Make sure that the appropriate people are involved from across the organization and that their input is considered, and when sensible, implemented.Involve as many people as appropriate and possible so that you are developing buy-in and support on the front end. This is far oben liegend to dragging your employees kicking and screaming after the changes have been put in place- kicking and screaming isnt pretty and it can undermine the chances of your changes succeeding. And, employee resistance can undermine everything because resista nce can even reach a point where employees are actively sabotaging the effectiveness of the changes. Consider additional strategies and methods for initiation and implementation to further reduce employee resistance to change.Examine the goals and direction of critical people and work units to assess the degree of conflict likely to arise and result from the selected solutions and strategies to accomplish it.Explore organization development and training options to assist with the next three stages of change.Inform employees about the selection process, the alternatives considered, why alternative solutions were rejected, and the rationale for deciding on the selected approach. The more you communicate with employees before you implement the changes, the more involved and committed they are likely to feel and act. You need to avoid the appearance and mistake of doing something to them- instead, create changes with them. Make sure that employees feel compensated, rewarded, and recogni zed for the extra time and effort that they expended in the evaluation process. You need to pay attention to this at every stage of a change process.Make sure that the senior members of the management team are onboard and supporting the need to change. In fact, this is a very important group to have by your side asyou implement any changes in your organization. If they dont support the changes, they will undermine and may even sabotage your efforts tomove the needed changes forward. They have too much influence over too many people if they are not on your change team. As many executives implementing change in their organizations have noted, their biggest mistake welches allowing the members of the senior team to undermine their change efforts for way too long before firing them. If they dont quickly come on board, they wont. You can trust this fact. Greg Scheesele, when leading a change effort at Pall Gelman Sciences Corporation said, I gave my senior team about eighteen months to g et on board. It was my biggest mistake. I should have known within 30-60 days who would support our changes. Decide which of the suggested solutions will best address the problems you have identified.Create and broadly share an energizing, inspiring vision of the future state to create widespread support for the change.Decide where and when to start. Determine whether you will be more successful starting in a single work unit or department to run a pilot or if youd be better off diving right in and involving the whole organization. See the six stages in change management. mora Related to Change Management Build Support for Effective Change ManagementChange Management TipsChange Management Wisdom

3 ways to test your startup idea before investing money

3 ways to test your startup idea before investing money3 ways to test your startup idea before investing moneyAs an entrepreneur, failure is part of the process. Not every business concept or product design will be a winner.The key is to spot the duds quickly, so you can focus your time and money on the ideas that have the most potential.But even though weve all heard the advice to fail fast, its hard to find actionable strategies for actually doing it.How can you determine if theres demand for your product or service, before investing the time and money to create it?After starting five businesses, Ive discovered three simple tests you can use to get started.1. Look for search trafficA quick, easy way to see if theres demand for your idea is to find out whether people are searching for it on Google.Obviously, they wont be searching for your exact brand name, but are they looking for a similar solution?You can find out with tools like SEMrush (which offers a free trial) or Ahrefs (whi ch I used to pull the numbers below).For example, maybe youre a foodie whos passionate about animal welfare, and you want to start mass-producing your vegan cheese recipe.Sure enough, the keywords vegan cheese reportedly get searched 34,000 times per month.Or maybe youre a software developer interested in creating an easy-to-use alternative to Photoshop.It appears that 3,700 people per month are searching for photoshop alternative.3,000 more are searching for alternative to photoshop. And 2,700 people are searching for best photoshop alternative.Are these numbers good or badeanstalt? It will be up to you to interpret the data for your specific idea and business model.Either way, this strategy is a perspektive to peer into the collective mind of the market, so you can see what people are looking for and what words they use to describe it.2. Look for competitorsWhile amateurs often view existing competitors as a bad omen, more experienced entrepreneurs are happy not to be the first mo ver.Why? Successful competitors are proof that demand exists.These early entrants have already done the risky work of validating the idea. Now all you have to do is compete.You can offer the product in a new location, market it to a new group of people, or differentiate based on features or price to carve out market share.The food delivery service space is a perfect example.After watching early movers like Seamless and Grubhub succeed, established companies confidently followed with their own food delivery apps.Leveraging its foodie customer base, Yelp purchased Eat24.Uber applied its successful driver model to meals and launched UberFRESH (which was later renamed UberEats).And payment platform Square acquired Caviar, giving restaurants a simple way to accept payments and deliver meals.Why did so many big companies venture into a space that already had established competitors?Demand was proven. So they looked for ways to differentiate and compete.3. Test your marketing copy on targe ted prospectsWhile this point might seem obvious, its also nuanced.Heres a quick breakdown.TestYour goal is not to see whether people think your idea is neat. Your goal is to learn whether they would be willing to pay for the product or service youre offering.your marketing copyWhen most entrepreneurs want feedback on a new idea, they get on the phone or meet a friend for coffee and have a conversation.Although this is fine for a first step, you wont normally be selling to such a patient audience.In order for a product to generate demand, its best if the value is quickly obvious to customers.Try to communicate your idea in 30 seconds or less. Or consider writing it down.Then, after your prospect has experienced the offer, gauge their interest and answer questions.on targeted prospectsYour mom may love your idea, but is she your target customer?Try to get feedback from unbiased people who you think could benefit from your product or service.The good news is, if your product or servic e truly solves a deeply felt problem, your target customers will be the people most excited to hear about it.Doing your due diligence can help you succeed fasterDue diligence is crucial in entrepreneurship because it helps you avoid losing time, money, relationship capital, and confidence on a bad idea.The three tests Ive shared are quick, simple ways to help you jumpstart that process. Obviously, there are more tests you can run. And its certainly possible for an idea that fails one of these checks to ultimately succeed.These evaluations dont guarantee success or eliminate risk, but they give you more data, empowering you to invest your time and money more intelligently.And that puts you in a position to reach your goals faster.Kyle Youngis helping creative people achieve big goals that matter.