by Jackie Simmonds, NEJS Blog Editor

Paul, a friend since my college days, recently emailed me with information designed to help me during my job search.  He was kind enough to pass his thoughts along to me since I am a relative newbie, this being my first experience with unemployment in my career.  Paul has been impacted several times during past economic downturns and knows a thing or two about soul searching, career change, reinventing yourself, improving your skill set, and finding that next opportunity.  This time, as the economy started to head South, he realized it was likely that his job was going to be impacted.  Rather than wait around to be let go he pulled together a project proposal and successfully lobbied for a two year overseas assignment.  Now half way through the two years he is beginning the soul searching once again as he realizes that once this assignment is up he may not have a job.

Paul’s advice to me,  First, Break All The Rules.   “This is a GREAT book and I strongly recommend it.  In fact I have now read it twice in the last 2 months and wrote up these notes to help remind me of key points.  It shows how to improve management and people performance and I also intend to use it to help identify my “Talents” (as defined in the book) in order to help select the best next role for me.  We usually focus on skills and experience and really should focus on natural “talents” or traits to get the right fit if we are hiring or being hired.  Lots of good stuff that can apply to work and also activities outside of work”.

Paul’s notes did a great job of passing along key concepts from the book and it got me thinking. Can we turn this information around and use it to make ourselves stand out in our next interview opportunity?  Can we hand our interviewer the very thing they are looking for before they even ask for it?  I am going to focus in on the talent information that Paul passed along because I think this can help us provide differentiation from competitors during an interview situation.

This information is provided as a tool to managers who are trying to hire talent, we need to understand what they are thinking about during an interview and then use the information to bring our natural talents to the forefront.

4 Keys:  The most important activities of a manager:

1. Select a person – Talent primarily, then experience, intelligence or determination
2. Set expectations – define the right outcomes, not steps
3. Motivate the person – focus on strengths
4. Develop the person – help them find the right fit, not just the next rung

1^st Key: Select on Talent primarily, then experience, intelligence or determination

Managers must know the difference between Talent, Skills, and Knowledge.  They must understand the balance between conformity and innovation.

Talent = any recurring pattern of behavior that can be productively applied

You cannot train someone on a talent, they are inherent like traits

and they drive individual behavior and performance.

Talents & mental filters are permanent and cannot be changed significantly.  Examples are empathy, competitiveness, extrovert, shyness, love of precision, calm under pressure, high-risk tolerance, etc.  There are 3 categories of Talents:  Striving, Thinking, and Relating.

• Striving explains WHY a person does what they do, what are they driven by

• Thinking explains the HOW of a person, how they think, strategic, linear, logical, etc.

• Relating explains the WHO of a person, whom they trust, confront, ignore, etc.

You can change some habits & behaviors through self-awareness but these should not be confused with ability to change natural “talents”.  Some attitudes are talents, such as teamwork, optimism, and desire for service of others.  The drive for achievement is a talent that is different from competitiveness.

A manager cannot take credit for your talents,

but they can take credit for helping you develop those talents.

Myth #1 – Talents are rare and special

Since the definition of Talent here is not the commonly used version this means all people have a talent for some behaviors and those that find a match with a job or hobby are “special”.

Myth #2 – Some roles are so easy they don’t require talent

To excel at any job no matter how simple requires a match of talent.  The skills may be easier to learn than another role, but to be the best requires a matching talent.  So-called “entry level” jobs may convey the false assumption that all persons will want to be “promoted out of” them. Some may have a talent for it and enjoy it.

Managers must identify exactly what talents they are looking for in each role, then work to find the matching individuals.  Consider company culture and how this affects the talent needed, as well as the local manager’s style and department’s culture. Talents not competencies drive minute-by-minute interactions and talents can’t be taught.

The Art of Interviewing for Talent

1. Make sure the talent interview stands alone and both parties are fully aware of the goal.
2. Ask a few open ended questions, and then try to keep quiet. Their repeated spontaneous responses will reveal their talents.
3. Listen for specifics with past behavior examples. This needs to be real examples not theory, and be repetitive.
4. Clues to Talent
   1. Rapid Learning – examples of this help identify talents
   2. Satisfactions – people are most satisfied doing what they are good at
5. Know what to listen for. By knowing how top performers respond to certain questions you can be looking for similar answers during an interview.

The challenge, as I see it, for the job seeker to bring all these talents to the attention of the manager.  While people want to know specific, measurable successes as this book points out talents can’t be ignored.  So for your next interview be prepared to talk up your talents as well as your achievements.  My guess is that we are not doing our innate personal strengths justice.  So if you are good at diffusing tense situations, have a knack for translating technical jargon to non technical people, or are sought after for brainstorming sessions make sure these facets of your personality shine in the interview as well.

• Previous Entry: FTC Cracks Down on Con Artists Who Target Jobless Americans
• Next Entry: Twitter: How To Use It For Your Job Search