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

» Read more: Interviews: Notes From a Friend