Work Life: If you need help, pause to listen (also works for normal life)

A close person had asked what sorts of food to make and was clearly asking me for assistance. 

"What food should I make?"

"There isn't much ingredients."

"It is hard to decide."

"Give me a list of things I can make."

And on and on and on...

I even made some attempts to provide some feedback. I tried using handle signal for a pause or a few seconds. Eventually even trying to interrupt. But she just kept on going for 30+ minutes, even repeating questions/statements.

She is definitely not the first person that I interacted with like that. Even at work there are people who just keep on asking, repeating the same question, talking a mile-a-minute, etc. These people at least you can kind of ignore or build a method to get out.

The worst are people who have an open Q&A to a presentation. They use half the time to present, then uses the second half asking for questions, to be open about questions, etc. There would be people with raised hands or try to get attention, but the presenter just keeps on going.

My Advice

1. Be comfortable with very uncomfortable silence

2. Pauses in your speech. 

Why?

1. Some people do not interrupt out of respect. It is more polite to hear the whole thing before responding.

2. Who's helping who? If you are asking for help, it is not my problem that you run out of time.

3. Respect runs both ways. If you do not respect my time, then I am less likely to interrupt you to help you.

(Bonus Skill) Learn to Empathize and Summarize

I understand that most people are unable to understand this so I will give a pass to some people (but know that I will still be irritated inside).

Empathy is your ability to put yourself in someone else's situation and have an interest to help. You do not need to fully understand especially the emotional part. In this case of seeking help, you need to understand who your audience is. Do they know your situation? Do they know the details? Do they know enough to help solve your problem? The counter-balance to this is to also know when too much information is too much information. The easiest is to listen if they have questions. Part of this is also to understand the person is also trying to come up with a solution within a limited period of time that you have spent significantly more time on.

I have no answer how to practice empathy. One of the common tests to see if someone has empathy is by just listening tell you their day. People with low empathy will commonly just jump from story to story with no context. No identifiers to understand that "he" in story 1 is different from "he" in story 2. And when it becomes clearer that story 2 is in place and I speak up, the speaker actually gets more irritated, frustrated, and/or angry.

Maybe I am not a great listener, but an empathetic person should change their speech patterns to their audience. That is essentially what empathy is. I have had little luck in explaining empathy to less-empathetic people. When I explain empathy to highly-empathetic people, I am not really explaining empathy. I am mostly teaching them other points-of-views that they haven't considered, then they go to town with it.

But on the most basic level, if you are asking someone to solve a problem... they need to have all the ingredients to solve the problem. If you lack an ingredient, then they will either say it is unsolvable or they will assume certain values or defaults (whether it is correct or not because maybe it may still help).

On the other hand, do not overwhelm them with information. So learn to summarize. Give as much ingredients as possible that is needed but not too much more than needed.

All this is just to get information from a person one time with little past negative history. To get continued help is another level of empathy. How is this experience going to help or detract some from help you in the future? Some people may help you this time but if the experience is poor, will they help in the future. In summary, empathy is not just a moment but also multi-level. Fortunately if you are starting to understand empathy, some empathetic people will understand and give some leeway. This is probably one of the few things that I believe hard-work and time will help anyone's quest to be more empathetic.

Interview: Dear Interviewer, Would you Answer Your Own Questions Honestly?

Dear Interviewer, Would you Answer Your Own Questions Honestly?

If you are new to interviewing, these are good starting points (or see link below).

What I have thought interesting since I started interviewing is how "textbook" some of the answers are to the interview questions. All questions are structured to get some sort of information about the interviewee, but do interviewers ever think about what the interviewee thinks about the company on certain questions?

One of the questions, "Tell me about the worst boss you ever had," the interviewer is "trying" to see if you are going to talk smack about your older bosses. Almost everyone will recommend that you try to redirect the question to something positive, but why not say bad things about a bad boss (unless you've only had 1-2 bosses then I would also recommend you avoid answering this directly)?

Is the new boss expecting to be bad? If he is not bad, then why would he worry about what I say about bad bosses? Who has not had a bad boss? I mean this is like asking, "have you ever lied?" We all know the real answer, and we know that is not the answer the questioner wants to hear. Basically, you want us to lie. Is that how you want to start someone's career at your company?

If going the route of "yes, I do lie," I would also suggest that you add what you did about it. Like when my boss hired someone that was weak, I wrote a report trying to avoid any personal bias. I told her that this is my opinion and that I respect her choice because there are usually other factors that they have to consider that I am not privy to. Another example was a poor process. I recommended a better process with analytic on how it is a better business strategy. I want to show that I will go to my boss with my experience and my knowledge. I do not jump levels and report to his boss about my thoughts on him. If you cannot back up your actions, then maybe you should stick with the suggest response from CareerBuilder.

What if your boss was doing something illegal? I have not actually thought about this... and I am not sure exactly what I should do on that matter. I'd probably read the employee handbook and probably should be handled by HR. Anyways, this is probably a bit too personal to answer publicly because if you happen to be my boss... it is probably better that you don't know what I would choose. To all the not-worst bosses, what would you suggest?

Another question is "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Does anyone really know where they see themselves in five years that are relevant to work? Does the interviewer even know where they see themselves in five years with their current work? How can they expect that from someone who doesn't even know who is going to hire them?

I seem to dislike questions that really only have one correct answer. These types of questions only seem to serve one purpose and it is not to understand the interviewee. If you or your HR is not going to put effort into finding the right candidates, I have lower views of your company. Does that mean I will not choose you? Unfortunately for me, I probably would consider the option since most companies ask the same types of questions.

But like interviewers who are looking for that one ideal candidate, I am seeking for that one ideal employer and I hope to do so by being more straightforward about my profession abilities. If there was one recommendations for employers about their interview questions, that would be that you would be able to answer the same questions you ask: "tell me who was your worst manager that you've had," "where do you see me in five years?" If you do not like answering those questions, then do not ask those questions. Like interviewees, avoid lying because you will not get what you really want. It is a lose-lose for both parties.

On a different matter, these staple responses from recruiters and head-hunters are things that have always made me uncomfortable with them. Shouldn't they be people who should be making the hiring process easier by being more honest about the truths? Why has the whole interview process been mutated into something that favors people who know how to interview and not their real talent? Does a company really care if someone knew how to answer a certain question that is really irrelevant to them? Who cares if the person cannot see where they are in 5 years? Who cares if they had a bad boss or had all bad bosses? They only care that the employee adds value to the company.

I am not saying that the knowledge is important. It is important to know if we have ambition or have social issues. But you are expecting someone to know those with just one or two questions?

Sometimes I wonder about the use of recruiters. Their business model revolves around getting people hired. People don't get hired if the company already has perfect people. They love churn because that gets them the bonuses that they work out in the contracts.

I think there is a lot of room for improvements for HR, recruiters, and head-hunters to really make more long term solutions to the interviewing process. I think recruiters have the most to gain especially with the current technology in social networking. They can now keep in touch with people for several years without being very intrusive.

Why recruiters? Because companies do really not care much about employees or potential employees' life outside of their company. They want to focus on their product. Also on the political level, there are some managers that hire people they know over people people who are capable. It only takes one poor manager to make systems extremely inefficient.

And, people want to focus on their skills so that they can add value where they are talented at. Why should the person know who they work best with, especially when the employer does not even give them a say in the matter? People struggle to get themselves hired and you want them to know someone else?

This leaves the recruiters to find the best matches because that's their role in the process. They care that you did good work for Company A, showed loyalty in Company B, and demonstrated hard work at Company C. They should care that you had that one bad boss but you overcame it. They should have a better idea what your 5 year goal is better than the interviewee (isn't it kind of messed up that they call the company the client and not the other way or even both?) With their experience, they should know where you can be in 5 years and they should know what the company would expect in 5 years. They should know historically who you have worked best with. Not only that, that knowledge should be exactly the same except that you explain it in the perspective for that person. Too bad they only care about the person being at the right place and at the right time... if not, they move onto someone else.

Anyways, there's probably an infinite and one reasons to why the system is not that way. Unfortunately, I cannot help but think on these processes on a part-time basis as I would really wish to focus on processes on building new engineering technologies. I have been distracted by other industries because getting good coworkers is the biggest problem in process improvements. So here's my weakness... I am easily distracted by things that I consider the biggest problems on things that are preventing me from working on new engineering technologies.

Reference:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/03/04/cb.answering.tough.interview.questions/