Week 1 – A Performance-Based Professional Life

(Due: Thursday, 6/4)

Read pages 17-54 of The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, by Lou Adler.  In your own words, what is “performance-based hiring”?  How do you see constructing your professional identity in a performance-based manner as helpful to your career prospects?  Be specific by taking several aspects of performance-based hiring and job seeking and translating them to your own career development and job seeking

               ANS: Performance – based hiring? It is a business process by which a person is hired. The process of hiring is based on four steps such as sourcing, selection, interviewing, and recruiting getting as a result a person who has skills and the most important motivation. In other words, it is a top talent person. It is based on the assumption that the demand for talent is much bigger than the supply. The result of the steps is on attracting, assessing and hiring top people who have multiple opportunities.

             Why is this important and how do I see it in the construction of my professional identity? Well, it is important because we, as professional people, should know how to play the hiring game, but we do not know how to do it. This game consists in two basic questions to evaluate competency and motivation for all the performance objectives listed in the profile. So we have to be motivated and competent to do the work and can work well within the culture and style of the organization.  But most of the time we, as candidates looking for a job, are too eager or not eager enough. Other times we talk too much or we do not talk enough. In other words, we do not  know how to present ourselves in a proper way. As candidates we have to take advantage about why we are the right person for that specific job. What we can contribute to the development of that company. We need to be sure that the interviewer has all the information necessary to make a well – reasoned decision about us. To achieve this, we have to collect all the information to judge the opportunity properly, from both a short and long term perspective. One advice to think about is before accepting  another job, ask ourselves one question: “Is this the job that I want”. Forget about the money because if we do not want that job, we would be disappointed not matter how much we get paid. Therefore, if the job represents a significant career move, the money should not be a problem. At least it would become less important in the overall decision – making process. That means that we, as candidates, have to see that specific job more than simple transfer.

               Constructing my professional identity, I have to convince the interviewer that I am the right person for that job about telecommunication technology. It involves my understanding and experience about it, being specific at the time to answer the questions and applying what I have cited as candidate looking for a job. It is really important to notice that we have to be involved within the interests of the company and having  a very good vision to share with it determining my initial interest in the new job opportunity.

Week 2 – Your Achiever Personae

(Due: Thursday, 6/11)

Read pages 55-90 of The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, by Lou Adler.  What is the “achiever personae”?  What essential qualities does a professional achiever demonstrate?  Do you have an achiever personae?  If so, what does it look like?  If not, what do you need to do to begin building one?

          ANS: Achiever person? It is who has an ambitious personality. This ambitious is complemented by vision into the field that that person is going to be involved.

This vision is composed by other factors such as motivation, which is the most important because a person, who does not have motivation for something, will not be an achiever. Because of the motivation, that person has talent and vision to solve problems as soon as possible efficiently and effectively. In simple words, an achiever is a person who has everything talking about technical and thinking skills; a person who has no problems to work as a team; a person who can deal even with the worst circumstances in job, and the most important, life, to solve them in a proper way.

Obviously the talent is directly related with the quality of his motivation; in other words, with his competence at the time to solve problems applying his knowledge, techniques and experience. Talking about dealing with something, it means that it has to have management qualities. To be clear, it must have discipline, organization and a good thinking to develop his job. Regarding to the thinking skills, it has to analyze the problem and look for the best way to solve it, making the best decisions, decisions that will let him to accomplish the objectives achieving the main purpose, which is, get the problem solved.

To achieve the problem solved, it is necessary to work as a team, which involves his team skills. These let the person to part of a total. It means that, the person can work as a group with other. All these qualities form part of an “achiever personae”, qualities that are really important if we as professionals want to success in life, and the most important of all of them, will be always motivation.

Talking in general, I think everyone has these kinds of qualities, but sometimes, what people have, is a lack of a little motivation to be an achiever; however, all people are achievers in the most common sense, as survivors.

Now talking about me, in my opinion and in a very humble way, I am an “achiever person”. I am a fighter who never gives up his dreams as a person and as a professional. Obviously, I am always learning, but who were born knowing everything. Nobody right. So all the qualities that we have talked before are a process in life. We are always learning something new everyday to become achievers one day in the future.

Week 2 – Your Greatest Professional Accomplishment

(Due:  Monday, 6/15)

Read pages 91-192 of The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, by Lou Adler.  How would you answer the interview question, “can you tell me about a major accomplishment, or where you went the extra mile”?  Do you believe your response will measure up in an interview for your intended profession?  If so, can you explain why using SMARTe analysis (pp. 92-93)?  If not, what do you need to do in the next 12 months to ensure that it does?

     ANS: How would you answer the interview question? To answer the two questions, referring to the most greatest accomplishment (MSA) and how to relate it with problem-solving question (PSQ); we, as candidates, have to be clear explaining it briefly and precisely. Talking about the MSA, we have to answer it using “SMARTe” analysis that means that, we have to give the interviewer an example of something significant that we have done. This example is the most comparable situation that could fit with the job that we are applying for.

Moreover, this example has to talk about a specific task talking about a challenge, project or problem. It must be measurable in some way with our performance. It also must show the result that we achieved and the time that it took and the environment; in other words, the people to whom we worked with as a team and management.

Having said this, we have to demonstrate the interviewer a complete word-picture of our past comparable accomplishment in order to assess our ability to handle the actual requirements of the job that we want to get including in our explanation job-related problem-solving skills, decision making, creativity, planning, strategic and multi-functional thinking, and potential.

All these features are related with both questions, which are the MSA and PSQ; in addition, we have to give the interviewer a reasonable go-forward of action based on understanding of the problem giving him a detailed response including the resources available, the culture, and the challenges involved. The idea behind this is showing the interviewer that we are competent and have passion for it. The answer may not be the perfect one or the most precise, but it does not matter because there is not right or wrong answer, the idea is that we have vision, that we can surpass the challenge at the time to solve the problem.

What is your major accomplishment an extra mile? My major accomplishment and at the same time biggest challenge in life is being here where I am today. Saying this, I am not referring where I am physically, if not, as part of our society getting education as student to contribute into the same. I will not talk about titles or diplomas because those just represent you into the society, but do not define who you are as human being. When I said being here, I refer myself learning a new language from zero and getting accustom to my new life; it was really hard. I am still learning everyday.

After attending an ESL program and after pushing myself to work twice harder to achieve an opportunity to get in college and pursue what I want in life. Now I am in my last year of a bachelor degree in the Telecommunications’ program, this is just amazing for me and impressive for people around me. Nobody told me this was going to be easy, but impossible either.

Do you believe your response will be measured in an interviewer? Definitely, yes because it shows how hard I have been working to face challenges in life doing what it takes to go forward as a person and as professional.