Preparing for Interviewing

Since I am a junior, I have been frantically looking for internships this summer in Financial Planning. After Feinberg's lecture on Monday, I learned some important information to keep in mind when I am out in the work force. He told us to think about a story that will tell the recruiter that we are different. Recruiters can only really pick up 5% of the top performers when they just meet a candidate. The other 30% of top performers need a little more love and care to make them into the best worker their can possible be. Not only am I keeping this statistic in mind when I go to job fairs, but he also told us that we need to always have our resume out there. It is always good to see what other jobs are out there and to not just settle for the first job that you receive. I can't wait to use these new tips to land my internship this summer.

Leadership Workshop - Kirk Weisler

At first when I heard that I had to attend a five hour leadership workshop on a Monday night I was not too excited. With in the first ten minutes of the keynote speaker's presentation,however, I was hooked. The presenter that night was Kirk Weisler, who is a professional speaker on leadership. He was very energetic and passionate about what he was talking to us about. His speech talked about three main themes that should be in the workplace: love, growth, and respect. The main point that stayed with me from his speech was the fact that most high performers spend more time working on their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Then I also learned as a leader you need to be positively contagious and to never stop teaching and growing. In order for us to grow as leaders, Kirk gave us some titles to read. The book that I have just started reading is QBQ: The Question Behind the Question. It was a long evening, but I can't believe all that I learned that night. Thanks Kirk Weisler!

Assessment Test

There are many different ways that companies go about interviewing future employees. Earlier in class we used the 30 second elevator speech to evaluate team leader candidates. All of the candidates had 30 seconds to impress us with their leadership story. The next day in class we used another interviewing technique. We did the group assessment test; for this test a group of 12 potential team leaders were given ten minutes to complete a task and the rest of the class had to evaluate them. The repeating pattern with all three groups was that right when they got the task they huddled together to come up with an answer. They forgot that the class was evaluating them and we couldn't evaluate them when we couldn't hear or see them. Finally, with a little help from the class most groups started to turn around and make sure the class was involved. The main point that I got from this assessment was that when I am in the same situation in the real world to turn towards the evaluators and let them hear my thoughts.

Picking Leaders

The other day in class, we had to pick our favorite leaders out of 38 students. They all had to go up to the front of the very large lecture hall and give their leadership story in 20 seconds. I saw every type of leadership style in those 38 students. There were some that looked really surprised and didn't know what to say. Then there were others that seemed very confident and spoke loudly and to the point. Not only was it the way that they presented themselves that was different, but what they said that was different as well. There was every thing from what they thought a leader should be, some listed their old leadership roles, and there was one guy that even just made a joke as his story. This class period made me see that there are a lot of different types of leaders and there are many ways to deal with on-the-spot situations.