Family poses and "interviews"

During the first few days of new year, I found some interesting new activities to do with my family. 

Family photography and Family interviews

Family photography: 

That was the term i put into Google search. Initially this was MM's idea. Being a semi-pro photographer, he wanted to look at how the pros handle families' pictures. I thought "Neat! I used Google's services for a lot of things, mostly work-related, but I this idea did not occur in my mind once! I should have!". So I did a little search of my own, and these are the family poses that I love from various blogs and photographer's websites... 

This one is very cute, creative and natural... the only thing is that i cannot see anyone's face

Very happy smiles, great curve

love the setting, color and the cute hands

dynamic, natural and classy

big family, will be a good pose for reunion... i like the uniform, it matches the background, but at the same time the picture seems to be colorless

love this one! very active, lively and fun

nice texture and color, back of the van seems to be a memorable place!

Family interviews

This is a new thing I haven't tried to do before. I decided if I should change my way of approach to listen more and listen well, I should start from the people that are closest to me. I started the topic of interviewing staff and how to find the right person for the right job, and the only key thing is to shut up and listen! (of course I have a curious voice, gesture, and ask more questions if needed, but basically it's a listening practice, not a debate.)

I took a small poll in my family interviews: how much is the success rate of your recruiting interviews? The result came out shockingly low. These are people that have had over 20 years of successful management experience under their belts. But what I noticed was interesting is their comments about the newly graduates: "Schools has trained them well in preparing for interviews. And it seems that the ones who has less ability would be likely to put more effort in preparing for job interviews than the better ones..." 

They also remarked "usually the guys who speak really well and show off his skills doesn't know how to get things done, but interviewers have little tools to find that out unless they put these guys under probation period. But this is costly and sometimes it affects the company's culture."

Yes, it is true. And I could tell from my own experience working as career consultant for students, all the stuffs we teach students are to "present well, looks like you know something,  do everything to impress the interviewers so that you can get a job!" It is easy to understand: it is assumed that the colleges are at fault if its graduates cannot find jobs. Well, it is true to some extent. But how do employers distinguish the gold from the wood if everyone graduates are taught to impress people without fail? 

One of the thing I started to think about after these informative family interviews is changing my approach toward training students to prepare for their jobs hunting.  

Interviews, in fact, is the only direct contact newly graduates have to learn about an employer. While some companies didn't spend enough time in interviews to study their candidates well, the graduates could take the initiative to have deeper understanding about a job they were considering. Interviewees asking for more time to learn about interviewers is an odd, but it's worth a try. After all, the graduates should be more concern about how to survive in the spot as well, not just whether to get in. They should ask themselves these questions: "Can this place bring out the best of me? Can I stand the negative components and has some positive impact in this place? How difficult it is? How long I would have to do this?" ... 

I think the most important thing for senior students at colleges to realize is that: They cannot only look for the best company to work with, the best offer, the best environment, because a lot of times it is not the case. The thing they may need to look for, instead, is places where they could build strong connection with and grow together with the company. 

And one first easy step to accomplish all that is start to Listen well.

Happy listening... :)