Author Archives: bryandilts

Are you passively employed ?

Posted on February 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Thinking of yourself passively — as being employed and, therefore, subject to the dictates of someone else — can be fatal to your long-term success. In reality, you’re the president of your own personal-services corporation. You’re completely in charge of production, quality control, training and development, marketing, finance, and promotion.

Seeing yourself as self-employed forces you to recognize that you are also self-responsible and self-determining. That everything that happens to you happens because of your conduct and your behavior. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’re behind the steering wheel of your life. It’s up to you to decide how to utilize your talents and abilities in such a way as to bring you the very highest return on the investment of your time and energy.  (Brian Tracy)

read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Raises, Time management, Training

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2 Questions to ask in every interview

Posted on February 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Salespeople who earn over $100,000 per year know how to ask questions. Then they ask another related question.  Top salespeople get smart people to say, “He’s right, I need his help.”  They do it without telling how smart they are.  They do it by asking the right questions.

Your job interview is a sales meeting.  You need the interviewers to “buy” you. Getting a job at McDonalds is just like getting a CEO’s job.  You have to convince the interviewers that you are the best person available. 

Everyone says, “I’m the best.”  You will be expected to list your accomplishments.  You will get to proclaim yourself a team player.  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” will be a key phrase you will utter, just like everyone else. I’m still waiting for the candidate that says, “I hate people.  I refuse to work hard. If possible, I will drive this company into the ground.”

So, be different.  Ask great questions.  Here is the first one:

“How will I be measured in 12 months time if I take this job?”

That question is SO different that your interviewer may stop a second as his mind shifts gears.  And you will find out more than just what they expect you to do every day.

Or use a related comment and question:

“Everyone is hired to fill an immediate need.  So, what problems do I get to resolve in my first two months?”

Are you getting the idea?  Tomorrow I’ll give you a list of some more questions I have gleaned over the years.

Something to do today

Same as yesterday. Make a list of at least 3 questions or topics you should ask about in every interview.

Now think about the exact wording.  Can you make the questions show your keen interest in doing a great job and helping your team?

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Later:                         Your interview questions

                                    How to get more vacation

                                    Moth traps

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The job hunting catechism

Posted on February 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

My neighbor invited me to his catechism class.  He went every Wednesday to learn the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church.  He showed me the book they used.  The teacher would read a question and the kids would read an answer back.  They would also talk about the answer.  It didn’t sound very interesting to my 8 year old mind, so I decided to play baseball instead of going with him.

I  read an article that said that today they do more lecture style teaching of the catechism.  But the problem has become that the teachers don’t teach rigorous doctrine.  Instead, the teacher and texts teach what is popular.  I heard the catechism teaching is going to shift back to training that is less flexible.

Confusion is always the most honest response. (Marty Indik)

Job hunting?  What does this have to do with job hunting?

Learning comes in stages.  First you have to learn to give a correct response.  It may be dull to learn and practice, but you will be right.  After you know a correct response and why it is correct, you can experiment with different answers.  Eventually you will come up with much better responses than you were originally taught.  But every once in a while you have to go back to the old catechism.  You have to check what you are now saying against what really needs to be said.

The next few days are going to be going over interview questions you need to ask.  I’ll start out with the basics.  They are the questions that work in every interview.  Then I’ll go to questions that set you apart in an interview.

I suggest you repeat your practice questions aloud 3 times before you go in for an interview.  When you are in the interview, don’t worry about getting them word perfect.  You’ll have the ideas cemented in your brain.  You’ll be prepared to set yourself apart from the competition by the questions you ask.

Something to do today

Make a list of at least 3 questions or topics you should ask about in every interview.

Now think about the exact wording.  Can you make the questions show your keen interest in doing a great job and helping your team?

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Later:                        Your interview questions

How to get more vacation

Moth traps

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5 quantum skills of IT, accounting, legal, and operations professionals

Posted on February 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

5 quantum skills of IT, accounting, legal, and operations professionals that will change your career and your company in this article.

Previously, I explored the forces driving fundamental changes to the IT business model. This is leading to what is being called the Quantum Age of IT–an era in which IT success and value is driven less by technology and more by relationships and interactions. We examined how this is leading IT organizations to develop five organizational traits to become learning organizations, disciplined organizations, transparent organizations, intimate organizations and, finally, dynamic organizations.

read more here.

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Posted in Economy, Training

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What to do about a totally unfair firing

Posted on January 31, 2013 | Leave a comment

My son was the best checkout clerk in the store.  His checkout speed was consistently the best.  Customers loved his happy personality.  He often had the most “add on” sales at the cash register.  Then one day he was put on probation.  Shortly thereafter he was fired.  It was because he had decided not to double check when the cash register said that a particular coupon had no corresponding product bought by the customer.  Most of the cashiers ignored the warning at least part of the time.  One of the baggers had noticed it and informed the managers.  They checked, asked him, and found out he was guilty.  Probation was a formality.  They fired him as soon as they could get it approved.

I’m proud my son accepted responsibility and never told anyone who the bagger was. When asked, he admitted what he was doing immediately.  He was fired as a warning to the other checkout clerks.  He didn’t have a chance to eat crow and change his ways.

The real question is: What about the other clerks?  The clerks had a chance to get upset at the baggers in general. They could moan and complain on breaks about how unfair it was.  They could become paranoid and follow each rule to complete stupidity. Or they could eat crow and humbly accept the truth, like my son did.  They knew they had been costing the store money by not checking coupons.  They had been breaking the rule all the time, not just when the checkout lanes were jammed.  They had talked about it.  They weren’t listening to the managers about it anymore when the firing occurred.  It was time to eat crow.  And crow is best served warm, when the offense is fresh.

How about you?  What do you do when someone is fired for doing something everyone does?  What about when you are passed over for a job you apply for?

If you blame another person, you are human.  If you blame society, you are human. You are not right.

If you got fired for poor performance, accept it.  If you were the best at a particular job but got passed over for a promotion, there was a reason.  Eat a little crow.  Find out why.  Don’t brag about how smart you are and how stupid the managers are.  There was a reason.

Back to job hunting.  If the job is evil and bad, drop out of the interviews or don’t apply.  If you found out the manager, company or division is full of idiots because they didn’t hire you, thank God you didn’t get that job. No need to ceaselessly murmur about the idiots.  However, you may want to eat crow and find out why you really were not hired. Getting the truth can be difficult.  Still, the time to eat crow is when it is still warm.  Ask what you did, said, or put on paper that disqualified you.  Then decide if you want to fix it.

Something to do today

Ask why you didn’t get the job.  Ask the recruiter.  Ask the company.  Ask the hiring manager.  Don’t worry about offending someone.  They already offended you by not hiring you, didn’t they?  Ask politely, but ask..

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Later:                           Catechism

Your interview questions

How to get more vacation

Moth traps

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Posted in Attitude, Interviews, Quitting or Fired

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I’ll do this today to get more done

Posted on January 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

As one of my Mastermind members said at our last meeting, “If I could get half as much done as you, I’d be happy.”

Well, it’s not that hard. It starts with doing the right things, right now. Too many people do the wrong things all day. Doing the right things starts by knowing what the right things are. And that all starts with your daily secret weapon revealed by Mark Ford in his guest essay below.

read more here.

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Posted in Time management

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Why worry about a degree? An advanced degree?

Posted on January 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

Dinosaur Jim was a professor of dinosaurs at BYU and he only earned a high school diploma.  He discovered more earth shattering fossils than any other man alive.  He published unbelievable finds.  Finally he was awarded an honorary PhD.  They built a large building just for his incredible fossil collection.

You can get ahead without a college degree.  To do it in the university or corporate world you have to be twice as good as the best guy with his university papers.

Let’s see, there is Michael Dell and Bill Gates.  They dropped out of college.  The guy who founded Wendy’s dropped out of high school.  Everyone knows those three.  You can probably name a few more very successful people who did not finish their education but became rich.  With luck you will name one person, who did not start the company himself, who rose to lead a major company without a college degree.  Many who started into their careers without a degree went back and got their degrees at night or dropped out for a few years to get an MBA.

Education is a foundation for people climbing the corporate ladder

I’m not saying you have to get a college degree.  However, you have to be twice as good as the college graduate in order to compete in upper management job hunting.  That is just a fact of life.  And a Bachelor’s 4 year degree is worth a whole lot more than an Associate’s 2 year degree.  Banks love MBA’s.  Technical companies love Masters Degrees and PhD’s.

It may be hard to get your college degree now.  Part time education for years is not appealing to many people.  And you don’t have to do it.  But building the foundation at this point in your career will be easier than building it 5 years from now.  Here’s why: you are being evaluated every day at work for a move up the career ladder.  Like it or not, you are the guy without a degree, MBA or engineering degree.  People say it and know it.  It can be positive if you are the best guy in the company and everyone knows it.  Otherwise, it is already killing your career. Every time managers compare you to another employee they mention it.

Think about it.  If you want to climb the corporate ladder, a degree will help.

Something to do today

Unless you have a PhD, check out how you can get another degree part-time. What can it hurt to just find out?

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Later:                           Crow is best served…

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Posted in Finding jobs, Training

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Do human “eagles” flock?

Posted on January 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

Eagles don’t flock, you have to find them one at a time. (EDS recruiting slogan)

I used to believe that eagles don’t flock.  I’d seen flocks of geese, starlings, and turkeys.  Never a flock of eagles.  For some reason, I believed the best people didn’t flock either.  After all, my employer used it as a recruiting slogan.  You have to find the great people one-by-one.

8 years into EDS, I worked with a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist.  On her wall she had the Sierra club calendar.  There was a picture of a dozen eagles all sitting in the bare branches of an Alaskan tree.  I commented on the incongruity of all those eagles flocking together.  She said, “My husband and I were in Alaska when we took that picture.  It really isn’t that uncommon of a sight where there are a lot of eagles.”

Looking for flocks of eagles became a hobby of mine, particularly since my employer’s recruiting slogan denied that eagles flock.  I found that there really are a lot of lone eagles.  They are islands of expertise and productivity in an ocean of mediocrity.  My current profession is to find those eagles and move them into flocks.

There are a few flocks of eagles in every industry and city.  Places where eagles are naturally attracted.  Once you know where those places are, it is pretty easy to get an eagle to move to that flock.  Some choose to remain the lone eagle among sparrows.  I can’t blame them.  Besides, they can move to a flock anytime they want.

Just being around eagles makes you grow.  You can’t help but want to be like them even if you are just a sparrow.  Somehow, you absorb their attitude and habits.  Even if you don’t really want to become an eagle, being around them is exhilarating.

So keep your eyes open for flocks of eagles and individual eagles.  Find a way to work closely with them.  You’ll learn and grow.  You’ll find your career is enhanced and your outlook improves whether or not you ever want to become an eagle yourself.

Something to do today

Ask around.  Where is the flock of eagles you would like to work with?  Where are the lone eagles?

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Later:               Laying a foundation later

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Posted in Attitude, Finding jobs

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9 job wounds worth leaving your job over

Posted on January 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

A job wound is a reason, other than money, that a person has to leave a job. Okay, money can be a job wound, but it has to be a major problem, not just wanting to leave for 5% higher pay.

Common job wounds are

  1. being passed over for promotion,
  2. a boring job,
  3. a horrible boss,
  4. dishonesty around you,
  5. an abusive environment,
  6. the company is failing,
  7. long hours for months on end,
  8. too much travel,
  9. or lack of personal growth.

A job wound is a serious problem.  One that can’t be overcome by doing your work a little better.  I will always try to find your job wound before I try to place you.  That’s because you are likely to spend a lot of time job hunting, only to stay where you are if you don’t have a painful enough job wound.

Many people will live with a severe job wound for years.  A good spouse, friend, or recruiter won’t let you live with a bad job wound.  We poke our fingers into the wound to see how deep it is.  I use a little rubbing alcohol to help clean it out because it really stings.  Then after I know how deep the wound is, I’ll pour in a little salt occasionally.  I want someone who is thinking of changing jobs to hurt so bad that they don’t make the same mistake again.

Sometimes you need someone with a vested interest in change to get you to do something about your problems.  If you have a severe job wound, it is time for major surgery.  You need a job-ectomy.

Something to do today

Show this article to someone who is willing to do some surgery.  Ask them to help you probe the size of your job wound.  Write down all the details and emotions you bring to the surface.

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Later:               Eagles don’t flock?

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Posted in Quitting or Fired

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6 unusual ways to land a job interview

Posted on January 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

The most unusual way to land an interview that I have seen, was with a 1 foot long bronze cockroach.

Here is a great article about 5 more unusual ways to land a job interview.  They don’t include using a bronze cockroach.

The bronze cockroach was used as a resume by a friend of mine.  He was applying for a hardcore programming job that required excellent 3-D art and perception abilities.  He only sent the cockroach, his name, and phone number.

He got the interview and the job.

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Posted in Interviews