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COACHING NEWSLETTER 02/2018
This Month's Topic: Job Interviews
Content
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Hello from the Coaching Team!   Interview Question: Tell Me About Yourself!
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How to Highlight Your Talents in a Job Interview   Coach Introduction: Andreas Schmid
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View the upcoming coaching dates   Contact us!
Hello from the Coaching Team
Dear Students,

We hope your semester started well and you have taken the opportunity to meet many interesting people at the Career Forum last week. Some of you may already have received their first job or internship leads and most of you will have to go through an interview process. Thus, this month's topic will be Job Interviews!

Unfortunately, it is an almost impossible task to judge a stranger correctly within a short amount of time. The overlap between interview ratings and subsequent job performance ratings is generally low, as it is very easy for an interviewer to misjudge a person. Thus, it is important to be prepared as well as behave and answer accordingly, in order to avoid being misjudged.

In our Video of the Month, Vincent Phamvan shortly explains how to answer the question that comes up first in almost all job interviews: "Tell me about yourself!" In our Article of the Month, you will learn how to highlight your talents, without showing off or coming across fake.

We are also happy to present to you our coach, Andreas Schmid, an experienced lawyer and HR Director. As an educated business mediator and ongoing systemic coach, he will be happy to advise you regarding your career and help you to become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

With this newsletter we intend to help all of you to be more successful in your career as well as goal setting. However, the newsletter is just a very small part compared to what actual coaching sessions can accomplish. We strongly and heartily recommend you to make use of our coaching offers. You can choose from a large number of coaches. To find out more, visit the coaching area on MyEBS to select a coach and book an appointment or contact us. We’ll be happy to hear from you!

Warm regards,
Your Coaching Team
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Video of the Month: Interview Question: Tell Me About Yourself!
The interviewer wants to know about your working habits, whether you’re reliable, and what you have accomplished in the past. Focus on your experiences and accomplishments that are most relevant to the position. Keep in mind that the interviewer is not asking for a full-length biography. It’s safe to keep the answer around 2 to 3 minutes. At the same time, you want to show that you know what the company does and that you have an idea what the company is looking for. Make sure you do a quick Google search and look for recent headlines in the news. Use this information to choose which accomplishments to highlight, and try to present them in a way that is similar to the job description.   Picture could not be loaded
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How to Highlight Your Talents in a Job Interview (Without Showing Off)
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A study by Michael A. McDaniel showed that there is only a 4% overlap between interview ratings and subsequent job performance ratings. Yet, for the majority of jobs, it is the most efficient way to gauge your talents.

One of the reasons for this very small overlap is that talents are very easy to fake, especially when people overestimate their own talents, as fooling other is a lot easier when you have managed to fool yourself. Thus, according to Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an organizational psychologist, narcissists and psychopaths perform best when it comes to interviews. Another problem is that most interviewers are not as talented themselves as they think. Many misinterpret key signals: extraversion for social skills, confidence for competence, or charisma for leadership potential.

So how exactly do you communicate your talents to others without coming across as a show-off or being somewhat deluded? Here are four suggestions:

1. Be brief about your experience

Past behavior does not predict future behavior, but it does reassure your potential employer that you “have done it before,” which is what most of them want to hear. You will be asked about your experience early on in the interview. Thus, answering the question won’t come across as showing off.

However, keep in mind that we live in an age of short attention spans. If you get so immersed in your answer that people stop paying attention to you, they might start making assumptions about your lack of brevity. People that talk too much about themselves are often perceived as self-centered or arrogant. Furthermore, focusing on your achievements without being specific can make the listener assume that you are exaggerating.

Thus, quantify your relevant experience and get to the point quickly: “I managed a team of 75 people” or “We grew our business unit by 150%”.

2. Passions > Skills

When it comes to people’s perception of you, telling them what you’re talented at will often make them assume the opposite. Imagine someone saying that they are really humorous and funny, or that they have awesome leadership skills.
  You’d instantly question it and would look for reasons to prove them wrong. However, saying that you are passionate about certain activities, like discovering people’s talents or innovating, will make people assume that you have some talent there as well.

3. Focus on your potential

Recent research suggests that, when it comes to judging others, we are more interested in their future rather than past. The past is already written and cannot be affected by our decisions. Furthermore, according to Chamorro-Premuzic, “inferring the future requires real skills and effort, so it’s a much higher-stakes activity.”

Therefore, you can help others speculate about your own future and place a bet on your talents by describing the key qualities of your potential. According to psychological reviews, there are three main areas that play a role: learning ability, drive, and people skills. “The key, however, is not to make generic self-promotional statements, […] but to demonstrate these things with concrete examples and during the interview.”

You can demonstrate good people skills by not interrupting the interviewer, speaking for too long, or showing off. To make the interviewer assume that you have good learning ability, talk about concrete difficult problems you have solved or niche expertise you have acquired.

4. Turn your fans into advocates

Your reputation is made of what others think of you. Thus, you are better off being promoted than promoting yourself. And while studies have shown that references are a poor predictor of future performance, in today’s society, they play a very important role in determining your success. Being recommended by the right person to the right person will matter more than any objective indicator of talent. Thus, treasure your supporters and people that think highly of you as much as you can.

Finally, remember that there are strong cultural differences in people’s tolerance when it comes to self-promotion. What may come across as a normal self-presentation in the US, would be considered extreme bragging in the UK, whereas the British way of showing off, i.e. fake self-deprication, will often be interpreted as anxious insecurity in the US.

No matter which culture, in the end of the day, people will look for the same thing - namely, for people who appear to actually have some talent.
Original article: https://hbr.org/2017/12/how-to-highlight-your-talents-in-a-job-interview-without-showing-off/
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Coach Introduction: Andreas Schmid
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Andreas Schmid is an independent lawyer at SFK Legal and HR Key Account Manager at Voith Turbo GmbH & Co. KG.

After he graduated from law school, he started his career as an attorney, employed by a German law firm, specializing in labour and employment as well as tax law. Seven years later, he went for an in-house counsel position at a worldwide-operating mechanical engineering manufacturer.
  He had been working there at the corporate legal department, acting as counsel in labour and employment law for about ten years.

After that, he has taken over the position as the Human Resources Director and HR Key Account Manager at another legal entity within the same group of companies. As the Human Resources Director, he oversees the HR department of a site with more than 1000 employees, and as an HR Key Account manager he is responsible for all overriding HR matters of a worldwide-operating business within a group division of this group of companies.

Mr. Schmid is an educated business mediator and will soon accomplish his coaching education at EBS. He coaches on a regular basis, in particular his staff, as well as other executives and leaders within his scope of responsibility and beyond.

He is married and has two children. In his free time, he is an active board member of a sports club. He also enjoys reading, movies, travel and music.

Andreas Schmid is offering coaching sessions in both English and German. Contact us to book an appointment with him!
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Upcoming Coaching Sessions
Campus Oestrich-Winkel

09. & 10.03.2018

15. & 16.03.2018

12. & 13.04.2018
  Campus Wiesbaden

21.02.2018

23.05.2018
  Info
 


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Contact
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  Marie-Luise Retzmann
Director Coaching

+49 611 7102 1664
marie-luise.retzmann@ebs.edu
    Michael Hartmann
Coaching & Personal
Development
+49 611 7102 1687
michael.hartmann@ebs.edu
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  Sina Delia Gehrmann
Coordination Coaching &
Consulting
+49 611 7102 1653
sina.gehrmann@ebs.edu
    Swantje Daniel
Coordination Coaching
Yoga@EBS
+49 611 7102 1657
swantje.daniel@ebs.edu
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