Covert Interview
I thought I might share a story that I use in my interviews so you can pick out some of the elements I’ve been writing about here.
The story comes from my experience in my first “real job” if you know what I mean. It was for a leading company in Silicon Valley in the early 90’s. I won’t mention any names, but I will say they’re known for manufacturing most of the hardware that pushes packets across the Internet. I use a similar story when I am asked about what I did there. Little do they know how much power a simple story holds.
Ignore the technical jargon; it isn’t important. Look for the message.
Anyways here it is…
” When I first began to work for this company I started out as a field tech. Each field tech had their own building of software developers and engineers to support. We mostly dealt with problems concerning UNIX desktops, local networking closets, and server farms. Engineers and developers worked all hours of the night, so I was always on call. This didn’t bother me because I was learning so many new things. If I was called at 3am I was more than ready to come in.”
“Since I often stayed late, I would always try and give a hand to the senior network engineers, as well as the senior UNIX administrators whenever I wasn’t too busy with my own work. After a few months I could do many of their tasks without any help, so I would pick up a lot of the slack on my team. As this was noticed and I was soon promoted to a technical lead which means I was managing a team of field techs because I had the experience to teach these skills well.”
“As many of the senior network engineers and UNIX administrators willingly became my mentors because I had taken the time to help them out by doing their grunt work and solve their problems quickly which means eventually I worked my way up to their level. A friend of mine and senior member of my team told me, he met with the boss who said ‘It’s time to make a decision‘ and I was soon promoted to a senior network engineer because all my hard work paid off and As you sit here, listening to me, you might already have started to think about how I can apply those skills and experience to your team. It was a great experience I’ll never forget.”
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admin :: Jul.15.2007 :: metaphor, persuasion, covert hypnosis, storytelling :: 2 Comments »
Good for you. There are those who are overworked, underpaid and still their hardwork is not apprecciated even verbally.
I have no work experience but the next level might be contributing to improving the business at a more macro level, but this depends on factors such as how the large is the business and how it is structured.