When I was in grade school we had to line up and get shots at school. You got to see other students get their shot. Some were OK, for some a tear or two appeared but they toughed it out, and for some the pain was unbearable and they fell to pieces. No wait this isn’t the right story.
I dread being the center of attention; weird because a large portion of my job is facilitating groups of people. You know, being that person in front of the room. This is different, because then I’m in some sort of control of the energy in the room and I can move it around as needed. Not often is that energy really at me (the deep me, the one below the façade.) It has only been in the last few years, in order to affect deep change in an organization, have I understood I have to also experience the change personally. I can’t just be the facilitator telling other how to change; I also have to model the change we are looking for. No wait that isn’t quite the right story either.
There is a fear, a fear that I will come up lacking. That somehow that part of me that feels somehow not up to the task will be exposed. Or that the embarrassment in the moment will be too hard to bear. Or worse that I might succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Not quite right either.
The first structured interview that I went through at Boeing, for a management job, I was being interviewed by a panel of co-workers from my group, friends of mine. Somewhere out of left field my unconscious served up the answers to the questions been asked. They were terrible. After the interview I was left with the dread of wondering “Where did those answers come from?” I bombed the interview. Later, I understood that this was a very important turning point in my life. This started me on a deep journey of self discovery that after 10+ years is nowhere near ending.
All these stories are true, and I felt each one over the last few days as I prepared for the interview today. I wanted to make sure that I did everything I could in order to be ready. And I came close. I wanted to make sure that my mind was a good spot and that I was relaxed, so I meditated for 45 minutes before the interview, this was helpful.
Nervous but controlled, I took my time before answering and thought about what I was going to say. My subconscious served up the right story, at the right time and I was able to trust and run with it, even when it served up stories that weren’t part of the preparation.
Walking away without knowing how I compared to the other interviewees and feeling I had done a good job of showing the panel my skills and how my skills could be used in this new position, I felt good overall. There is some “could haves” and “should haves”, but that is part of being human. I celebrated by going to McDonald's and getting a Mocha Latte. Now it may be up to three weeks before I hear the result.
It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Much of dread was unhelpful, but I was able to transform some into preparation. The best preparation was in dissecting the job requisition to understand what they were looking for, asking myself “What experience did I have?” for each area they were looking, and then rehearsing the answers as best I could.
Great news on the resume front, I got my resume back from the resume seminar leader:
Wow! You got it! A+. A couple of things please — drop all of the gingerbread please meaning no underscores, no bolding no font changes or 27 level font, only left margin adjusted please, no indenting or bullets; please eliminate all the graphics to make look pretty - I simply want business professional; maybe a little less language with positions in the past as it should be less and less as you go past the present position.
Very very nice and much hard work.
Cleared for takeoff—I’m ready to expand my search outside of Boeing. I will make a different copy of the resume without the “gingerbread”. This is important because all of the major companies use automated resume searching to find matches. The type of work that I do is generally going to be consulting to a large company or being an internal consultant in a larger company. So the resume I will use most will be this non-“gingerbread” one. I understand this, and still needed to see a beautiful resume, one that is balanced, artistically thought out and pleasing to the eye.
Tomorrow: an hour of coaching has been given to me by a person that I met on LinkedIn and who offered to help. Focusing outside the company, in the Seattle area will begin tomorrow.
inSite Group 50
Jobs applied for: 18
Rejections: 5
Job Posting withdrawn: 1
Interviews: 1
I have received many emails from this blog, and I appreciate everyone I have received. I won’t share those here in any way that would expose someone, and I would like to encourage people to leave comments here on the blog. This way others can benefit from your wisdom, and not just me.
Part of the problem is the stigma attached to receiving a warn notice. Too often this means we have to endure the pain alone. Our coworkers often don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything for fear of hurting someone more and we end up feeling more isolated. My hope is that we can network together and help each other. It would be great if we can find positions in Boeing, but if not, I would like to have a network of people that I can stay in touch with and leverage off of each other’s wisdom and findings as we navigate this transition.
The sooner we can overcome the stigma, the better off we will be. We will be able to look realistically at our situations, learn from it them and be able to move on better experiences.
Okay, I off my soap box for the day. But at least you know where I’m heading.
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