Grace Under Pressure! Hey Andy, what are your views on the interview assignment
that's more like unpaid consultant consultancy work than a brief assessment okay
this is what i think and i'm going to try to give you a couple variations here because this is
really good okay folks and grace i i wish i knew um i wish i knew which grace you were i wish i
knew specifically what your job function was and how high a level you were in the organization
and what you're interviewing for so here's how i view assignments now number one i have no problem
with organizations that want to give you a little homework assignment why would i not why would that
not bother me so for those of you that follow me a lot what do i always say i always want you to take
all those behavioral interviewing questions the questions about your past that tell me about your
stuffs the walk me through your resumes and all that stuff and i want you to move it into their
future right and like how would we handle that in your environment do you have a case where i could
address that and so forth if you don't know what i'm talking about i have a video out there on
the number one tip number one interview tip that'll get you hired and i talk about this
because when you get into the future it gives the interviewer a much easier way to see how you would
actually operate in their environment if you don't do that they have to interpolate that and and and
and usually they don't interpolate correctly they that most interviewers think their environment
is the more difficult environment to operate in they just do so they say well you did okay over
there and that was a fine answer but i'm really not sure that you could do it here so moving in
the future helps them see that more clearly a case study or an assignment is even better
because now you actually have a chance to think it through you can show your work you
can walk them through how you would do what you would do now now you're okay so i love it
now you're getting into okay well this is going to take me a long time then it's a question of do
you want the job bad enough do you have the time can you make the time right so that's up to you
so you could decide if you want to do that then the question becomes okay well what if
they take my work and they go off and they implement it to that i would say
i'm going to use myself as an analogy you know all this stuff that we do every week you know those
videos i put out for you those training programs and everything do you have any idea how easy it
is for anybody who's a career coach to just go grab it that's right and i don't worry about any
of that stuff and why don't i worry about any of that stuff because they don't see the invisible
work that goes in it they don't know exactly why i do things the way i do or what i tell you the
way i tell you or all the history i'm drawing on that makes the masterpiece a masterpiece it's all
the invisible work and it's me driving it okay so if i handed a strategy of how to be a career
coach to somebody else i would not be worried in the least that they would benefit from that
other than they would have an outline of what they would do and what's going to ultimately happen for
them is they're going to make all the mistakes that i made probably 10 times over and they're
not going to know how to recover from all of these things right so if you go put something together
for them that is an assignment that is a part of an interviewing process i wouldn't be worried in
the least if it's hey we want you to actually do work for us like stuff that that is immediately
usable before you ever get hired then i would start questioning that okay so it's different to
say well hey grace how would you run your first 90 days on the job to build that unit that's an
assignment right what would that plan look like hey can you put a presentation together how you
would grow the marketing team hey could you put a presentation together to tell us how you would
recruit all these players how would you can like all that stuff to me is okay so
um not knowing exactly what this is like if it truly is like work that they're gonna
benefit from like it's truly free work that's pretty damn rare and i will tell you this
i as a recruiter okay now i we've placed 600 and some odd people in my lifetime
the number of people that interviewed for us right many many more and the number of people
we interviewed and the number of people that we submitted to our clients that had assignments
and all that good stuff i have never not one time not like zero ever seen a company
give an assignment that they could actually take and use effectively if that person was not hired
okay so so i would not be too too concerned you're probably making a bigger deal out of it than it is
um those are my thoughts and that is a phenomenal question it really really is this
is one i we definitely want to cut up and and and circulate because this is a great great question
grace i wish you a lot of luck i would not be worried and so my my my final word to you is if
you really want this job and you love the company i would do the assignment and i wouldn't bat an
eye and i'd throw my heart and soul into it i'd give them everything i got and out it goes that's
how that's how i feel i really uh and and you know you know this not to get too philosophy
where whatever you focus your energy on grows if you're going to be worried that they're going to
use it you're not you're going to half-ass it and it's not going to be effective and you're
not going to get the job if you feel like no i'm going to show them what a badass i am
and this is this is this is what you got to look forward to
you're going to get hired all right i hope that helps that's great question dang that's good
you