Career Advice: Do The Little Things

February 13, 2007

Recently, I went on an interview for an opportunity that seems to be really rewarding.

The company is really good and the opportunity is high profile. My credentials match perfectly, there is only one catch. After two phone interviews and one face-to-face meeting, I found out that I am the number three guy so far.

Of course, the interviewing process is not over yet but clearly it is not completely going the way I wanted it too.

During my face-to-face interview, I had the opportunity to meet with the Account Executive responsible for the client. While we discussed the challenges and issues the team faced, I took notes and came up with a few ideas.

My next and final stop was with the two principle hiring managers. After our intial exchange of pleasantries, we got right into the discovery stage.

They brought up a what-if scenerio and I proposed and idea that I had come up with during my first meeting. I thought to myself that this "was good!"

Our entire interview focused on the idea and the implementation of this idea.

Overall this was not a bad thing. Just think, my interviewers wanted to know more about my idea.

The problem was that I was not able to share other strong areas of my character, such as my track record of leadership development, my leadership style, illustrated with examples and other areas of success where I could provide examples.

I spoke to the executive recruiter on the way home and told him how I thought it went. His suggestion, and the point of this story, was for me to write a follow-up email outlining my strengths. Great idea!

Below you see what I wrote and the point - make sure you follow-up with a short outline of your strengths. Do this either through a letter or when time is a factor through an email.

My follow-up:

Hello xxxxx and xxxx,

I want to thank you both for taking the time out of your busy schedules to meet with me on Thursday, February 8th.

I appreciate our discussion and your candor regarding the complexity of the current position. Clearly, it's a great opportunity to have a positive impact on the team and the organization.

My only regret is that I spent a large portion of our meeting discussing the phone tree implementation and not enough time discussing my leadership abilities.

In Summary:

- I have a proven track record of leading multiple centers supporting similar business types. As a result, I understand the importance of creating consistency by developing a defined process and auditing it to ensure that the process is being followed.

- My leadership style can be categorized as collaborative, others may referred to this as participative. I believe in leading rather than pushing and this can be accomplished through employee inclusion, communication, coaching and development. In addition, I adhere to a positive performance management process that focuses on trying to catch people doing things right and recognizing that behavior.

- Call center success is achieved through the effective integration of people, processes and technology. One does not work well without the other. Therefore, I believe it is critical to create work flows that capitalize on the benefits of all three. An excellent example of this is the use of IEX, creative schedules (4-10, split shifts, etc) that not only meets the needs of the business but also meets the needs of your teams, and a clear process in place that includes recruiting, training and operations to eliminate any surprises.

- and finally I understand that I need to create buy-in from the team and must lead by setting a positive example and managing the WIIFM (What's in it for me?) People need to see the benefits that can be achieved for them by implementing and executing a new process. As a result, and whenever possible, the team needs to be a part of the solution. By doing so, our execution will have more buy-in and a greater chance of success.

Once again, thank you for your time and the opportunity to discuss your objectives and requirements.

Sincerely,
Greg Meares

Give me feedback by commenting below. Thanks

Greg

Important Tags: greg meares, career advice, job hunting, success

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