:: please be someone else when you interview ::

A key ingredient in being truly happy and successful in your job:

Be you.

Being an unemployed advertising professional, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around trying to find a company I’d like to work for rather than looking for a job description on a job board. I figure this is probably a good way to find a place that has an attitude that fits mine and that will allow me to be me. Sure this may be a “best-case” scenario and yes, I’ve been shot down or ignored by some of the companies I’ve approached, but I’m fairly sure at some point something will shake out and both myself and the company will be better off for it.

Let me back up… here’s a little background on me:
Work for me isn’t 9-5. I take it personally and being myself is paramount. I have ideas, lots of them, and they come at all times of the day and night. I also tend not to quit on something until I’m satisfied with the result, regardless of the hours it takes to complete. These traits can make it hard to maintain a personal life but generally make for something I can show people with pride. Ideally, in order for me to be firing on all cylinders, I’ve got to believe in what I’m doing and know that the people I’m working with have confidence in me to get it done. I’ve been lucky enough to work at places that fostered this kind of attitude and I’m determined to find a place like that again.

It’s amazing the impact it can have when someone believes in you.

Moving on…

It probably applies to every profession, but in advertising especially, it seems that feeling comfortable in your surroundings and being able to “think out side the box” without fear of feeling like someone is cocking an eyebrow in your direction and secretly calling HR when you leave the room is fairly important. If you don’t feel comfortable expressing yourself then you’ll never be able to blurt out that idea that doesn’t fall in line with the rest of the pitch. You know, the one that you’ll have to fight for in the client meetings, that’s also the one that will turn their company around and keep your agency afloat.

Now, let’s take this outside of advertising for a minute.

Imagine you’ve got a production line or a machine shop. You may not necessarily care if your employees feel comfortable being themselves or expressing ideas as long as they can man the position for 8 hours a day and your product is being shipped out.

What if you encouraged the employees on your production line to be creative and come up with ideas? Once a month you gathered them to get feedback on what you could do to improve things. Not a bitch session mind you, but a time when someone could state a problem providing they also proposed a solution. What if one of your workers thought of a way to streamline your production by 15% and the only reason they thought of it was because they were manning your production line and not supervising it? In a normal production scenario a line worker would probably dismiss the idea and go home to dinner, but if individualism and expressing himself is encouraged from the onset of his or her employment, the situation may change and SHAZAM your business becomes more profitable over night.

Makes sense doesn’t it? It certainly does to me.

I would want my employees to be individuals, to think differently than everyone else. It can only lead to good things.

So when I come across a page that suggests how I should look & act when meeting with a company, I tend to recoil like someone just gave me a purple nurple.

Certainly some of the suggestions make sense (look sharp, be on time, know your own resume, etc.) and to some, maybe even all of them make sense. After all you’re applying for a job at THEIR company right? You should fit into THEIR mold.

But what if I don’t have a strong, firm handshake? What if I talk too much? Or I don’t talk enough? Maybe I’m not a guy who sends thank you notes. That certainly doesn’t mean that I can’t turn your sales group around.

Doesn’t this also kind of defeat the interview process? If everyone does the same thing, hits the same marks, dresses the same, how can you determine who you really want to hire? Isn’t HR just making their own job harder?

I’m fully aware that not every position requires innovation (and certainly not everyone wants to be an innovator), but I don’t know of any company that wouldn’t benefit from people who think like innovators.