I participate in mentoring for my undergrad university and I also interview a ton in my current position. A trend I've been noticing lately is that I cannot tell one candidate from the other. Most of my interviews/mentoring sessions end up like this:
I try as hard as I can to bring forth some interesting nugget of information - I ask questions, I look for visual cues, or I sit patiently and wait for a well thought out question to spring forth until I basically end up hearing myself talk to awkwardly fill in the silent moments.
Remember that saying, "Dress to Impress?" Well, ladies and gents, it's no longer looking the part that is expected of you now a days. It's being able to clearly communicate what makes you so awesome and why I want to fight to hire you for my company and have you part of my team.
I recently watched Sally Hogshead's TEDx talk on How to Fascinate. Besides the actual content of the video, please note how open her face is when she talks, the personality she oozes with every word and the way she gesticulates with her hands and moves around the stage:
Pretty...fascinating...right? Sally engages the viewer almost right from the beginning and you are basically sitting on the edge of your seat with excitement wanting to know, YES, how can I too be fascinating? At least I was.
As part of this little exercise, I was able to take her Fascination Test which is about 28 questions long. Each question is designed to figure out what triggers, as she calls them, define your archetype - your bread and butter - your brand.
Her seven triggers are:
1. Power
2. Passion
3. Mystique
4. Prestige
5. Alarm
6. Vice
7. Trust
By taking the test, you learn about your primary and secondary triggers that are the very definition of you. I have found out that my primary trigger is PRESTIGE and my secondary is PASSION. What does that mean? It means that I'm acute, discerning and detail oriented. I don't settle for average. I'm a combination of ambitious, goal-oriented, social, expressive, and intuitive. Pretty spot on I would say. I fall in with the likes of Ralph Lauren, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Lady Diana. Not too shabby.
How can I use this knowledge to create my own brand and to fascinate others? For one, just simply recognizing these triggers is a huge step. It's something I exuded anyway whether I knew it or not but now that I have a knowledge of what this truly is defined as, I already have that much more confidence in myself. For another, I can use my PRESTIGE trigger to get more people at work to recognize and respect my talent by having them share in my own visions. With my PASSION trigger, simply showcasing my personality and my flair draws people in and captivates my audience. This is how I can bring value to my team.
This test reaffirmed what I already knew about myself. It definitely defined it better for me and gave me more direction on how I can use these skills to my advantage and things to look out for (i.e. I tend to be over emotional so toning it down a bit on occasion may not be such a bad thing). Circling back to my earlier comments, I really think each student should take this test their final year of college, before they go out into the real world and interview for jobs. It would provide them with more direction and give them ways to position their own brand. I remember one of the worst things about finishing college was this big gaping hole at the end of it all and I wasn't sure where I would land, if ever. I wish someone had made me take this test so I at least had some paths I could choose from.
I'm one step closer to Branding D and I can't wait for what's in store once I start consciously pulling these triggers more and more.
-D
No comments:
Post a Comment