What hiring managers are really trying to figure out when they ask, ‘What are your hobbies?’

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Jacquelyn Smith May 9, 2016

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Jeff Hitchcock/flickr

Don’t just say, “I love photography.” Explain why.

When you’re in the hot seat interviewing for a job, you’re answering questions such as “What’s your greatest weakness?” and “Why should we hire you?” — so a query like “What are your hobbies?” will probably seem like a piece of cake.

But before you start babbling about your lifelong obsession with horses or your newfound passion for baking, consider this: The hiring manager wants to get a better sense of who you are, so it’s important to think about which hobbies best showcase your strengths, passions, and skills — and then discuss only those in the interview.

“The employer is trying to determine whether you’d be a good fit, and getting insight into your interests, hobbies, and personality all help in evaluating that,” says Amy Hoover, president of the job board Talent Zoo.

Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of “Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job,” agrees: “By learning more about your outside interests, they can glean more about your personality, and even draw some conclusions about how you may thrive in the organization.”

 

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When People Ask for Career Advice, This Is What I Tell Them

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Great mentors–and personal experience–have taught me some valuable lessons.

BY JUSTIN BARISO
CREDIT: Getty Images

He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
–Richard Henry Dana

Throughout the past 20 years, I’ve been privileged to experience some very different types of work. Sure, I’ve felt the joy (and struggle) of pursuing my passion–but I’ve also had jobs that others would consider very…”unglamorous”.

Since beginning this column over a year ago, a number of readers have reached out to me for advice on their own work life. The individual situations differ slightly, but most questions are variations of the following:

I try my best to respond to these requests, since I love connecting with readers. I always emphasize that I’ll never tell someone what to do, because they’re the ones responsible for the decisions they make and their consequences.

But I’m always happy to relay principles that I feel have proven successful in my experience.

Looking back, here are a few of the lessons I’ve passed on:

Happiness is an attitude, not a set of circumstances.

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The Five Big Mistakes That Will Sink Your Internship This Summer

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J. Maureen Henderson

I have no qualms about saying that, for a host of reasons, I’m not a fan of internships and the emphasis we place on them as the best (and increasingly only) path to that elusive post-college entry-level white collar job. But, as a career advice Cassandra, I realize I’m in the minority. Interns are gonna intern. If your summer plans involve getting on-the-job experience (and a decent paycheck – please hold out for that) in the hope of increasing your future employability in a world in which the value of a college degree seems to erode by the year, you can at least go about it in the smartest manner possible. In other words, don’t make these mistakes.

Assuming Your Boss Knows What He/She Is Doing

It’s possible your manager hires interns because he or she deeply believes in nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurial or creative talent. It’s also possible that he or she has never managed anyone before, just needed an extra set of (cheap) hands around the office or was told from on high that the department would be getting an intern, end of story. The point being that it’s very unlikely that your growth and development will be this person’s top priority. Between putting out various fires, dealing with inter-office politics and daydreaming about an upcoming two weeks at a cabin in Maine, your boss likely won’t be devoting significant time to planning out your workload. Thinking your manager has your best interests at heart and relying on him or her to craft a winning internship experience on your behalf is a mistake. Read more…

On the heartbreaking difficulty of getting rid of books

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Astack_of_booksApril 26, 2016  By Summer Brennan

Like a lot of avid readers, I enjoyed Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up but bristled when it came to the section about books. The gist of her now-famous method is this: go through all your possessions by category, touch everything, keep only that which “sparks joy,” and watch as your world is transformed. It seems simple enough, but Kondo gives minimalism the hard sell when it comes to books, urging readers to ditch as many of them as they can. You may think that a book sparks joy, she argues, but you’re probably wrong and should get rid of it, especially if you haven’t read it yet.

Paring down one’s wardrobe is one thing, but what kind of degenerate only wants to own 30 books (or fewer) at a time on purpose? What sort of psychopath rips out pages from their favorite books and throws away the rest so they can, as Kondo puts it, “keep only the words they like?” For those of us for whom even the word “book” sparks joy, this constitutes a serious disconnect. Still, as the weather gets warmer, many readers will tackle their spring cleaning with The Life-Changing Magic in hand.

I wondered, can Kondo’s Spartan methods be adapted for someone who feels about books the way the National Rifle Association feels about guns, invoking the phrase “cold dead hands”? I decided to give it a try. Read more…

Why hirers use social media to screen candidates

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by Dennis McCafferty Posted 054-29-2016

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A growing number of CIOs and other hiring managers are screening job candidates by checking out their social media pages, according to a recent survey from CareerBuilder. These managers are also using search engines to research prospects—with many indicating that they’ll rule out applicants entirely if they couldn’t find any information about them online. Supervisors in the IT industry are most likely to turn to social media/search engines for research here, looking for details that supports candidates’ fitness for a vacancy as well as a professional online persona. A great deal of survey respondents admit that they’ve eliminated people from consideration based upon what they’ve found out about them online. As for the biggest deal-killers? These would include provocative/inappropriate photos and/or videos of the prospective hire, as well as the posting of discriminatory comments and any “bad mouthing” of an employer. “Tools such as Facebook and Twitter enable employers to get a glimpse of who candidates are outside the confines of a resume or cover letter,” said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer of CareerBuilder. “And with more and more people using social media, it’s not unusual to see the usage for recruitment to grow as well.” More than 2,185 hiring managers and HR pros, as well as more than 3,030 workers, took part in the research, which was conducted by Harris Poll. – See more at: http://www.cioinsight.com/it-management/careers/slideshows/why-hirers-use-social-media-to-screen-candidates.html#sthash.a3jll3XB.dpuf