Sometimes interviews are personality tests. The recruiters want to get a sense of what drives you, what motivates you. But the interviewer has a lot of details and doesn't know which one to focus on. Try not to spend time talking about what you're not. Avoid saying "I'm this, but I'm not really that, and I'm not really that." What you're not is sort of useless information to the interviewer.

Skip the useless information

Before the interview, make sure you know about not only the job description but the company itself. Do an audit of your personality traits that match, and your skills that match.

Do your homework

Effective practice is about training your mind and your mouth to work in concert. Just several times, try to practice getting those ideas you've prepared for the interview out together in a very confident, clear, and simple way.. You don't need an actual audience, a simple practice in front of the mirror works just fine.

Effective practice

It may seem like a softball, but it's actually the toughest job interview question. Here's how to nail it. Let’s be real: “Tell me about yourself” isn’t even a question. It sparks instant anxiety for most. Where do I start? What’s most important? How much of myself do I reveal? Also, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 am I? Innovation Editor Christine Liu decided to tackle these questions head-on with the help of Joel Schwartzberg, author of, “Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter.” With a few practical steps--like matching who you are with the company’s needs and mission--you’ll have more answers than questions next time someone says, “Tell me about yourself.” Filmed in Fall 2019. --------------------------------------------------------------------- At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact. Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters Follow us: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review/ https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review #personalbrand #communication #jobinterview

Stashed ideas

How to Answer the Question, “Tell Me About Yourself”

They look broadly to do the job that needs to be done. They build a reputation of being a flexible utility player, with the agility to adapt to changing needs.One of the best ways to encourage this is to be a good communicator, both by letting people know what is happening, and really listening to other people.

Top performers look beyond their assigned role

They don't wait to be asked; they get things started and involve others, even when they're not officially in charge. They lead or follow on-demand rather than by command. They don't assume that other people are in charge who will tell them when they are needed and what to do. In leadership circles, this is often called "leadership from behind."

Top performers get things started

... rather than workers who measure their contribution by hours worked. Too many average workers operate on an avoidance mindset, taking responsible action, but when things get tough, they stall out or escalate issues up the management chain rather than taking ownership.The best business leaders and business professionals are also ones who produce more results.

Look for those obsessed with completion

Many employees interpret change as annoying, unfair, or threatening to their stability. Top performers interpret new targets and new rules as a need to recalibrate and refocus their efforts, as well as the business. The result is a culture of innovation, keeping the organization relevant and responsive.

Top performers see change as an opportunity to learn 

The best players provide a lift, not by taking on other people's work but by being easy to work with. They bring a sense of equanimity that reduces drama, politics, and stress, and promotes a positive and collaborative work environment for everyone. They offer to help, rather than seek help.

Top performers make heavy demands lighter

How to Identify a Top Performer in Your Business

The grabber is a bridge from the question. For example, if you are asked, “Tell me about yourself,” you might respond “I’d be happy to.” If the question is “How is Project X coming along?” you might reply, “It’s on track.” If you are asked for quarterly results, the grabber would be that number.Note that these grabbers respond to the question but do not provide a full answer. They bridge from the query and do so in a confident way.

Begin with a grabber

Every question deserves a clear, focused answer, and the second component of your response should be your message. It captures in one sentence the point you want to make.In a job interview question above—”Tell me about yourself”—the message could be: “I thrive on creative projects.” If you’re answering the question “How is Project X coming along?” and your grabber is “It’s on track,” your message might be: “We have already found ways to reduce costs by 40%.”

Present your message

You have to support your message with proof points.If your message in a job interview is “I thrive on creative projects", when you give the reasons you can say that:&nbsp;<ul><li>"In university, I studied graphic design at a top school."</li><li>"I love nothing better than working on campaigns that include a strong design element."</li><li>"My portfolio is full of examples that have earned me and my firm design awards.” </li></ul>To organize your thoughts, it’s best to introduce these points with “First,” “Second,” “Third,” etc.

Add proof points

Every answer must have a purpose—it should result in action. A call to action shows that you as a leader not only have a message, but you are delivering a message that is actionable.In a job interview, your call to action could be: “Is there anything more you need from me to bring me on board?” or, “I look forward to hearing from you about the next steps.” The call to action in a job interview shows your confidence as a candidate. It makes clear you assume there is a next step as you move toward being hired.

End with a call to action

Whether you’re interviewing for a new job, or meeting with clients, each response you give should have these four elements.


4 simple things you should include in every answer you give

<ul><li>Vehicle identification. Allowing a vehicle to identify itself to parking garages, smart home systems, other vehicles, etc.&nbsp;</li><li>Over the air updates. Allowing verification that the software running in your car is correct and up-to-date.&nbsp;</li><li>Function on demand. Allowing payments to upgrade your car with features such as higher maximum speed or extended range.&nbsp;</li><li>Autonomous vehicles that earn money. Allowing autonomous vehicles to act as fee-earning taxis when not used by their owners.&nbsp;</li><li>Payment for tolls and EV charging. Allowing automatic, transparent and frictionless payment.&nbsp;</li></ul>

Uses of IOTA in Automotives

<ul><li>Decreases complexity. There are no middle men involved. Only you and the truck.&nbsp;</li><li>Has no transaction fees. What you send is what the truck receives.&nbsp;</li><li>Simplifies cross-country payments. No need to deal with foreign currencies any more.&nbsp;</li><li>Can enforce sanctions in case of a default. The truck will only drive as long as you are paying for it.&nbsp;</li></ul>

What IOTA offers

People often ask me what Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology is. As a technical analyst, it is part of my job to explain it to them. However some technologies are extremely difficult to…

Modelling New Business Models with IOTA

Y Combinator is an American seed money startup accelerator that was launched in March of 2005. It has since then launched over 2,000 companies.

Y Combinator

There is no key for success, no magic recipes, or things to execute to ensure success with your company

<ol><li>Routine will kill strategic thinking.</li><li>Start small thinking big. It's impossible to build the best service product at the beginning and this journey involves constant evolution and continuous improvement.</li><li>1, 10, 20, 50, 100, 1.000, &amp; 10.000. Each number means facing new challenges. Don't try to get 1000 customers if you have gotten to know if your first 10 has loved your service/product.</li><li>Hire people you trust, share values, and enjoy working with that have high performances.</li><li>Know how to balance your energy and understand when you need a 'hard reset'</li></ol>

Strategies Learned From YCombinator

Almost one year ago (2019), I experienced a life-changing event: being accepted into the most important accelerator in the world: Y Combinator. The reason why it was a life-changing event is not only…

How YC changed my mindset

One important tool to resolve the tension between the customer’s high expectations and a centralized digital sales organization is recommendation engines. These analytical models estimate which product or service has the highest chance of being relevant for the customer — the Next Best Offer (NBO).Everyone who has shopped online or has used streaming content providers such as Netflix, which come from such models.

Digital sales require knowing the Next Best Offer

Collaborative filtering methods take advantage of combination of large number of products and customers. They predict which products a customer will be the most interested in based on the preferences of other customers who Bought/Liked similar products. This model only requires data on which customers bought which products and are relatively simple to train.But they require a very large amount of data on Customer/Product purchases to produce good results. 'reinforcement learning' tests different offers and learns from the response (Interaction/Purchase), optimizing what is displayed to each&nbsp;

Analytical models for few products, but lots of data

Machine learning Algorithms predict the probability of a customer’s action by learning patterns in historical data. The resulting model scores are then calibrated across products to give comparable probability scores. To get the first implementation up and running, each model uses the same classification algorithm trained on a standardized Dataset. One can later improve each individual model by creating special explanatory variables and Fine-Tuning parameters. If your business has a data science team, it is highly likely to have such models which help the model factory.

The prediction model factory

In general, an NBO system is not a stand-alone product that can be bought off the shelf, but a solution that should be tailored to specific business needs. This holds true for the prediction model factory as well, and below we outline the most important preparation steps for a successful implementation.

Five critical success factors for implementing an NBO system

To gain organizational Buy-In, the Nbo system should be supported by a business case which considers estimated sales increase versus cost of development and maintenance of models. If one has previously Operationalized a prediction model, this might work as good proxy for estimates. If there are any existing next best offer solutions (E.G. Based on simple rules) these are also excellent starting points.

Clear business case

Most important ingredient in any Analytical model is the data it is based upon. Aim for a "good enough" data set as a starting point and gradually expand. Whether you are legally allowed to use the relevant data for the Modelling, and if it is ethical do so, must also be considered.

Data preparation and quality assessment

Do you need a different strategy for outbound (E.G. Email and outgoing Phone-Calls) and Inbound (E.G. Website Banner) channels? a customer service representative might receive a recommendation on the screen when a customer calls customer service.

Understanding communication channels and processes

<ul><li>Do you have access to an environment where prediction models can be developed, tested, deployed and Retrained?</li><li>Which systems consume the prediction results? which systems are integrated with your analysis environment?</li></ul>

Preparing for operationalization and system integrations

Lastly, when the NBO model is up and running, we need to monitor both:&nbsp;<ul><li>That the prediction models are sufficiently accurate.&nbsp;</li><li>That the activity itself has an impact on customer behavior.&nbsp;</li></ul>

Measuring model accuracy and activity impact

As an increasing amount of sales will happen digitally, the importance of NBO systems will only increase in the years to come, and successful implementations of such systems are already the competitive advantage of some of the <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/01/competing-in-the-age-of-ai" target="_self">world’s leading companies </a>. In this article we have outlined how businesses with lots of customer data but relatively few products can get started building their own NBO system, and if you think your own business can utilize our approach we encourage you to contact us.&nbsp;

Summary

This is a central and repeating question within sales and marketing.Recommendation engines are often used to find the answer and are key to the success of virtually all digital leaders such as <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/01/competing-in-the-age-of-ai" target="_self">Amazon and Alibaba</a>.But what do you do if you don’t have that many products? And shouldn’t you be able to take advantage of customer data beyond salesAn alternative approach for Next Best Offer (NBO), consists of mass-produced and calibrated prediction models, calculating the probability of purchase for each individual product per customer.

Which product is the most relevant to offer your customer right?

We describe an alternative approach for Next Best Offer tailored to businesses such as banking, insurance and telecom.

Next Best Offer when you have few products but lots of data

A high-performing company is made up of many high-performing teams. If one team’s performance starts to slip and isn’t quickly corrected, other teams’ performance will be affected – with company-wide implications.&nbsp;And it isn’t just companies that want high-performing teams, it’s individual team members.

Why should we focus on how teams work?

A team that isn’t growing or adapting is stagnating.&nbsp;Teams need to continuously evolve, update strategies, and integrate new team members and leaders to maintain high levels of performance.

When teams stop growing

The four steps of the HPT framework are:<ul><li>Measure: Take your measurements to identify the strengths and challenges that exist for the team. Using the same metrics each time deepens understanding and focuses discussions within the team.</li><li>Act: Get the team together and review the measurements. Decide on actions your team will take to improve the problem areas, and work on the most urgent first.</li><li>Review: Towards the end of the specified period, close out any open actions. Review the closed actions to see what worked and what didn’t.</li><li>Share: Pick out the actions that worked – these are your reusable plays for next quarter. Add them to the shared team playbook to create a global resource and share your learnings with other teams. In subsequent quarters, teams will be able to find relevant plays for the metrics they want to focus on.</li></ul>

The High-Performing Teams (HPT) framework 

A high-performing company is made up of many high-performing teams. We've built a framework to help us continuously improve the way we work.

Building high-performing teams through continuous improvement

It may seem essential for software to become the core of a business model for a broad cross-section of companies. For example, among industrial companies, 38% say they aspire to generate over 50% of revenues within the next three years from digital technologies.
However, it doesn't mean it will be easy. There are a handful of successful cases of non-software companies building software businesses. Many companies head in the wrong direction because of common misconceptions.

Nontechnology companies turn to software-based models

People may think companies become successful because of software engineering transformation. However, product management and product organisation play a bigger role, where product managers are more like mini-CEOs for a product. The digital transition is a business-model transformation across all parts of the business.

It's an engineering transformation

It is a misconception that a company should hire a few senior executives from tech companies and repurpose their own IT talent in software-business building. Non-tech companies need a lot of digital talent to shift successfully to a software model. But when it comes to top performers, your company competes with leading tech firms, meaning you are more likely to lose. You risk overpaying for lower-performing talent. To get the talent you need, second- or third-tier regions may be better.

Repurpose your IT talent

Many businesses improve company performance by the consistent acquisition of small players. But in the case of a nonsoftware company buying software assets, it is not effective. Smaller digital acquisitions often create difficulties integrating the new companies because the companies differ dramatically from one another. It is better to focus on anchor digital acquisition. When the bigger purchase has been integrated, your own organisational culture is digitally adjusted, putting you in a better position to start acquiring additional assets.

Build scale by acquiring small players

You may be confident in your sales force and its good relationship with customers, but selling software is different from other products as it requires technical chops and deeper vertical expertise. Your existing sales force may lack some understanding of the software they're trying to sell and the expertise to win customer confidence. An alternative is to pull in a set of specialists that your existing sales force can contact in the sales process.

James Hall@jamehall