Kymberly Lavigne Hinkley
Director, Learning and Employment Record Ecosystem at Western Governors University
Kymberly Lavigne-Hinkley is part of the career coaching team at Skillful, an initiative of the Markle Foundation that aims to create an ecosystem where individuals are valued for the...
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- Skills-Based Workforce Development: Enhancing job seekers’ potential for success
- Digital Credentials and Employment Records: Facilitating transparent skills documentation for individuals
- Career Coaching and the Future of Work: Navigating pathways to meaningful employment
- Strategic Partnerships in Education: Collaborating for better workforce outcomes
- Empowering Small Businesses: Investing in employee skill development initiatives
Meet the mentor
TALK SHOW VIDEOS
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- So that she can follow up with a thoughtful thank you note to her interviewer that highlights specific moments of the interview and emphasize her strengths as a candidate
- Show appreciation of the interviewers time, re-emphasize your strengths and value to the interviewer and employer, establish a more personal connection and show interest in the opportunity by demonstrating openness for follow up questions/interview
- 3 The response is very generic. Tom could have been more specific on his particular skills or abilities that will bring value to the teaching assistant role. Tom also could have been more specific on what he liked about the company culture or highlighted a particular moment in the interview. It would also help Tom to provide his preferred communication method.
- Send one additional follow up email articulating your interest and openness for questions or a follow up interview. Thank them again for their time and express succinctly your qualifications.
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- To follow up, I would have them review a number of example thank you notes and work together to identify a basic structure. I would make sure that the person could easily articulate their occupational, foundational, and transferable skills and, if possible, quantify or qualify how these will impact the employer and open vacancy. They would then practice writing this out in the follow-up. I would also help the individual try to get into the mindset of an employer and what may drive their decision making processes.
- Someone who can help them with questions about a product, information about the store/brand, someone to make helpful suggestions, to provide a positive experience in the store or online (depending on the sales format). Specific skills may include: strong communication skills, listening skills, empathy skills, problem solving, math and knowledge of currency, intuition
- By having a strong knowledge of my product/company/etc., asking questions to my client to better understand needs/goals, listening to the client, making helpful suggestions, have a personal demeanor, provide my client with my attention and focus
- Build a process - think of sales meeting as a journey. Establish control - ask for the business at the end.
- Help solving a problem, suggestion on a product, assistance with checking out/closing a sale
- Have a consistent and thoughtful sales process, strong communication skills, establish control - not be timid or afraid to make the ask/close the sale, have a friendly demeanor, use questions to better understand expectations and how to meet and exceed them
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- Aside from the skills highlighted in this section - I think that the best skill to have is listening and best tool to use is asking questions. From my experience in program and business development, most people want to talk about themselves and their individual experience/situation. It is helpful to have a handful of questions to start the conversations and then use good listening skills to ask more as you establish a relationship.
- Adaptable, comfortable in unfamiliar environments, recognizes unexpected situations, ability to consider consequences, executes on strategy, ability to influence, and change behavior
- I would have practices a negative visualization exercise to consider the various scenarios. This would have produced a more mindful result and created more confidence in my approach
- Deep work sprints, negative visualization, coming up with various exercises to practice instant reactions, take on stretch assignments or work in areas where you don't have expertise. Make small changes in your daily routines.
- Identify areas where you feel most uncomfortable and begin taking small steps towards progress on these. Don't stick to work assignments that are comfortable and routine. Work with people and managers that give you stretch assignments to begin to establish new routines and pose questions to you that they have had to make quickly. Practice split-decision making in a safe environment. Fun creative problems solving games can be great here to - i.e. make a {object} out of these materials in 5 minutes.
- Listen, demonstrate empathy, clearly communicate processes and next steps
- Acknowledge that we are going to face angry clients in a majority of situations and that it is up to us to take ownership of the situation. Having some basic best practices will help - for instance: listening, asking questions that are helpful to exploring potential resolutions, showing empathy by acknowledging their situation and feelings, not taking the anger personally. It is also very important to know your own boundaries and your organization/company's boundaries. You should know at what point to bring in a manager or additional assistance.
- Situational interview puts an individual in a hypothetical situation and a behavioral interview asks for an individual to recall from past experiences
- You get to see how a person would react in a given scenario, you get to see how a person handles split-second decision making, you can get a sense of that person's conflict-resolution abilities with actual routine incidents, you get a sense of processes in handling problems
- Managerial, conflict-resolution, communication, listening, personable, empathy, human resources, team work
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- I am not conducting an interview soon. Here are a few examples though: 1) Two of your managers want you to dedicate 100% of your time on a project in the same timeframe, what do you do? 2) You are working with a state partner that doesn't think a project is going as expected, what are your next steps to resolve the issue? 3) You have been given an assignment in an area where you don't have subject matter expertise, but there is one person on staff that has it, do you ask for help and why? 4) You have been given additional work responsibilities above and beyond your capacity, how do you talk to your manager about it? 5) You have to create a project plan with a team member that you don't enjoy working with, how do you make sure the project is successful?
- I would reverse engineer the questions - start with what you want the answer to be or what is going to most highly benefit your organization/company, then come up with a question that explores whether or not that person will be able to meet these expectations.
