On the second day of my freshman orientation hiking trip, we new students were tricked by our group leaders. After a short hike and some petty excuse making, we finally got settled for our first meal of the day. To tide everyone over until lunch was ready, a giant bag of peanut M&M’s was passed around.
'Take as many as you like, we have plenty,' we were told. I grabbed exactly eighteen.
The catch was revealed moments later. This was not an appetizer but rather another ice-breaking activity. For each M&M, we were supposed to tell one fun fact about ourselves. Everyone had a nice giggle as I announced my total.
I took a minute to decide what to do. I’d barely spoken on the trip so far. I could say I liked M&M's but even this obvious fact seemed too mundane to share as 'fun'. And seventeen more after that! I was shy and I was stuck.
Finally, it came to me: I was eighteen and I had to say eighteen things. If I told one story from each year of my life, I would be all set. I cleared my throat and got started...
‘When I was one, my grandmother tied a weight around my neck…’
‘When I was five, I broke my arm before gymnastics practice…’
‘When I was eleven, we used to play off-the-wall in the boys bathroom with a bouncy ball…’
'When I was seventeen, I was at the center of a minor uproar involving the junior math award...'
All things considered, my idea went over very well. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from the trip anymore so I can’t say for sure if this was a memorable moment for my classmates. Probably, I would bring it up and they would vaguely recall 'something along those lines'. Then, we would talk about (their) kids or (their) jobs or whatever else was needed to properly get caught up.
But after all these years, I still remember it. It was a good lesson on how to break up a messy problem into a set of smaller but coherent chunks.
A few months ago, I recognized how unsure I was about the best way to prepare for job interviews. Broadly speaking, I did not want to spend too much time preparing. A job requiring I know every detail of a company’s history or a boss demanding perfect polish for each minute I was onsite was very likely to be a poor fit with my skills. But I couldn't just roll out of bed and start talking, either. I felt the need to do some kind of preparation.
Eventually, I remembered this incident from ten years ago. I decided to try writing down a story for each line on the job description. Surely, citing past examples of what the hiring team sought would only help my candidacy. And by limiting myself to a predetermined set of responses, I protected myself against the temptation of going ‘off-script’ into areas where the relationship between my skills and the job’s needs was not so obvious.
So far, the results have been mixed: I have not yet seen a job offer thanks to this technique yet I’ve felt very good about my recent interview performances. I think I’m on to something here, though, and looking forward to refining the approach over the duration of this job search.
