Five Questions for Patrice Bain, co-author of "Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning"12/13/2019 In this blog post, I pose five questions to Patrice Bain, co-author of an excellent book on teaching titled “Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning.” I have taken these five questions plus a bonus question from the video interview I did with Patrice and edited them for clarity. Also, I asked Patrice to recommend five books on teaching and learning that one can read to gain more knowledge. How did you discover the scientific approach to teaching elementary school students on how to learn? Teaching is challenging since there are so many demands put on teachers, and there is not sufficient time to do everything teachers want to accomplish. My first several years were trying to figure it all out like how do I get the lesson plans done, how do I cover the curriculum in classes and how do I finish other tasks. After teaching for several years, I started asking, “Why are some students learning well and others aren't?” and “What is the disconnect here?” It was about this time that I met two wonderful cognitive scientists Mark McDaniel and Henry Roediger, who are cognitive scientists from Washington University in St. Louis. They wanted to research how students learn in authentic classrooms.They were interested in this because up to this point, most research up to this point was done at universities in laboratories with college students. Dr. Roediger and Dr. McDaniel chose my classroom after they obtained a grant from the Institute of Education Science (IES) to research how students learn in elementary schools. I was fortunate to be at the forefront of how learning takes place in elementary schools, and the cognitive scientist who came to work with me in my classroom was Pooja Agarwal, the co-author of my book “Powerful Teaching.” Soon, we started looking at strategies that were effective in students’ learning. I worked for years with these cognitive scientists and was able to learn how students learn because how students learn is typically not taught in teacher education programs. I taught for over 25 years, and it probably took about fifteen years before I was able to start perfecting my craft and creating learning strategies based on cognitive science. Why are students not taught how to learn? As a teacher, I was never taught how to learn through my education programs. I can't remember once where we ever discussed how students learn and what strategies improve their learning. I began to question why educator’s often didn’t have access to the cognitive science research. I made it my mission to not only test research based learning strategies in my classroom, but promote it to other teachers so they could help their students learn how to become effective learners. When I taught my students how to learn, they felt empowered and started feeling good about learning. Learning became fun. Getting students to feel empowered about learning was very important since some of my sixth graders had internalized failure. They were saying to themselves, "I'm just not smart," but in reality, that was far from the truth. Once they learned how to learn, they not only got excellent grades, but could rattle off important information and demonstrate deep thinking on their essays. When I think of so many of the problems that affect students these days, I believe it is often because of this internalized failure that has crept into their mindset. I keep asking, "Why don't we simply teach these type of students how to learn?" It would change many lives by empowering students how to learn, especially when they are young.. What are three stages of learning and why retrieval is so important to learning? There are three main stages of learning: encoding, storage, and retrieval. The first one is encoding. Encoding is where we, as teachers, impart knowledge. This imparting of knowledge can be through lectures, texts, websites, articles, video clips...we choose the methods we see best fitting our student needs. It is getting the information out to others. In schools, this is teacher-driven. The second step is storage. We have been taught to get information into students' heads, not out of their heads. What is important to students is not putting information in, but how do we pull information out of students' heads. This leads us to the third step: retrieval. This is the most important step of learning. Students become adept at doing homework, such as read a question and come up with a correct answer. But they had difficulty retrieving that information on tests. What I found was that students who excelled in doing their homework were not getting good grades on tests when critical thinking was required. That's when I realized that these students were not able to retrieve the information. Once I focused on using different retrieval strategies to address this problem in my classroom, students' grades improved, and they became better critical thinkers. Can the learning strategies that you used in school be used in the workplace? All of the learning strategies can be used anywhere, including at the workplace. Companies need to look at this closely since they spend so much money on training. If employees knew how to learn, they would feel empowered and probably become more engaged in the workplace. Many of the things we write about in our book "Powerful Teaching" such as retrieval, spacing, interleaving, and metacognition, are now used in engineering and medical schools. The reason for this is that students in these cognitive intense programs need to be able to retain a lot of information. For example, a doctor in the ER can't just google something. They must have the information at their fingertips when they are taking care of patients. People in corporations also have cognitive intense jobs where they have to pull things out of their heads quickly, whether in meetings, solving a problem, or providing service to customers. Speed is critical for these corporations to compete, and their employees have to be fast in everything they do, including how quickly they can retrieve relevant information to get the job done. All companies want to be a learning organization today, but what we see is that many of them have become teaching or training organizations.Teaching does not result in learning. I think they should closely look at what we write about in our book "Powerful Teaching" and start applying learning strategies or work with us in helping their employees learn faster, better, smarter so the company can indeed become a learning organization. Is the 2/20 technique a good learning strategy? I used this strategy with my son, where I spent two minutes with him in the morning to get him ready for school and focus on what he's going to learn that day in school. Then spend 20 minutes after he came back from school and had something to eat and was ready to go over his day in school. I just let him talk and not say anything till he was done. All I would say to him after he was done was whether he needed any help. Most of the time, he was able to focus and get his work done and be prepared for tests. So I wanted to ask Patrice what she thought of this strategy I used with my son. Patrice Bain's Answer That is a wonderful idea. You are setting your child up in the morning to start thinking ahead. Then after he got home and the 20 minutes you are offering gave him chances for retrieval where your son was going through the day and pulling out information he learned during the school day. Talking about his day is so valuable. As parents, simply asking our children to retrieve what was learned earlier is a powerful learning tool. Bonus Question: What makes someone an outstanding teacher? From my years of experience, I would say you need compassion, a solid understanding of learning strategies, your curriculum, and a passion for learning. In addition, it helps to have good mentors who can guide a novice teacher along with a supportive administration. Many things come together to make one an outstanding teacher. Five Book Recommendations
You can get more information at the following websites: patricebain.com powerfulteaching.org You can contact Patrice at patrice@patricebain.com or follow her on Twitter at @PatriceBain1. Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist that will help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to have an two 75 minute coaching session or interested in inviting him to your event to give a talk on job Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877.
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Five Questions for Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of C-Suite Network, Author, Keynote Speaker5/29/2019 I recently had the opportunity to meet Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of the C-Suite Network at a local National Speakers Association event in New Jersey where he was speaking. He exceeded my expectations. He not only gave an inspirational talk on what has made him successful as a public speaker and an entrepreneur, but spent a lot of time interacting with attendees, including me. Since I still had more questions, I reached out to him to see if you would be open to answering five questions that I would post it as a blog so others can benefit too. He replied immediately with a terse email: “On the BIG 5—bring it.” Jeffrey is a busy man. Besides running his company, he is an author, keynote speaker, and a host of his own podcast show. He could have ignored my request but didn't. He knew I was going to add value to him by spreading his thoughts and enhance his brand. I learned something very important from attending his talk and interacting with him in that he is a great marketer and has an effective and efficient system in place. To get the job done, he assigned one of his outstanding Senior Media Strategist, Keira, to work with me. I had a very good experience working with her. She made Jeffrey look real good that shows that he certainly knows how to hire the best. To learn more about Jeffrey’s thinking about business, values, and success, I recommend you read his excellent books: The Hero Factor: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations and Create Winning Cultures Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing? I have read all of them and will be blogging about what I learned about his working with Donald Trump in his book Think Big, Act Bigger. Below you will find the answers to my questions and the five book recommendations that have influenced his thinking. Five Questions Can you briefly talk about what your preparation is like before you give a speech? I like to prepare for a speech by knowing as much as possible about the event, its organizers, the venue, and the audience. I research everything about them – bios, interviews they’ve done, any press and I also look for some type of factoid, or original piece of knowledge, pertaining to any or all. I find that the more you can personalize your speech, the more successful it’ll be. How do you measure your speeches’ success? By the engagement I receive all over social media and the engagement I receive from the crowd while I’m on stage. For example, I always look out at the crowd, and if I see half of them on their phones, something’s gone wrong. My speeches are meant to live lively, engaging, and interactive. Afterward, I get tons of requests for pictures with audience members, and they ask me all kinds of questions about business, marketing, or leadership. I’m happy to answer any questions and take pictures with them. The more pictures I see on social media, the better. That’s how I measure success, not to mention the standing O’s are a pretty clear indicator. With so much noise today, what makes one stand out? What makes anyone stand out: being yourself. Authenticity is one of those ‘old’ values that never goes out of style. It’s about being yourself, regardless of the scenario you find yourself in. Being authentic, genuine, and speaking from the heart is how you stand out. Anyone can make a speech, not everyone is capable of reaching an audience. What does it take today to get to the C-Suite? Hard work and dedication. In business, nothing happens by chance or by luck alone. You have to work harder than anyone else, and while there are no guarantees that you’ll reach the c-suite, hard work always pays off. It’s called “work” for a reason -- because it’s HARD. What skills, attributes and competencies folks in the C-Suite look for in people they hire? They look for someone who is dedicated to the company’s mission and vision, someone who will roll up their sleeves to do whatever it takes to move the needle forward and increase the bottom line. They look for ‘clock changers,’ which I describe as people who are willing to stand out and go the extra mile by making a difference and doing whatever needs to be done, instead of being more interested in blending with the rest of the pack. Personally, I look for people who are willing to learn and not always necessarily the people with the most impressive resume. Don’t get me wrong, a good resume goes a long way, but you can always teach people a higher level, or different, skillset. You can’t teach attitude or passion. One More Question What makes you so good at what you do and what do you do to keep getting better at it? You just keep trying every single day to do your best. There’s no such thing as perfection, but you have to keep on trying. You can’t let one bad day influence the rest of the week/month. People often ask me, “what has been your best day?” or “what has been my highest accomplishment?” I always reply with “I’ll let you know when that happens.” There’s always tomorrow (and room for improvement). Can you please recommend five books that have influenced your thinking? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life by Daymond John Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill The Art of War by Sun Tzu ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success. Five Questions about Selling for Skip Miller, Author of "Selling Above and Below the Line"5/19/2019 Sometimes you buy a highly recommended book that you never get around to reading it. That was the case with me with the book Selling Above and Below the Line by Skip Miller when it was published. But recently I heard Skip discuss some of the ideas he covers in the book on the podcast “Same Side Selling” with Ian Altman. The way he explained how to sell Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) resonated with me so I had to read the book to get a deeper understanding. And I am glad I did but also kicked myself for waiting so long. After listening to him and reading his excellent book, I reached out to him via LinkedIn to see if he would be open to answering five questions among many I came up with. He immediately sent me an email with the subject, “How can I help you?” I always advise people that before you ever do business with anyone, find out how they network. You can find out a lot about people by the way they network. Look, it is much easier to be responsive when there is a potential business on the line, but Skip, with his busy schedule, turned around my questions in one day. I was impressed and learned something from him. Besides Skip being a class act, he is a President of M3 Learning based in Silicon Valley that trains sales professionals how to sell the way managers, directors and those in the C-suites like to buy, specifically using the concept Above the Line and Below the Line. Skip has authored other excellent books such as of ProActive Selling, ProActive Sales Management, Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting, Ultimate Sales Tool Kit, and More ProActive Sales Management. Skip loves teaching people how to sell effectively and efficiently through books, speeches, podcasts, blogs, and answering questions on selling as you will see below. You can tell he cares about this craft and does his part to make salespeople better, so they are not only successful but enjoy selling and satisfy customers. Question 1: Can a salesman have credibility at both Above the Line and Below the Line? Or do you recommend that a salesman bring his ATL executive for an ATL to ATL meeting, assuming they have practiced, planned, and prepared well before the meeting? You can talk to kids as a dad and to other adults as parents, yes? It's two value points. One needs to use the best product they can afford, BTL, and one need is to have it have an effect on the bottom line of the business, especially some initiatives that the ATL is working on and they need help with. Don't overcomplicate it. There are two different value propositions, and you have to address the right one with the right person in the right language. Question 2: Do you think there may be more than one line in a large enterprise-wide sale where you often have to start at BTL for proof of concept and pilot before moving to ATL for a departmental wide solution and then TL (Top Line) for an enterprise-wide solution? The reason I ask this question is that companies are risk-averse, thus are reluctant to make an enterprise-wide decision until they see the solution deployed at one or more sites. When companies take this approach, aren’t you dealing with more than one line since the conversation is likely going to be different with the buyers or managers, operational executives, and financial executives? Of course. Companies are set up to mitigate risk and trial things out unless they have a very urgent need to do something. Very urgent, like loss of market share, new competitive product, or major product mistake. However, there are a ton of ATLs who will jump in the pool and do not have a toe in the water first, if their value prop is addressed correctly. ($3M deal in 6 weeks kind of stuff) See the section of TRAINS in the Train Station in the book as well. The more trains you can effect, from one station master (ATL BUYER) or affect multiple train stations, the better the value and the more risk the customer is willing to take on, and weight that into the purchase decision. To be single threaded in an enterprise account is very dangerous. Question 3: Don’t companies like to pigeonhole vendor salespeople at the BTL level and work with the top consultancies like McKinsey to help them at the ATL level? How can you break through when a company is not looking at a vendor salesman for ATL insights? Another reason for this could be that the ATL executives may have an excellent relationship with the consultancy and view them as a trusted advisor and keep vendor salesman at the BTL level thus possibly commoditizing the solution that he is offering? What do you do here? Salespeople pigeon hole themselves by only speaking features and functions, and then they get to ATL, they regurgitate their successful BTL speak/presentation, which is not what the ATL wants to hear. I know of a ton of great salespeople who talk ATL so well, they are sought out by ATLs. McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and all the rest are great at top strategic stuff. Execution, at the point of attack, with a solution is what vendor salespeople have. The good vendor solution sales people hunt out problems first. Bad vendor solution sales people are a solution looking for a problem...wrong way! What do I do on a call? I call ATL...Hunt for Trains (as an example I use in my book)...Identify Gaps. That's my mission. Question 4: My focus is on helping people get senior to executive level jobs, including sales professionals. When they are interviewing, don’t you think they have to use what you are teaching in your book Above the Line to resonate with key decision makers that they can sell well both internally and externally at both Above the Line and Below the Line? You nailed it. The more the salespeople can demonstrate they can speak to BTL and ATL, know the differences, ask great questions, invoke transfer of ownership, and request decisions, win. The rest, they SELL, DEMO, TALK, SHOW, GIVE, CHAT, HELP....notice these are 4-letter words? But don't speak BTL to an ATL buyer or ATL to a BTL buyer, they won't be in rapport with you, and that's not good. Question 5: After reading your book, I have to ask this question about energy at the ATL level. Is it a stretch to say that the Boeing 737 MAX is a good example of what happens when there is too much energy at the ATL level and little at the BTL level? By this, I mean that Boeing executives and carriers’ executives did not get adequate input at the BTL level, the people who built the plane, such as engineers at Boeing, and those who have to make the plane fly such as pilots at carriers who purchased the planes. I don't know about the example, but the ATL who makes a decision without getting the BTL buy-in runs a risk. In the printer story, if I would have bought a printer for Ann, the BTL buyer in this case, and she didn't like it, I would have to and to return the printer, which would have wasted time and cost me money. I could force her to use the printer I want, but that usually does not end well. Only a corporate emergency would have an ATL do something without getting BTL involvement. One More Question: What is the one thing you are really good at that has made you so successful in sales, and what do you do keep getting better at that? I can sit in the customer chair and ask buyer customer-centric questions, rather than questions about my product or service. Can you please recommend five books that have influenced your thinking in sales? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldrat and Jeff Cox SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Others Don’t by Jim Collins Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Selling the Way Your Customer Wants to Buy by Marvin Sadovsky ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. He was recently honored with an award by Hire Heroes USA for his outstanding volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses and by Brookdale Community College for Excellence in Teaching. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You are always welcome to contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event (job interview, sales meeting or a big speech) coming up soon, please contact him right away that is if you want to win. Also, contact him for his next "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" workshop if you want to accelerate getting a good high-paying job. According to business leaders, one of the most important skills for success in business today is critical thinking. Companies value this highly if they want to compete and win. Since we are becoming more dependent on machines, humans often have to think critically so they make critical decisions. If they don't possess this skill, the result can be catastrophic. The problem is that Business schools embed Critical Thinking into the Business curriculum, but do not offer a specific course in Critical Thinking, making it difficult for students to learn this type of thinking. Students place priority on hard skills to get a job out of school and little or none on soft skills like Critical Thinking. They are pretty much on their own to learn it on the job. If you don't master Critical Thinking fast, it is likely to hurt your career since you can't succeed for long as a good business leader without Critical Thinking. Bob Schoenberg noticed this problem when he was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts. He taught thousands of students on courses related to developing their critical thinking skills. But what drew my attention to Bob's work was his excellent book Critical Thinking in Business. It is an excellent start for those who want to learn this quickly. Though the book is short, you should use it as a textbook to master it. To learn this skill, you will keep coming back to this book and study it. He has also written a new book Stop Assuming that helps people not fall victim to making assumptions that can backfire. I had the opportunity to talk to Bob about the work he has done and is currently doing. He has an online course that you can take and gives talks and workshops. You can reach Bob at bobsch3@gmail.com. Below are five questions Bob was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer and since he has such an impressive background that includes being a pianist, teacher, speaker, and writer, I wanted him to recommend five books that have influenced his thinking. Five Questions Since critical thinking skills are highly valued in job candidates, can you explain how businesses define critical thinking skills that they need in employees to help them achieve their business objectives? The Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Test is the gold standard that businesses use to evaluate a job candidate’s critical thinking skills. However, this test does not focus exclusively on business, and many of the questions have nothing to do with business. A candidate may score high on the test, but it does not measure one’s ability to apply critical thinking skills to business. Conversely, a candidate may score poorly on the test, but still be able to think critically on the job. In general, many businesses value a candidate’s ability to solve problems, which actually involves several critical thinking skills and even some creative thinking skills. The problem with the term “critical thinking” is there are hundreds of different definitions, and there isn’t anyone agreed upon definition. How does a candidate demonstrate critical thinking skills in a job interview? One of the best ways for a candidate to demonstrate critical thinking skills in a job interview is to state that they use several critical thinking skills and give an example of how they would use a specific skill in a business setting. This lets the interviewer know that you know more than just the definition of critical thinking skill. It actually demonstrates that you can use critical thinking on the job. Is critical thinking skills different today due to intelligent machines which we often have to work with? By this I mean we have to defer a lot of our critical thinking skills to machines to make faster decisions. How has this changed in how we think today? While we are becoming more and more dependent upon machines for certain tasks, many of the problems in business involve “human factors” such as personality clashes, distress (emotions that are uncomfortable), various learning styles and management styles. Computers are not programmed to deal with these human factors. However, some critical thinking skills can deal with these issues, such as Methodological Believing which helps to understand an opposing point of view. This is not a skill that is well recognized in the business world but is quite useful and valuable. However, because we have become more dependent upon machines, it has changed how we think. We let the machines do the work for us and sometimes don’t think at all! For example, some high school students don’t know how to use a dictionary. Instead, they just use a computer to find the spelling or meaning of a word. But if the computer goes down, they are helpless. In this respect, some people don’t know how to think in a situation like this. Is critical thinking valued during job interviews but less valued once a person is at work in that politics often trumps critical thinking in just about everything? It varies from one business to another, but I think that politics do often trump over critical thinking and people often get into illogical arguments and use fallacious thinking. A good critical thinking skill to use in situations like this is Fair-mindedness. Using this critical thinking skill, you listen to an opposing point of view even if you don’t agree with it. You also are willing to change your own point of view if you agree with the speaker. How do you measure critical thinking skills? Businesses often use the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Test. There are other tests designed to measure CT skills. I often have people keep a journal listing what critical thinking skill they used during the week – or could have used. I also have them describe how and why they used or could have used that skill. In a relatively short period of time, an improvement can be seen in their critical thinking ability. One More Question How does one develop and master this skill besides reading your outstanding book? I recommend one take a course in critical thinking and practice and engage in the skills. The Critical & Creative Thinking Program at UMASS, Boston offers both online graduate courses and face to face courses. I offer non-academic courses specifically geared for business people and courses for use in one’s personal life. For more information contact me at info@StopAssuming.org or email me at Bobsch3@gmail.com. Like any skill, you need to practice it. In my courses and workshops, whether online or face to face, I encourage people to collaborate with one another and practice their skills online or in person. Please recommend five books that have influenced your thinking. 1. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill 2. Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't by Michael Losier 3. Propaganda by Edward Bernays and Mark Crispin Miller 4. Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power by Noam Chomsky 5. The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for job interview, sales presentation, entrepreneurship or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. He was recently honored with an award by Hire Heroes USA for his outstanding volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses get good high-paying jobs when transitioning from military to civilian life. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event (job interview, sales meeting or a big speech) coming up soon, please contact him right away that is if you want to win. Ladan Davia is the CEO and founder of Beeya.com. She is a young dynamic serial entrepreneur who loves to solve problems that others are not solving well. That’s why she founded Beeya.com to solve a problem that both job seekers and employers were experiencing. Beeya.com is a recruiting platform that matches job seekers with over millions of jobs. The website not only gives candidates a percentage of how close the match is but makes suggestions on the type of jobs that would be a good fit. The goal of the platform is to make the whole process simple, fast and successful for both the candidates and the employers. Five Questions for Ladan Davia How should one use a site like Beeya.com to increase one’s chances of getting a call from a company? Beeya.com uses AI and machine learning to match a candidate to the jobs best fit for them. The goal of Beeya.com is for employers to be able to see which candidates are truly qualified for their job posting, show them the match scores and let them choose who to interview from there. This allows candidates who don't necessarily have an introduction to a certain company, to have a fair chance at being considered for an interview. In order to get the match score and be apart of the process, a candidate needs to make a free account, upload their resume, and start searching for jobs. What resume tips, techniques and tricks do you recommend one use to get past the Application Tracking System? I am really against Applicant Tracking systems because I don't believe they work. Finding a job shouldn't be based off of which tricks to use and which key words get more hits, it should be based off merit and qualifications. I believe when you are subjected to judgment by an ATS, it's primarily based on luck and nothing else. Therefore I don't have any tricks or techniques, that's why I started Beeya so job seekers wouldn't have to go through those hoops. What kind of bias exists in recruiting platforms? The reason I ask is that I know people who have a lot of experience but get little to no response from recruiting platforms indicating that perhaps there might be an age bias in the platforms. There is a lot of bias in recruiting, primarily around gender, race, socio-economic background, and age. Employers are overwhelmed with resumes and most online job boards provide little to no filtering and deliver stacks of applications to employers on a daily basis. To avoid reviewing all of the applications, the easier thing to do is take referrals. This is where the main source of bias comes into play because the only applicants who "pass" the screening process, are in the hiring managers inner circle, or some extension of it. Is there much difference from one recruiting platform from others? Is there a metric that one can use to decide which recruiting platform will result in more matches? I think most recruiting platforms are the same product, with a different logo. As the world and technology change, we are desperate for change in this as well. I think a job seeker should look out for platforms that do not provide results from key word matches. Is it a good idea to use multiple recruiting platforms or use one? I think the way the industry is right now, job seekers almost have to use more than one platform to make sure they don't miss jobs posted on all of them, unless they use Beeya. I don't say that because obviously I have bias toward using my own product, I say that because I truly believe in my product and it solves that issue. We're a meta search so we bring all jobs from different websites, to make sure a job seeker only has to go one place to access listings. One More Question: Is there a resume format that Beeya.com recommends candidates use that gets the best response from companies? No, but I highly recommend any candidates to always have their resume in PDF format. That way you ensure your resume will always be formatted correctly and looks the same on every employers computer it ends up on. Five Book Recommendations
##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for job interview, sales presentation, entrepreneurship or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. He was recently honored with an award by Hire Heroes USA for his outstanding volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses get good high-paying jobs when transitioning from military to civilian life. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event (job interview, sales meeting or a big speech) coming up soon, please contact him right away that is if you want to win. Five Questions for Mike Adams, Author of the Book "Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell"2/4/2019 I read a lot of sales book, looking to pick up one or two tips to improve solving customers' problems. Many books have provocative titles but inside there is not much there that you can put into practice and start seeing results fast. However, that is not the case with Mike Adam's book Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell. The book focuses on the power of seven stories that salespeople can use during the sales process to win deals. I agree with the premise of the book that stories are effective in connecting and persuading. The challenge salespeople face is how to overcome people's short attention span. Mike's answer is to practice, practice and practice so you can deliver it in less than three minutes. After reading Mike's book, I had lots of questions, so it was hard for me to come up with the top five questions. But before I get into my five questions, let me tell you a little about my interaction with Mike. He is a class act. He does not know me or has ever met me. Yet, when I sent him my questions, he responded so quickly that I was taken back. The rapid response was quite refreshing since many authors I reach out to don't respond. And some of these authors are writing about sales. Go figure. I am often left wondering why write a book if you have little to no interest in interacting with your avid readers. Well, Mike is not part of the these gang of "drive by authors." Based on my experience with Mike, he must be great at sales and you ought to listen to what he has to say. You can start like I did by getting his book on Amazon right now and then study it. Soon you will start becoming a better story teller. I read it once and I feel I have learned a lot that I plan to put into practice immediately. Reading, studying and practicing what Mike teaches will not only improve your sales performance, but, more important, you will start enjoying selling even more and become natural at it like Mike. Five Questions I agree that storytelling is effective in sales, but aren’t you also opening up to customers telling their stories about their negative experiences with salespeople and even your company’s past behavior? How do you handle this situation? Effective sales storytelling is about telling and sharing. We tell the right story to transmit important information but also to receive the client's story. Our choice of story content primes the client's story. I'm very interested in the client's story - good and bad, that sets my starting point for the engagement. Is storytelling an art or science? Is fear red or black? Your question is like that question, for me ;-) I think of science as the process of detecting patterns in the universe in order to make useful, amendable predictions. Stories are the highest level of pattern capture that humans have. Stories are scientific when they synthesize real patterns from the universe for useful predictions. In that case, the story resolution completes a useful prediction. Stories can also synthesize fantasies and be non-scientific. All art is a type of story - that is, a sequence of patterns that makes our mind try and predict the next step. Our cortex doesn't care what sensory inputs are being used, it can create auditory stories(music), visual stories(paintings), movement stories(sport) and emotional stories(therapy) with any combination of our eight sensory systems. (If we injected a brand new sense into our cortex it would happily make stories from that also). Story art is scientific when it creates a useful prediction based on real patterns from the universe. [I guess, enjoyment could be considered a useful prediction, scientifically that means expressing some brain chemicals that creating an enjoyable pattern.] Storytelling is a fundamental mechanism of the neocortex that can be used for art and science. (I consider fantasy a type of art, btw) Should you ask permission before telling a story? Do you do that? You could by saying "could I share about a time when ..." generally I say something like "that reminds me of ..." In our culture we usually don't ask for permission to tell a story, we just tell them at a logical point in the conversation. What kind of stories work well with technical people and why? All seven of the story-types in Seven Stories work well for technical people. Why? Because technical people are also humans who have a story brain (sequence prediction brain). Technical people often forget that their audience does not have their technical expertise. Translating that expertise into story, radically improves understanding for the listener. Other devices like metaphors (story on steroids) and analogy are also very effective. Can storytelling distract the customers such that it affects achieving your overall objective? Yes. Its critically important that your story makes a relevant business point. That said, I quite often come across people that tell too many stories and do not allow space for the client's stories. However, these people are MUCH better salespeople than those that do not tell stories. One more question: Isn’t there a lot of performance aspect to storytelling and how do you develop that? Yes, stories have to be practiced and there is huge benefit from coaching. I do that with video messaging. Please recommend five books that are sales or non-sales related that have influenced your thinking. Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence Mahan Kahlsa, Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play Mike Bosworth & Ben Zoldan, What Great Salespeople Do Ries and Trout, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Shawn Callahan, Putting Stories to Work You can get more information about Mike and his work at his website mysevenstories.com. Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it is for job interviews, sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. In addition he was recently recognized by Hire Heroes USA for his outstanding volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses for coaching them get good high-paying jobs when transitioning from military to civilian life. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event (job interview, sales meeting or a big speech) coming up soon, please contact him right away that is if you want to win. Five Questions for Robert Morris, a top book reviewer of business and non-fiction books on Amazon3/10/2018 With so many business, leadership and innovation books being published every year, it is hard to decide which books to read when you have a limited time. That’s why I like reading Robert Morris’ book reviews, who is one of the top book reviewers on Amazon. According to his bio, he has reviewed over 3,400 books. One of the books he reviewed was mine: Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. He does an excellent job with his reviews in which he lets readers know what they will learn and leaves it up to the them to decide if they want to read the book. Since he provide such a great service in reviewing books I like to read, I had few questions for Robert which he answers below. What books do you like to review and why? Most of what I read are business books, but I also read non-fiction books such as biographies, memoirs, essay collections, and histories, as well as novels. I only review the books I admire. I like to read those that immediately seize my attention and do not let go until the final paragraph. In fact, as I am within (let's say) a dozen pages of the conclusion, I begin to feel sad that my engagement with the work will soon end. Since childhood, I have viewed books as magic carpets that could transport me to the plains of Troy, Dickens' London at Christmas time, and experiments at the Edison Lab in Menlo Park and later at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. My purpose in reviewing is to build a bridge between the given work and those who read my reviews. Peter Drucker once thanked me for "not giving away the plot" in reviews of his books. What is your process for reviewing a book? With regard to works of non-fiction (especially business books), I first check out the subtitle, then the table of contents. The subtitle suggests a question to be answered or a problem to be solved whereas the table of contents serves as a roadmap, providing an overview that resembles a Google Earth photo. Then I skim the book until I read the final chapter. All that is Step One, and it takes about 15-20 minutes. During Step Two, I read the first 2-3 chapters word-for-word, highlighting key passages. If I decide to read the entire book, I continue the process. That's Step Three. I can read all most business books in less than an hour. Reviews take longer. All my reviews have the same primary purpose: To help those who read them to decide whether or not they wish to read the given book. What makes a review worthwhile for readers? Readers tell me that they most appreciate help with deciding whether or not to read the given book. I explain the WHAT and sometimes the WHY; it remains for the author to explain the HOW. What have you learned about writing from reviewing so many books that writers should pay attention to when they are writing their next book? The basics haven't changed since the first "book" was created: o Who is my reader? o What is the purpose of what I create? That is, explain with information, make vivid with compelling details, explain a process, and/or convince. These are Aristotle's four levels of discourse that he devised more than 2,000 years. The purpose of some books is primarily to entertain. And some books are "hybrids," such as Swift's A Modest Proposal, Voltaire's Candide, and Orwell's Animal Farm which can cause both a smile and a wince. Keep in mind that the original meaning of sarcasm is "ripping of flesh." Lifelong Learning I also think that aspiring writers must master the basics of literacy while they gain what should be a never-ending liberal arts education. It is imperative to understand the rules before breaking them. Don’t Waste Reader’s Time With Fluff Too many aspiring writers are ignorant, careless, and self-absorbed...without justification. Though many are worldly, it is hard to discern much thought derived from their experience. Emily Dickinson, a recluse, lived life to the limits...in her mind. Although blind since birth, Helen Keller "saw" more than almost did anyone else in history. Life should be a delicious feast. The best writers have a voracious appetite and very sharp teeth. What have you learned about business, leadership, creativity, innovation, etc., from reviewing so many books related to these topics? Years ago, Albert Einstein was playfully chided by a Princeton colleague for asking the same questions each year on his final examinations. Einstein replied, "Quite true. Guilty as charged! Each year the answers are different." I think the same is true of business. The same questions but different answers through various "revolutions." For example: 1. Who is our customer? 2. What is our core business? 3. How can we create or increase demand for what we offer? 4. How can we attract and then retain the people we need? 5. How can we reduce (if not eliminate) waste? During dinner a few years ago with a very prominent venture capitalist in San Francisco, I asked him how many requests for a meeting did his firm receive each month. "On average, about 1,000. Again on average, we agree to meet with about 75 or so each month." Then I asked how they decided on funding. "We keep three questions in mind. The first two are easy. 'Who are you?' and 'What do you do?' How they answer the third one separates the wheat from the chaff: 'Why should I care?'" Most companies don't answer that last question very well. As a reviewer, you are trying to help readers decide whether they should read a book, but do you also put yourself in an author’s shoes before you post your review? With regard to authors, I never wear their shoes -- nor do I polish them -- but I do appreciate how difficult it is to get a reputable agent which is more difficult than getting a reputable publisher. Most books that are published don't sell as well as their authors originally hoped but at least may have marketing value. There is much to be said for self-publishing and even more to be said for e-books of 50 pages or less. First, of course, you have to have something to say that will take into full account this implicit question: "Why should I care?" Q: Which question do you hope to be asked during an interview – but aren’t – and what is your response to it? A: "What is the single biggest mistake that senior-level executives make?" My response: They become hostage to what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Book Recommendations Of all the business books you have read, which five do you think every executive should read and then re-read from time to time? Here are my five...listed in alphabetical order:
Three best films that dramatize business principles
I have collected several hundred thus far. These are the ones I most often cite in book reviews, interviews, and commentaries. o "Potential means you ain't done it yet." Darrell Royal o "Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it." Voltaire o "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Ann Landers o "The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese." Steven Wright o And my favorite passage from Lao-tse's Tao Te Ching: "Learn from the people Plan with the people Begin with what they have Build on what they know Of the best leaders When the task is accomplished The people will remark We have done it ourselves." BONUS: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." African proverb If you want to find out more about Robert Morris, please check out his website: https://bobmorris.biz/. I recommend you get on his email list so you can get his reviews of business books, especially those that are newly released. He will make sure you have the latest info on thoughts authors have put down in articles, books or interviews. I recommend it since it is my must read blog. And I want to thank Bob for helping me learn from him. * * * * * Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach and a student. He has worked as a programmer, a technical sales consultant and an alliance manager before reinventing himself. He volunteers for Hire Heroes USA mentoring and coaching experienced military veterans get executive level jobs. He is an author of Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the free speech checklist and the free speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. I will add you to my newsletter list so I can provide you tips, techniques and insights on speaking and other related subjects every two weeks. You can reach me at joza@winningspeechmoments.com. For someone who recently published his first book, writing is a very lonely activity. Finishing the book was a real struggle, but I persevered and finished it. Unfortunately, many who want to write a book don’t even get started and some who do start never finish it. Why? There are many reasons for not completing a book, but one important reason is that one does not have “cheerleaders” who are there to push her past the finish line. Victoria Ichizli-Bartles has written Cheerleading for Writers, a book that helps those writers who need some support to finish their books and for non-writers who want to get a better understanding on how a writer takes a book project from start to finish. In this blog, I ask five questions plus a bonus question to Victoria Ichizli-Bartels about writing. I wanted to understand how she has improved as a writer, the writing process she uses, how she comes up with the subject of her books and get her recommendations on books that have influenced her writing. Note, I reviewed her book on Amazon and as you will see from reading the review that I highly recommend her book. How has writing several books improved you as a writer? It made my writing flow easier; I second-guess myself less and less. My grammar (as a non-native speaker) improves, as well as the quality of my writing. I learned to write the best book I can in that given time of my life, but I also learned that there are many perfect ways to write the same book, so I stopped trying to write a bestseller. Sending my work to Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Award and getting amazing feedback and grades helps to realize that I am not that bad. Each new book also means further feedback on it. And each of them got positive reviews. That motivates me as a writer. Also, the editing process, and realization that the teamwork of my editor and me make my books better make me even more enthusiastic about writing and less afraid to make errors. That goes back to less second-guessing. You mention in your book that Cheerleaders for Writing is a compilation of your blogs you wrote between November 2015 and October 2016, do you think this is a good approach for someone who wants to write her first book, so she has better success at completing her first book? Yes, I think it is. I was fortunate enough to find my first fan (when not counting my family and friends) on my blog. I shared my book with her, and she helped me to pull through the process. Blogging a book, as some authors call that process, helps to find fans who cheer us through the process. But that is also a commitment you make as soon as you share your writing with others. This commitment helps you to persevere. If you start blogging your book and get one or two comments on it, then more, after that it is harder to stop and explain why you quit than simply continue writing chapter by chapter. Stopping doesn’t make the things, which we started, complete. And it’s harder to stop when people are waiting for the story to continue. What is your writing process? Do you use a detailed outline before you start writing your book? No, I don't use a detailed outline. I like micro-plotting. Meaning, that if something is not progressing and I procrastinate a chapter, then I look closer there and take time to jot bullet points. The outline emerges step by step. Right now I work on a novel that way: jot thoughts on the outline, or write down parts of various scenes, descriptions, and dialogues. I try not to limit the creative process. And if I have a fun idea for a scene, then I write it down. Independent where in the story it occurs. Earlier I carried a notebook with me to do it, but I caught myself procrastinating to copy those bits into my book projects in Scrivener. Now I send myself emails and then it is easier to copy those bits into the manuscript. The game-like approach as well as seeing myself and my behavior non-judgmentally helps here a lot. When I observe myself being too stressed about a piece of my writing, then I try to slow down and sort out my emotions about it, paying attention which parts of that bit are fun to work on. And then I emphasize on those fun bits getting rid of or modifying the other. If I have fun writing something, then there is a good chance that my readers will have fun reading that. If I hate the scene I write, it will show, and my readers will hate it too. So nowadays I let (as much as I can) my curiosity, enthusiasm, and fun be my guides in both plotting and writing. What are some of the differences between writing nonfiction vs. fiction? Do you enjoy one over the other? I enjoy both, but I find right now non-fiction dominates my writing time and it looks I say more yes to it than to my fiction. That also has the interest from potential readers. But there are bits of time when I have some ideas for scenes for my current fiction work-in-progress, and then they feel easy and enjoyable to write. I guess my answer to these two questions might differ from one day to another. Has writing made you a better reader or being a good reader made you a better writer? Absolutely yes, in both cases. I wouldn't have been a writer if I hadn't been addicted to reading. I do read differently since I started writing. I observe the writer while reading. I am currently very much into Nora Roberts books (one of the reasons is that they are both captivating and comforting to read; another is, she takes such good care of her characters, settings, and the stories encapsulated in each book). Her books, the scenes, the characters give keys and clues for my books. For my current work in progress, one great clue was that I want to try two points-of-view and voices instead of one as I did before. Reading helps me both improve my writing and identify what is fun for me right now. Bonus Question: How has writing changed you? I didn't know for a very long time that writing was my dream and a long-term calling. In addition to my work as a semiconductor physicist, engineer, secretary, personal assistant, interpreter, consultant, teacher, project manager, team leader, business owner, and other, I tried various art-forms. I attempted making jewelry, playing guitar, painting, drawing, dancing, knitting, making self-made Christmas decorations, playing games, and some other, but nothing kept my interest for long. I wasn't curious to stay longer with any of these. I still do some of them on one or another occasion, but nothing that brings me joy to come back again and again. I found that writing is the best way for me to express myself. Writers read a lot, and I always like to find out what five books that have influenced them or their writing. Here are five books Victoria Ichizli-Bartles recommends. You can find her extensive list in “Recommended Reading” at the end of Cheerleading for Writers.
Information about Victoria Ichizli-Bartles books and her upcoming book Cheerleading for Writers is one of Victoria's motivational books. Check out all of them and her other books on https://www.victoriaichizlibartels.com/books/ If you would like to increase your motivation and productivity in writing and other projects, and have fun in the process, then take a look at Victoria's book crowdfunding project Self-Gamification: Turn Your Life into a Fun Game (https://www.inkshares.com/books/self-gamification-turn-your-life-into-a-fun-game). Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach and a student. He has worked as a programmer, a technical sales consultant and an alliance manager before reinventing himself. He volunteers for Hire Heroes USA mentoring and coaching experienced military veterans get executive level jobs. He is an author of Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the free speech checklist and the free speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. I will add you to my newsletter list so I can provide you tips, techniques and insights on speaking and other related subjects every two weeks. You can reach me at joza@winningspeechmoments.com. |
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