I am a factory, not a product

I had the pleasure of reading 'How Not to Sell Yourself During a Job Interview' by Michael Neece in his newsletter from his company, Interview Mastery. He likened the interview process to dart throwing, and you gauge the target through your opening interview questions. I replied with my own thoughts which I've included below.

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I appreciate what you had to say about interviews not being selling events in your April 1 newsletter. I started cringing over that kind of thinking when an ex-boss in a now defunct consulting company wanted us to consider ourselves as products to be on display.

Let me share my thinking for a moment. We are all factories of one sort or another. Let's not reverse things though. Actually it's our factories that are becoming more organic. Small systems integrated into larger systems and networked by various devices and protocols. But that's another story.

We each possess abilities of a greater or lesser extent. When left to our own we each produce to a certain level of quality. We each have lesser or greater capacities in our fields of interest. Our productivity is determined by such factors as our health, our strength, our intelligence, and our motivations. And all these things can be manipulated for self-improvement.

Sometimes trade-offs are involved. Will I spend an hour exercising or an hour in the classroom? I need to do both but time constraints will not allow it. I may get in a half-hour of exercise and still attend class. In the factory these are matters of scheduling, repair or preventive maintenance, or renovation or retrofit.

As I become more sophisticated, what I produce can be more sophisticated.

When I go to an interview the qualities I will attempt to demonstrate are my capacity, my passion for quality, my abilities, and my adaptability over time. I will make promises I expect to keep. My appearance will be neat if not elegant. A well-run factory keeps reliable schedules and has good housekeeping. Poor housekeeping and poor schedules interfere with productivity and my 'customers' need that assurance. And I do have a customer and salesmanship is required.

When I interview in this mode there is no dart throwing. In the nature of the best salesmen I will match my capabilities to the customer's needs through discussion and by assuming some control of the interview. We can discuss special requirements in terms of a schedule. Can I obtain the required knowledge in the first few months of work, on the job or through formal training and education? If I'm fortunate I have samples of my previous work to show. (Not everything I design is readily reduced to paper these days). My quality procedures and communication must be aligned with the organization's.

Do I have the job?

Would a Space Elevator make a suitable Collider?

The Space Elevator: 'Thought Experiment', or Key to the Universe? (Part 1)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke took note in 1981 that then current materials could construct a stable tower 40 kilometers high. Just long enough for the International Linear Collider. So why not test the concept with the construction of the ILC? There must be some benefit to building in the air rather than burrowing in the ground.

And there would have to be some energy savings from dropping your particles over 39 kilometers as opposed to maintaining a 'straight' path conforming to the earth's curvature or tangential to it.

Or split the difference with a 18 - 20 kilometer tower combined with a tunnel of similar length that uses an angled configuration proposed in the literature.

The customer is always right

I like to sum up years of experience in a few sentences. Today I brought out, "Our customers are always right. It's our job to find out what it is they're right about". Well let's face it. Sometimes what our customers say needs some interpretation and understanding. What they may consider a problem may only be a symptom.