@nasimson - yes I agree some interviewers tend to penalize honesty - but that was the point of the article - they may be turning away an excellent employee.
It's good to see that there are some people who actually think this way .
You readily appointed that student because you found her honest which,in your opinion,was the first priority while selection, but this honesty and
straight forwardness sometimes become a misfortune as disclosing your flaws when you are not supposed to do so specially at the time of interview is like getting yourself into hot water.
plus as you have mentioned in your article that the girl was more interested in the other two internships .THUS If she would have been interested in this job, she would have shown a different traditional attitude.
Exactly, Kim. Too scripted, too polished, too inhuman. If a cust. serv. agent or tech. support person says that to me, I'm immediately expecting him/her to be a total nincompoop whose supervisor I'm eventually going to have to speak to.
@Joe: You're quite right. College education these days is no longer an easy decision. It used to be a pretty straightforward choice for people when college education was directly proportional to income levels. However, we see plenty of cases today where people do well even without degrees and many college grads unable to get good earnings. Certainly makes things confusing.
Hmm, depends on the context, I think, Kim. "Challenge" can be an exciting choice, especially in writing, but in the customer service context, it implies a sense of adventure that somebody with a customer service issue/problem/challenge simply does not want to go on.
Think about the most frustrating customer service issue you had to deal with for yourself. Now think about how much more frustrating it might have been for you had it been reframed for you during the call/correspondence as a "challenge."
("Challenge," after all, denotes reward -- some sort of fulfillment after a hero's journey. Very Joseph Campbell. Most customer service calls don't offer that.)
"Challenge" only works, I think, if you're taking a Seth Godin "Purple Cow" approach to it and using your horrible customer service as a unique marketing tactic, treating your horrible customer service like a marathon or a competition like "Tough Mudder." You could give out T-Shirts that read, "I survived a phone call to BigCompCorp's customer service line!" or beer glasses that read, "I got Bank of Frustration to refund a fee!"
@Joe - thanks for bringing up the issue about problem vs issue. I favor the term problem. Like you, I believe problems have solutions - root causes - which is the goal of a problem solver in the IT field. The problem does not have to be a person and usually is not - although, have to admit, sometimes it is someone. But if we do not identify how a problem happened, how would we prevent future problems? I think issue has too many political nuances and issues may never have solutions. Risk management has issues. User support has problems to solve - something that used to work and does not work anymore - there has to be root cause and a soul satisfying solution!
It *is* interesting. For me, part of it is the wannabe writer in me. So I have more than a passing interest in word choice.
The training I got in customer service, though, explained it as, and I'm paraphrasing:
You want to keep the customer focused on getting to a fix. So don't use words that induce conflict. Never use the word "problem," for example. Problems to most customers have causes that are to be blamed on someone. And the customer is going to make sure they aren't it. Find words that don't lead to blame. "Issue," for example, acknowledges that something is happening, but it's broad enough that you and the customer can move forward to a resolution without getting involved in a blame game, or a confrontation.
In a customer service situation, made complete sense to me. I get what you're saying though. And, actually, excellent example. :)
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
