Week 14 - Guest Speakers Momtaz Ajid (CEO) & Kobitha Sultana (Office Manager)

This week we have special guest speakers, Momtaz Ajid (CEO of Leaders In Community) and Kobitha Sultana (Office Manager at We Are Peas).

Kobitha Sultana

Title: Office Manager

Company: We Are Peas

Age: 19




Kobitha started off by talking about her journey into employment.

At the age of 17 she had dropped out of college, against her parents wishes, and started her first apprenticeship in Business Administration.

She later participated in 2 other apprenticeships and numerous training courses, working in temporary reception and administrative roles whenever she could find the work.

After a year and a half she finally secured a permanent position as an administrator at We Are Peas and currently works as its Office Manager.

All at the tender age of 19.

Our young candidates found Kobitha's journey refreshing to hear as many, despite parental pressures, were considering not going to University. Partly due to the recent and massive rise in university fees.

She made it sound easy, but had actually sent out over 100 CVs before securing her first apprenticeship.

And her motivation had all come from herself. No one had pushed her to apply everyday, or go out to shops handing in her CVs.

I took this as an opportunity to ask how many CVs our young people had handed out since they had started the program. The answer was around 40 total, between all ten of them.

Their target is now 100 CVs each before the end of the program.

Momtaz Ajid

Company: Leaders In Community (LiC)

Title: CEO & Founder

Age: 28





Momtaz spoke on the importance of volunteering.

It's an opportunity to do something you love and gain working experience.

A chance to show a company your potential, possibly leading onto a paid job.

LiC employs 7 members of staff, and almost every single one started as a volunteer.

Momtaz herself was also a volunteer at another company before creating Leaders In Community

Dressing Professionally
This week was especially useful for the girls who got to talk about how to dress professionally as a woman (Anhar and I had been distracting them with shiny objects whenever they asked us).

For the boys, was quite simple... wear a suit.

The boys made the poor choice of choosing a pink pen to jot down ideas on good interview appearance

For the girls, it was slightly more complicated with issues to worry about such as:

• Make up application
• Shortness of skirt
• Hair styles

Some ideas from the girls on good appearance for females going to an interview

*Special thanks to Momtaz and Kobitha for giving up their time to come out and speak to the group.

Week 13 - Interview Preparation, Top 4 Y2J Trade Secrets

Interview Preparation
As our candidates are still quite young, we likened preparing for an interview to preparing for an exam:

• Know where it is and plan to get there in plenty of time
• Revise on the questions that you think will be asked
• Do some mock questions as practice

Add to the above that you need to:

• Be dressed business smart
• Revise on the company and role that you're applying to

Stress levels at both an exam and interview can be equally high.

Our candidates admit that they have not been as prepared as they would have liked in exams, so we'll be working to shape up their forward planning skills for future interviews.

A lot of the essential planning stages were covered in week 10, including:

• Preparing clothes and appearance
• Planning the journey
• Revising the Job Description and Personal Specification
• Researching the company

Below are our Top 4 Youth Into Jobs trade secrets that they won't teach you at regular employment workshops:

1. Talk to people before your interview

Chat with the receptionist, security guards, cleaners. Ask how long they've worked there, what it's like, etc. Anything to keep your mind off your own nerves. 

Otherwise, you're giving yourself too much time to sit there stressing out about what you'll be asked you and are guaranteed to be a nervous wreck by the time your name is called. 

Small talk also warms up your talking muscles, meaning you'll be a lot more relaxed and comfortable in your interview.

2. Drink water

You know that glass of water they offer you?

Take it.

I don't care whether you're thirsty or not.

Accepting that glass of water shows you are comfortable being there.

It allows you some extra time to think if you time a sip correctly after a question is asked.

And of course, it gives you a chance to drink something if your voice gets a bit croaky from all the talking you'll be doing


3. Go to the bathroom when you get there
Whether you drove or took public transport, likelihood is you had to walk through the elements to get to the interview.

So whether you immediately need the bathroom or not, going there when you arrive gives you a chance to fix up your  appearance. Hair, face, clothes, etc.

Use the toilet if you can, you don't want it to creep up on you when you go into the interview.

4. Ask good questions
Anyone who's ever given a presentation, speech or led an interview knows it's customary to ask if there are any questions at the end.

This can often lead to what we call "tumble weed moments" or "one minute silences", leaving you wondering whether anyone was even listening.

But sometimes, you get someone who will ask a really insightful question.

It could be a member of the audience asking about a part of your presentation that you wanted to talk about but was forced to cut out due to shortages of time.

It could be an interviewee pointing out a potential problem (and possibly solution) that you yourself have already been having within the job that they are applying for.

These people don't come along often, but they are the special few who stand out.
The ones you go and make conversation with at the buffet table afterwards.
The ones you will remember due to the fact that they were truly listening and "getting it".

Money 4 Life (Update) 
The teams have now created their FB pages under the following names:

Team 1 - Money Matters

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Money-Matters/256399841109230

Team 2 - If Money Doesn't grow on Trees then why do Banks have Branches?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/If-Money-Doesnt-Grow-On-Trees-Then-Why-Do-Banks-Have-Branches/291912810874406

Within the first week both teams had already smashed the target of 50 likes, although the "If money doesn't grow on trees..." or dinosaur team only very closely scraped through the criteria ("tsk tsk"). 

The winner will be announced in 2 weeks times on Wednesday 21 March 2012.

Week 12 - Personal Development, Money 4 Life & Subway

"When life kicks you in the ass, at least you're moving forwards"

Personal Development Day
Personal Development Day allowed us to give them feedback on how everyone has progressed over the last 12 weeks. Anhar, my fellow trainer, also likes to use it as an opportunity to motivate people using one of 3 methods:

1. Criticise them - Tell them how much they have to improve on and how far they have to go
2. Relate to them - Tell them about when you've been in a similar situation as them
3. Praise them - Tell them how amazing they are doing

Different approaches were used on different people, depending on which we thought would work with them. On the whole, their attitudes have improved dramatically and interview performance is up but in order to keep them moving forwards, some needed to be kicked up the ass.

Money 4 Life
The group are taking part in a project funded by Money 4 Life, whereby they have to teach others on the importance of budgeting and saving using the magic of Facebook pages.

To increase their competitiveness they are being split into two teams with a budget of £50 for each team. The Facebook pages must be related to money management and after 2 weeks, the team with the most "likes" wins.

The winning team will get to go out on a trip worth up to £300. The losing team will get nothing (a lot of thought went into this decision).

The level of hard work, sneakiness and undercover espionage on this day was unrivaled throughout the whole program.

Team 1 immediately get to researching about popular
Facebook pages and what makes them work

Team 2 follow onto the computers shortly after seeing
Team 1 do it

Subway

Midway through the Money 4 Life project, Anhar enters the room talking loudly and causing everyone to stop their work...

"...you want to know if they'll be interested? I can find out for you right now"

(he holds up the phone to the room)

"Anybody want to work at Subway?"

The room erupts with noise as everybody tries to signal their interest in working at Subway. 

Anhar makes a sideways zipping gesture to silence them and exits the room.

He later re-enters informing them about 2 part time positions available, but they have to be ready to be interviewed in two days time.

They all rush to phone around, canceling plans and rescheduling appointments to be available.

The ones that can't are instantly out of the running and learn a valuable lesson: this is how fast the recruitment industry works, and you need to be equally flexible and fast reacting to give yourself the best chance of being hired. 

Week 11 - Mock Interviews & Mid Term Review

"The only way to get better at anything is to practice"

Peter

Being able to see the interview from the point of view of the interviewer is a good way of improving your performance at interviews.

From my experience, performing actual interviews will have you cringing at some of the things people will say, and just praying for them to mention some of the key points to score higher.

When the roles are then flipped and I am being interviewed, I can then answer questions while keeping in mind the kinds of things I would need to hear if I was the one interviewing. 

For our mock interviews, we split the group into 3 interview panels, one representing Marks & Spencers, one representing JD Sports and one representing Asda.

The panels took turns interviewing someone from another team before we would announce "SWITCH", and they would shift around to interview somebody new.

At the end, each team picked the person they would hire using the tried and tested X Factor method of moving photos of each candidate around and criticising each one whilst still providing reasons why they are a strong candidate.

The participants anxiously await their panel interviews

At the end a clear winner was announced from Marks and Spencers and Asda, both hiring Bobby, with the JD Sports panel hiring Shahina. Bobby later accepted positions at both companies to help support her starving family.

The exercise gave everyone a chance to see what it's like from the side of the interviewer. We'll be testing how this has changed their interview performance in our 1-1 interviews in week 14.

Fokrul keeps his cool under the pressure of being interviewed

*Video coming soon

Week 10 - Why People Fail Interviews

"The best interviews are when the candidate doesn't know he/she is being interviewed"

Peter

Interviews are like auditions.

Except in an audition, you are given a helpful snippet of how the person will actually perform if you hire them. Whereas in an interview, you only get to hear the person talk about how well they will perform a job if you hire them. 

So many people who are very capable of performing a job, are incapable of talking about how they will perform the job. They put all their efforts into performing a job, e.g. selling phones, but never practice how they will talk it up in an interview to display their capabilities. 

We've been teaching our Y2J candidates how to structure their answers and make it easy for the interviewer to see how capable they are. When answering interview questions, remember to:

PEE in your CAR

PEE stands for Point, Evidence, Explain and CAR stands for, Circumstance, Action Result. 

Every answer you give can follow this structure, so for example, when asked a questions about customer service for the role of sales assistant at John Lewis:

Point - I believe good customer is about exceeding customer expectations

Example - While doing my work experience at Asda...
     Circumstance - ...I noticed an elderly lady struggling to reach a jar of mayonnaise on 
     the top shelf

     Action - I rushed over and got it for her. I also offered to help her carry her bags to 

     the car

     Result - The lady was really glad to have some help and couldn't stop thanking me

Explain - I am naturally giving person and find it genuinely rewarding to exceed someone's expectations

Answering questions using this structure makes it really easy for the interviewer to see your strengths. A John Lewis interviewer hearing this answer could then assume you would go equally far for John Lewis customers as you did for Asda customers. 

Ruman answers some tough mock interview questions for a fake panel of interviewers

Some tips our candidates came up with about preparing for an interview include:

Before the Interview

• Know the Role - examine the person specification, job description and your CV/application form
• Know the Company - have some key facts about what makes it different from others
• Practice your answers with a friend (a Google search will usually show you what kind of questions are asked about the role by the company)
• Plan your journey - find out how to get there and how long it will take
• Dress smartly
• Trim your nails and hair (especially facial hair)
• Bathe the night before
• Don't smoke

During the Interview

• Look positive
• Speak clearly and confidently 
• Show positive body language (only 7% of communication is verbal)
• Answer the question asked - take you time and answer the question relevantly to the role
• Sell yourself
• Turn off your mobile
• Don't be late!
• Don't swear or use slang
• Don't slouch
• Don't criticise former employers or colleagues

After the Interview

• Ask questions - prepare some relevant questions to ask at the end e.g. when will I be informed if I'm successful? Where is the job based? But don't ask about salary
• Call them back - if they haven't informed you when they said they would, give them a call and ask

*A top tip is to remember that it is not the end of the world if you don't get the job. SERIOUSLY keep this in mind and it will help you to be more natural and calm at the interview, rather than a trembling, nervous wreck! 

Week 9 - How to Be Confident

"Confidence... that feeling you have before you fully understand the situation"

Confidence increases with experience. 

On a scale of 1 - 10 (low - high) the first time you ride a bike, confidence is probably below 3. After riding to work everyday for a year, it's probably at 9 - 10 and so high that you don't even need to think about it. 

As most of our young participants have never had paid jobs or been to an interview it is perfectly normal for their confidence to be low. 

To find out where confidence levels were everyone was given a note with another persons name on it. They were asked to stick it (face down) onto a confidence scale from 1 - 10 of how confident they believe this person is. They were then asked to write their own name on a sticky note and place it on the scale of how confident they felt. 

A green tick represents outward confidence sticky note

The first note represents outward confidence, or how confident a person appears to others. 

The second note represents inward confidence, how confident a person feels inside. 

When the first stick notes were turned around, everyone realised that their outward confidence (average = 7) was higher than their inner confidence (average = 5) i.e. everyone appears more confident that they feel. Seems everyones been practicing how to look more confident than they feel. 

Our plan for today was to raise their inner confidence levels as there is almost no situation where it would be useful to have low confidence. I write almost as Rahima helpfully pointed out the following dilemma:

"...but what if you're actor playing a role of somebody who has low confidence?"

The 3 things we chose to concentrate on when talking confidently are:

1. Volume
2. Speed
3. Breathing

We split the group into pairs and had them talk one at a time for a full minute on any subject they felt strongly about. They then took turns telling their story to the whole group who would then rate them on their volume, speed and breathing. Everybody found it very difficult to have the spotlight on them and there were frequent fits of giggles or pleads to stop and sit down, which were promptly ignored by myself and my fellow trainer. 

On the whole, everyone improved by their second or third turn and were given individual feedback on what to work on including:

• Breathing between sentences
• Eye contact to the whole group
• Open body language (no leg twisting or hand ringing)

At the end, they were once again asked to rate their confidence level which had (wonderfully) improved now that they had a little more practice on speaking to a group!

Week 8 - How to speak to an Interviewer / Manager

"There is a very big difference between being professional and being a professional"

Anhar

Our young people have a good internal understanding of professionalism and are able to recognise it in people (i.e. workers slouching, chewing gum, talking inappropriately). But they find it hard to define what exactly being professional is. 

Anhar defines it as:

"performing the role that you've been hired to do to the best of your ability"

It's difficult to define since there are so many ways of being unprofessional, but far fewer examples of being professional. We started by improving one part of them to quickly boost their professionalism: language. Every time somebody used slang or a swear word they word receive a point against their name. As a prize, everyone with 0 points would get an extra 30 mins of help with their CV. The game went on for the full 2 hour session, and ended with only three people on 0 points. Some of the really high scorers had as many as 10 points to their names.

At the end, each person was given a work based scenario and asked how they would deal with it professionally. Some of the scenarios and approaches include:

You see a close friend at work stealing from the shop...

Bobby and Shahina both (independently from each other) decided they would approach their friend and try to reason with him/her to give the item back, one going so far as to threaten to go to the manager.

Both gave great performances and did exactly what we would want them to do when confronted with this situation within a working environment!