Handling the Most Difficult Interview Question

On today's episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast,' host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about the quiet quitting and quiet firing trend that we started to hear so much about in 2022. This week we look at the status of these trends and how they are evolving in 2023.    

On today's episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about 'Career and Workplace trends on 2023'. So much happened in 2022 in the space of career and work! This puts us in an interesting position to take a look at the biggest and most important trends as we head into the new year.   Resources Mentioned: Professional Success Coaching: Website     Professional Success Podcast  

  In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about the power of saying no, and how we can set better professional boundaries. Sheila is going to share some examples of how we can set clear boundaries at work and how saying no can be key to wellness and self-preservation.     Episode Highlights:  Sheila suggests defining your boundaries at work with clarity of purpose. Saying yes to everything is the lazy person's path and a strategic 'No' is the best way to maximize the value you deliver. There are a lot of subtle and graceful ways where we can say 'No' without being a jerk. There's a whole spectrum of responses that lie between yes and no. One of the ways to say 'No' would be that instead of you having feelings of insecurity with a 'No', be honest and acknowledge that you are not the most competent in that particular work and suggest another name who can do it more efficiently and ask if he/she can help out?  If your boss asks you to take extra responsibility, then try to pose some questions to her to understand exactly what she needs. By better understanding what your manager needs to achieve, you might be able to recommend a much simpler solution to the problem. Sometimes you're asked to do something you can't manage and there may be a way to add value without taking on the weight of the entire project onto your shoulders.      3 Key Points: Instead of saying no directly, you can work with graceful responses like we want to resist taking on a cumbersome project by getting a better understanding of why it's necessary and possibly suggesting alternative action plans. Additionally, we may want to contribute a smaller percentage of our time to a project instead of tackling 100% of it. Stick with your purpose to focus on what you're uniquely hired to do.  Sometimes there's an emergency, or something's on fire, or sometimes we need to earn a few points with someone who's asked a favor. In such situations where the request is a challenge and we've been trying to get our hands on it, in such scenarios use your judgment. Sometimes letting take us off purpose is the right thing to do, but this should be the exception and not the rule. If you're being asked to take on something cumbersome and it would take you days to complete what they're asking for. Your response starts with recognizing that your time is a company asset. Let her know exactly how much of your time and attention this task would require and what might not get done as a consequence. Then ask her if she'd be open to exploring more efficient ways of getting similar results. So by asking those probing questions, you might be able to protect the investment of your time and energy while also delivering real value. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Website   Podcast

Tell me about a time you failed" is no one's favorite interview question. Understanding what the interviewer is really asking, choosing the perfect example, and having a template will set you up for success. In this week's episode of the Professional Success Podcast we dive into how to handle this question.

In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about how to become a purpose and belonging informed leader. Purpose and belonging informed leaders prioritize genuine care of their employees above all else. Even when employees leave to continue their careers elsewhere, these leaders continue to act in these people's best interests.  Episode Highlights:  The mass resignation triggered by the global pandemic has made recruiting and retaining talent, one of the biggest challenges for leaders and organizations. Young professionals have become pickier about who and what they work for rather than quit working altogether. As tires need to be aligned to keep the car going, so do purposes. Purpose and belonging informed leaders act on purpose by making decisions that have put people in purpose before the performance, and profits, even if that requires sacrifice. These leaders cultivate transformational and not transactional relationships. Transactional leaders rely on rewards pay titles, perks, or punishments to keep employees in line. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Website   Podcast

In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about how to communicate with a critical Manager. She discusses the ways that we can handle a very critical boss.   Episode Highlights:  We may have had bosses who inspired her, challenged and pushed her. She has had some that have bored her, and some that have even made her cry. Begin by understanding what might be triggering the bad behavior in your boss, so we can do this by starting with empathy. Without excusing the critical delivery mechanism, it might help to see if you can look past the criticism to the content in terms of figuring out why your boss is trying to communicate. You can say that you have some specific changes to suggest that might enhance your relationship with your boss and make both of you even more positive and productive as you work together. Make that request for better, and more balanced feedback and communication from your boss. You have the right to feel safe and respected at work, if a boundary has been pierced, don't ignore it. These are complicated times and the job market might feel a little intimidating but if your relationship with your boss isn't improving, it's time to start planning your next move.     3 Key Points: Recently, Sheila worked with two separate clients who have brought this as the main topic of struggling with an overly critical boss. The idea is that bosses can really vary in their style and how they like to work with others. How they communicate might just come down to the fact that some bosses really are better than others. Sheila suggests that first, we need to assess the situation. Your boss does not have the right to behave badly but you do need to have some degree of control over your response to their behavior. So we can empathize with this critical boss. Sometimes understanding or imagining what the other person might be experiencing allows us to replace some of our emotions, anger, and defensiveness, with instead empathy and recognition. So begin by understanding what might be triggering the behavior and see if you're able to take some of your own reactivity off the table. At this point, use language that's typical for your company's culture. So you might say that you would like to discuss your career development, or just sit down for a one-on-one. These are all legitimate reasons for meetings. So choose what feels most authentic to you and in line with the language that your organization uses. So feeling judged and criticized all the time can really weigh on us. Your goal in the conversation is to focus on the professional impact of what you've been experiencing, and lean into the opportunity and not the complaint.

         In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about what we can do when we start to feel completely overwhelmed by that to-do list that probably most of us have experienced several times. Episode Highlights:  It is important to focus on what we have control over when we reach the state of overwhelm with our to-do list. It's important to be confident when you raise the red flag stating that you can't handle everything because you are taking accountability for ensuring nothing falls through. Feeling overwhelmed on occasion is normal, but we want to try to keep the overwhelm from touching others. The next time you are feeling overwhelmed, but the strategies we discuss into play to help you move to a better place.  Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Website   Professional Success Podcast

In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about how to change careers. Episode Highlights:  Whether it be big or small, making a career change can feel intimidated because it feels like such a leap of faith. Specific credentials might not be fully transferable. However, they can show that you're capable of mastering and applying new skills. Most hiring is now done by keyword matching which is a challenge today and HR departments love it because it gives them the illusion that they are getting the right candidates. Be prepared to network your way into that new career. Let everyone know what kind of opportunities you're looking for. Ask them to share their knowledge and ask for their advice.

In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about how to dial up your confidence. She focuses on what actions we can take to dial-up our sense of confidence.   Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Website   Professional Success Podcast

In today´s episode of the 'Professional Success Podcast', host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about five simple steps that we can take to master a new skill in just 30 days. This involves developing a 30-day program using incremental bite-sized progress steps.   3 Key Points: The first step is to identify the key elements to master.Start by finding the most important components of a skill, the basics that underlie everything else. The second step would be to grab a blank calendar and design a 30-day challenge for yourself to practice the foundational skills. Decide how much time you'll do each day learning, and then write down 30 incremental things you'll do each day to move along the learning curve. Each day you should focus on just one new skill but those skills combined should add up to real progress. Brains learn best when they can focus on a problem. During your practice, deliberately choose one thing to master and put your attention there. Each day of the challenge should push you a little past your current skill level. You don't need to practice the same elements of a skill every day.   Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Website   Podcast