Mastering the Panel Interview

Establishing a rapport with a single interviewer is hard enough. What happens when you need to face a panel of three or four? Worst of all, the employer might not tell you that you’ll be meeting with several people at the same time.

“Nobody’s going to tell you about a panel interview in advance,” said Don Georgevich, a 20-year IT veteran, author of “The Complete Interview Answer Guide,” and career expert. “And if you let the group run rampant with questions, they’ll burn you out. The key is to treat a panel like a one-on-one interview by breaking it down into small, manageable chunks.”

Group interviews present a unique set of dynamics and challenges. If you remain calm, and practice the following techniques, you can still prevail:

Get Names and Titles

Create a “seating chart” by jotting down the names and titles of the interviewers or placing their business cards on the table in front of you. Having a roster will help you address them by name and discern their concerns, agendas and pecking order. Sure, you’d like to impress everyone—but in reality, some interviewers have more clout than others.

“While the manager may solicit feedback from everyone, there’s only one decision maker,” Georgevich said. “Gear most of your answers toward that person, because that’s who you need to win over to land an offer.”

Control the Pace

A panel interview can morph into a rapid-fire interrogation, unless you make a concerted effort to control the pace.

“Take a few sips of water or jot down a few notes after you finish answering a question,” Georgevich said. “Those 15 to 20 seconds belong to you—don’t give them up.”

Notes can help you remember key details and formulate insightful follow-up questions at the end of your meeting. Make eye contact with the manager or leader when you’re ready to proceed.

Tailor Your Responses

Since panel members usually have different roles and responsibilities, customizing your answer toward individual questioners’ issues and concerns showcases your capabilities from different angles, said Laura Smith-Proulx, an executive resume writer and career coach.

“For instance, an engineering manager or technical lead may be concerned about your technical strengths, especially if the last developer he hired didn’t work out,” she added. “While the IT director is looking to see if you’re easy to manage and a fellow developer or PM is looking for a supportive team player.”

Framing your answer is an effective way to acknowledge the questioner’s position and demonstrate your range in front of a group with diverse agendas. For example, you might say: “As a member of the development team, I realize that I may need to acquiesce to avoid conflict. Here’s how I would handle the QA issue you just described.”

Engage the Group

Build a rapport one person at a time by addressing the questioner, but pan your head around every so often as you’re talking to keep the other panel members engaged. And be sure to limit your answers to two minutes or less.

“As you’re wrapping up your answer, go around the circle and tip your head, smile or acknowledge the other panel members especially the hiring manager,” Georgevich said. “Using body language, facial expressions or gestures is an effective way to draw in the other observers.”

Avoid Traps

Strange things can happen when a group of tech pros gather around a conference table. One may try to dominate the conversation, while another may play “bad cop” by posing difficult or “gotcha” questions. The panellists may even disagree about a testing methodology or when it makes sense to reuse code.

Whether it’s a genuine conflict or a ploy to see how you react, don’t get sucked into the drama. “By remaining calm and professional, you’ll convey that you can confidently handle any situation,” Smith-Proulx said. “And employers hold group interviews to see which candidates can handle stress and how they work with others.”

Source : dice.com

2 Huge Problems Every Startup Will Face

And how they can affect employee productivity

MPW Insider is an online community where the biggest names in business and beyond answer timely career and leadership questions. Today’s answer for:What’s your biggest worry and how are you dealing with it? is written by Amy Errett, CEO of Madison Reed.

Startups will usually face two major hurdles: proving their business model, and growing their business. While Madison Reed has a proven market, we’re still growing our company every day. Although growing a company is an enviable problem to have, it requires an entirely different skillset than proving your business is viable. That’s why scaling our company without abandoning the identity and culture we’ve worked so hard to forge is one of my biggest worries.

We’ve created a culture at Madison Reed where employees can thrive through compassionate, thoughtful relationships with both their managers and peers. In a time when most companies are pushing their employees to grind it out for every additional bit of productivity, we empower our employees to be honest with one another and abandon their fears. This approach drives our team to achieve beyond what they thought was possible and furthering the company’s success in the process — I call it scaling with love.

Propelled by growth projections and a deluge of new hires, over time some startups lose their identity and distance themselves from the very DNA that made them such a splash in the first place. Ensuring this doesn’t happen at Madison Reed is something I work to achieve every day.

Though I try to remain focused on our goals, retaining our company culture isn’t easy. I believe the compassion and empathy each employee brings to the table is incredibly valuable — not something we can afford to abandon as our audience continues to grow. There is no single strategy to keep you team members happy or engaged. After years of doing this, I believe that human beings are more motivated by finding meaning in their lives than being solely money focused. Certainly, compensation matters, but in a company like ours where we have a deep social meaning — where we believe in creating the best hair color products with low chemical ingredients.

While we have lots of room to grow, we won’t sacrifice what makes us unique to do that. Ensuring we retain the compassionate, empathetic culture we’ve spent years developing is something I think about every day. It requires a balanced approach — focusing simultaneously on the big picture and the details. We believe we are well on our way to disrupt a $50 billion market with a better product, better experience, and better service. We take massive pride in that and we know we will have challenges and opportunities as every company does, but I know our culture will carry us through.

Source : fortune.com

What Mark Zuckerberg Can Learn From Elon Musk About Changing The World

Two billionaire events happened last week:

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan said they'd give away most of their wealth, and Elon Musk renewed his call for a carbon tax.Both Zuckerberg and Musk want to change the world. Some have argued that by creating Facebook, Zuckerberg already has.I might argue that Musk hasn't. Yet.

But that doesn't mean he won't ultimately change it in far more profound ways. And both Chan and Zuckerberg should study him closely as they look to deploy the family's resources, which will stand at about $45 billion.Though Musk has given away some of his money, the thrust of his change-the-world vision has come from investment in his companies: Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City.

When he got very rich after the sale of PayPal to eBay, he took - as he often explains it - all of his money and sank it into those three enterprises.

To risky to succeed?

Speaking in Paris last week, he stressed that he wasn't initially looking for outside investors in either Tesla or SpaceX because he thought both companies were likely to fail. Cars and rockets are risky enterprises.

Along with Solar City, they were huge bets on a transformed future, as well as means to ends: an acceleration of the societal move away from fossil-fuel dependency; and a way to "back up the biosphere" and become a "multiplanetary" species.

And note that Musk is demanding a carbon tax because he grasps that Tesla and Solar City can't do it on their own: only government action can make carbon so expensive that the alternatives become mainstream.Chan and Zuckerberg are leaving themselves the opportunity to do something similar, by setting up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as an LLC rather than a conventional non-profit foundation.

To explain the move, Zuckerberg wrote that the structure: "enables us to pursue our mission by funding non-profit organizations, making private investments and participating in policy debates - in each case with the goal of generating a positive impact in areas of great need."

So they can use some of the money to take risks and fund startups that might make big things happen fast.Could become a visionary.They're not alone in thinking that investment-for-good is perhaps more effective than giving-for-good: Google's Larry Page said last year that he would rather give his wealth to Musk than distribute it the old-fashioned way.

But what they haven't yet outlined is the kind of mad vision that drives Musk.Ten years ago, if you had said that this guy Musk would offer a viable alternative to NASA space missions while at the same time establishing a relatively successful all-electric car company, you would have been told you were 100% nuts.

If you had then said that the ultimate goal of both SpaceX and Tesla wasn't to just to build electric cars or blast rockets into orbit, but rather to end global warming and create a city on Mars, you would have been laughed out of the room.

Think big

Facebook says its mission is to make the world more "open and connected," which is fine, but it doesn't quite grab you in the gut like unhooking planet earth from its oil addiction and colonizing the Red Planet.Zuckerberg's stated plans for the philanthropy so far are ambitious because of the sums involved, but not terribly thrilling. He and Chan, a physician, want to cure diseases, improve education, and open up the world to the Internet.

The structure of their giving will turbocharge these efforts, by bringing entrepreneurship into the picture in a bigger way.But for Chan and Zuckerberg this is actually a unique opportunity. Silicon Valley is full of investors trying to build companies with vast online audiences and alter the scale at which we communicate.Far fewer are tackling the truly major problems that confront humanity.

Zuckerberg obviously knows how to create the former. Now, as he embarks on the latter, Musk should be a guide.

Source : techgignews.com

A chief scientist at Microsoft says we're less than five years away from computers understanding us perfectly

As frustrated as you might get that voice-controlled tools like Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana don't always understand you, it used to be a lot worse.

Earlier this year, Google announced it had gotten its speech recognition error rate down to 8%.

But Microsoft Distinguihsed Engineer and Chief Scientist of Speech Xuedong Huang says that it's a vast improvement.

When Microsoft made its first-ever speech recognition technology available alongside Windows 95, a project Huang headed up, the error rate was "almost 100%," he says.

If you chart it out, Huang says, that means that on average, speech recognition has gotten 20% better every single year for the last twenty years. Which means that the end is in sight.

"In the next four to five years, computers will be as good as humans" at understanding the words that come out of your mouth, Huang says.

But for Huang, Microsoft, and the tech world in general, the end of this road is the beginning of the next phase: building real artificial intelligence.

"Invisible revolution"

With "total parity" between human and computer understanding on the visible horizon, Huang says, it means that the world of speech science has a firmer foundation on which to work on giving computers actual artificial intelligence.

"To understand a word is easier than understanding the context," Huang says.

But with tools like Microsoft Cortana, Google Now, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa, we have consumer-facing apps that are slowly but surely getting better at figuring out not only what you said - but also what you meant. It means that you can start to have more complex conversations with your gadgets.

This means that we're on the cusp of an "invisible revolution," Huang says, as speech becomes an accepted and useful interface for computers, and artificial intelligence becomes a reality.

Source : ETCIO.com

'Indian engineers are Silicon Valley's secret weapons'

BENGALURU: Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave started Web Summit, which some call the world's most imporant tech and startup event, in Dublin in 2010 along with friends Daire Hickey and David Kelly. Cosgrave used Skype to convince Silicon Valley's bigwigs, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Skype founder Nik as Zennstrom, to speak at he inaugural event. The summit now attracts over 40,000 visitors.

Cosgrave spoke with TOI on a visit to Bengaluru. Excerpts:

Web Summit uses proprietary algorithms to pair entrepreneurs and potential investorsmentors.How does it work? When I started Web Summit, I presumed that other people use software to make conferences better. But that wasn't he case. We launched a Web Summit app that recommends to you the people in an event who you might most benefit from meeting. We figure that out by looking at different data points -- your interests, your friends, who you follow on Twitter and Facebook. We put our own graph on top of that. We also see actions inside the app, who you are talking to. And using machine learning, we figure out which talks you might like to go to. We also use algorithms to seat people at dinner tables --the least influential are connected to super influencers.

Was there a challenge to attract high-profile speakers initially to Dublin? Their first reaction was "Who the hell are you", "Have you held a conference before?" When I shared the idea of the conference, they said "It sounds good, is it for a conference at Palo Alto," and I'm like "No. It's in Dublin.". "Dublin? Where's that?" So it was very hard to start. We are not a tech blog. We are the only anomaly. We provide value by connecting people.

Uber's Travis Kalanick came to the second edition of Web Summit in 2011 and raised funds at the event. How did that happen? Travis then had a tiny star Travis then had a tiny startup which only worked in San Francisco. Nobody thought much about it. Everyone thought it wasn't really a game changer. In Dublin, (through the algorithm) he met an investor called Scott Stanford, who was with Goldman Sachs. He hadn't heard of Uber. He realized there was a funding round about to be closed. Travis also met Shervin Pishevar from Menlo Ventures in Dublin. Scott and Shervin didn't know each other and they didn't know they had invested in Dublin at the same time and the deal for both those funds were done in Dublin. That happens a lot. It's a really big story.

A 100 other Ubers happened that year that added up to a much bigger story than Uber. You can engineer that if you can figure out who should meet whom. No wonder, ours is the fastest growing conference anywhere in the world.

How do you see the Indian environment? About five years back in Ireland, I set up a junior Nobel prize for undergrads (an initiative that aims to identify and connect the world's top students). For the last three years, the award has gone to Princeton, MIT and Delhi University . What's phenomenal is how well Indian undergrads do globally and at these awards programmes. For decades, the secret weapon for many companies in Silicon Valley have been Indian engineers. It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a team to raise a company , and the real differentiator is the engineering talent.

Source : ETCIO.com

Google denies claims it broke child-data promises

Google has denied it broke its promises on using children's personal data.

Civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) accused Google of collecting and storing data from children using its products at school.It asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate.But Google said it used the data only to improve its products and services and not to target adverts - in line with its commitments.

In a complaint filed with the authorities earlier this week, the EFF said Chromebooks supplied to schools as part of its Google Apps for Education (GAFE) project came with a feature designed to synchronise the Chrome browser across devices, which transferred students' data without permission.It said the data collected included "records of every internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords".

The group alleged Google used the information "for its own purposes such as improving Google products", as well as to target adverts on GAFE's non-core apps, such as Chrome and YouTube.

The suite's core apps are:

Gmail

Drive

Calendar

Sites

Google said: "There are no ads in these core services, and student data in these services is not used for advertising purposes."

Student privacy

In a blogpost on Wednesday, Google said "personally identifiable" data collected was only "used to power features in Chrome for that person, for example allowing students to access their own browsing data and settings, securely, across devices"."In addition, our systems compile data aggregated from millions of users of Chrome Sync and, after completely removing information about individual users, we use this data to holistically improve the services we provide.

"For example, if data shows that millions of people are visiting a webpage that is broken, that site would be moved lower in the search results. This is not connected to any specific person nor is it used to analyse student behaviours."

Google denied the EFF's allegation that the practice was not in line with its commitment to the Student Privacy Pledge, which prohibits it from misusing children's data.The pledge was co-written by the Future of Privacy Forum and the Software and Information Industry Association, and Google said both organisations had "criticised EFF's interpretation of the pledge and their complaint".

Source : bbc.com/news

Bengaluru Startup Launches FLIP, World’s 1st Open Source IoT Platform

In the 21st century, education and technology can be considered as the two most important factors on which the future of a country depends. That means, in order for a country to progress, both these factors will have to grow in synchronisation with each other or the progress rate of the country takes a hit.

Understanding this scenario, Bangalore headquartered Frugal Labs, a leading Electronics and Communication enterprise specialized in educational technical training, skill development and prototyping products, has come up with a unique idea called FLIP (acronym for Frugal Labs Iot Platorm).

Developed especially for IoT passionate students and hobbyists, with FLIP, the firm’s main objective was to offer a comprehensive open source IoT platform inclusive of all components like Hardware, Cloud and ready to launch solutions for sensors.

With the help of FLIP, IoT enthusiasts can turn their dream concepts to PoC in the shortest duration possible. Further, they will also be able to sell their products in the niche markets.

Frugal Labs Private Limited is a known name in the educational industry for providing hands-on Training Workshops to educational institutions and enthusiasts and to promote knowledge and skill development in the emerging technologies with focus on applications and use cases. Their workshops are known to be designed in such a way that the students not only grasp the fundamentals of specific topics but also understand the various applications. They do so by offering them specially designed kits that provides a hands on experimenting experience of the course content.

There were three major factors which encouraged Frugal Labs to come up with a concept like FLIP. The factors are as follows:

They saw that almost every IoT innovator in the business was spending a major amount of his/her time, effort and money on sourcing the requisite hardware, assimilating the necessary knowledge on coding for firmware, middleware for cloud connecting, application UX / UI for handheld devices so on and so forth.

The time taken from the step of “Concept” to “PoC” would often get stretched depending upon various factors. This would often have a frustrating effect on the innovator and his innovation skills.

Further, though the quantity of components required for developing a PoC is low, the cost of developing it is always high and with almost no support.

FLIP acts a a complete IoT platform that facilitates creating and developing a “PoC” for any IoT based service, product or solution, much easier and affordable to anyone who Dreams, sleeps and eat IoT.

In an effort to continuously improve the features of the platform, the Silicon Valley based firm has decided to keep it as an “Open Source” platform.

So, all you IoT enthusiasts, here’s something for you which you must not miss. Go crab your piece right away!

Source : indiaweb2.com