Back To Career News

PayScale’s VIP Blog Roundup: Draft Your Team Like an NFL Manager, How Depression Affects Your Job, and Answering the Second Most-Awkward Interview Question

Topics:

Even if you’re not into sports, you can learn a lot about leadership — good and bad — from watching the managers of professional sports teams. It all comes down to using data to help you make better decisions. Plus, also in this week’s roundup: how depression affects working memory, and thus our productivity, and the best way to answer, “Why are you looking for a new job?”

football 

(Photo Credit: cliff1066/Flickr)

Marc Prine, PhD at Interview With the Geek: Draft Your Team Like an NFL General Manager

Do You Know What You're Worth?

Assessments are built to help you gain peace of mind on your hardest decisions. The best resume in the world paired with a witty performance in an interview does not indicate whether or not this person is the right fit for your organization. Make the right choice by giving yourself an objective data point and included an assessment when you draft your team.

Prine suggests hiring a professional to help you put together these assessments, but even if that’s off the table, you can make better hiring decisions by deciding, in advance, what your perfect teammate looks like. That way, you’re less likely to be wooed by a charming interview and miss the person who would really help your team get the next level.

Pedro De Bruyckere at The Economy of Meaning: Depressive Thoughts May Have a Negative Effect on Working Memory

If you’re a person who suffers from depression and also has the tendency to put taking care of yourself at the bottom of the priority list, you now have another reason to invest in self-care: depression could impact your job. Specifically, researchers have found, depression has a negative effect on working memory. De Bruyckere writes:

The link between working memory and depression has been subject of several studies. This new study doesn’t say that bad working memory is the origin of depressive thoughts, but vice versa. Building on the knowledge that dysphoric individuals (DIs) and clinically depressed people maintain their attention on ‘mood-congruent’ information longer than people without depressed mood, researchers carried out three studies to test both working memory and processing speed.

The three studies showed reduced working memory in depressed individuals, and possibly reduced concentration and productivity levels as a result.

Anita Bruzzese at 45 Things: How to Answer, “Why Are You Looking for a New Job?”

After “What are your salary requirements?”, this is probably the worst question to answer during the job interview process. But, there’s a good reason interviewers ask it, and how you answer is important. Per Bruzzese:

This is often a question asked by interviewers as way to set the tone for the interview. If you answer something like “my boss is a total a**hole,” then the interviewer knows he or she can make the rest of the interview fairly short. Why hire someone who badmouths a supervisor, even if the boss is an a**hole?

But if you provide an interesting answer that mentions the skills you can bring to the table, the interviewer is more intrigued.

In other words, if you keep your wits about you and stay positive, you can turn this awkward question into a chance to show yourself off to best advantage, and get the job.

Tell Us What You Think

What’s the best career advice you’ve read this week? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.

Jen Hubley Luckwaldt
Read more from Jen

Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
What Am I Worth?

What your skills are worth in the job market is constantly changing.