Value Of Local Interview Projects

This is part of an email course I am building: Thoughts welcome.
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Let me start with a hypo a hypo example: Let’s say you want to build a school for low income children in your community. Sure you know a few people in your community. But you don’t have much money, and not many significant relationships to help you make it a reality. Where do you start?

You must at least get the idea out there, right? Why? Because you can’t do it alone. So a good way of giving yourself a chance to succeed is to start a conversation about it among people who know something about what you want to do, care about it, and know other people, and could help.

Is it a bad idea, then, to start an interview project with these people about what you want to do and how it could be useful to them? Can you discuss with them what your plans are and how you may need their help, and what they will get out of it? Can you put it in win-win terms, the conversation? And to make it more earnest, is it a good use of your time, their time, and for results if you put it into a project with a defined goal and a definite time frame?

Yet you cannot do this with your current range of relationships you have, if the project is sizable enough? This is where you will have to step outside of your comfort zone and approach people you do not have prior relationships with but know have knowledge and resources that could be useful to you. So in a sense, go out and talk to strangers. So it is with interview projects, and that’s the value of this course: People and communication skills that will come in handy for useful causes.

An interview project gives you an opportunity to pick up some valuable people and communication skills that is rarely taught at schools: stepping out of your comfort zone and engaging with others. What’s more, if you document your journey, you also strengthen you writing skill.

What else is an interview project good for?

If you were to start a project like I did (which was definitely not to build a school) and document your experience and share it online, here are a few things that you could come away with.

Initiative

It’s a show of initiative. This is good for all work positions. But if you were looking for work, this is a good notch on your resume. This doesn’t mean you should not look for work, but it gets you in a position to add to your skills besides a show of initiative, which almost all job ads require from applicants. What’s more? Write about it, document it, share it online, and when an employer were to ask, simply point them to your site (and you can get a site up in 10 minutes for free to use to do this). How many of the other job applicants can say that?

A Good Word

When your project is done, providing you conduct yourself well, and provide value to those you interviewed, they’ll likely speak well of you when you ask them to give you a recommendation on how you did your project. This is not to fake it, but when you go out there with a sincere desire to learn from others, add value to your community, learn from the experience, and possibly teach others by sharing it, you’ll definitely have a few people say a few good things about you when you need it.



     Find A Suitable Job

Looking for work? Why not turn the tables and interview employers instead. Rather than wait to get calls for interviews, why not go out and interview people who could hire you, or know others who could?
During one of my interviews — -the one with Mr. Matt Lacey — -at the end, he jokingly remarked on his desire to offer me an application to work with him. I didn't take the offer, but the reason he offered is not far-fetched. He saw my joy in talking with him, the value of my questions, and my initiative to do something like this. The same opportunity could be next door in your community, while you may be looking for work.

Discovery Opportunity

As the interviewer, the ball is in your hands, since you will be the one asking the questions: One of the questions you want to ask is what they are currently having a difficult time with. Out of 10 employers who answer this, one of them most probably will have a challenge that falls right in your wheelhouse of skills or desire, and you can offer your skills to the employer to help them solve it. You can do this after you have completed the project, or start a side gig to help them out.

Improve Your Writing Skills

I recently read in Basecamp’s book, Rework, on how they’ll recommend that business owners hire writers. Why? Life is all about communicating, and without effective communication, nothing will be done effectively. Copywriting, essays, books, even web design/programming is all language based, an ability to clearly and creatively get a point across. So write.
You may say, I’m not that good at it. Yeah, no one starts out excellently, but how do you build a skyscraper? A brick at a time, right? What about eating an elephant? A bite at a time? Okay, so is writing, as is walking, one step after another.
Also, as the saying goes, writing makes a man exact, and refines your thinking. So keep a daily journal of what happened. Few people can do this, and of those who can, few will take the trouble to: this separates you froma lot of people.

Startup Chance

Again, you’ll come across problems that some of the people you interview may be struggling with, and if you have the skills offer it to help them solve if for a fee. If you come across a problem, you can’t solve, see if you can find someone else more qualified than you are to help solve it. But probably more important than all of this is, if you find out that you will like to turn this into some sort of start-up, you can. Simply figure out how you can turn it into consistent revenue through more marketing or referrals.

Volunteer Spirit

Since you will not charge anyone anything for your time and effort, this demonstrates a good degree of a volunteer spirit — the ability to do something for another person for free. Who doesn’t like a person like that? Most employers want someone like that on their team, who can take something upon themselves without asking, and do it without asking for anything in return. Remember, almost all worthy professionals did many things for free when they first started out. Everyone would like someone like that for a friend, a coworker, or even a boss — A generous spirit is a great treasure.



       Relationships

If you do something like this, you’ll end up with relationships with people you did not know previously. Life is all about connecting, and most will come in handy later, if you genuinely set out to help them, and they in return.
Finally, this means you are giving something, and it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Give instead of receiving: Many are waiting for someone ( an employer) to give them a job, but you package a value and give it to employers instead.

Skill Gathering & Demonstration

Demonstrate some of the skills employers are looking for — -email writing, diligence, follow up, packaging ( in packaging the project), people skills, audacity, initiative, leadership, and others. This paves the way to easily show some of these skills and gather others while you are at it.
Since it may be your first, it will not go perfectly, but there’s always the opportunity rinse and repeat to for the next one.



        Take Advantage of Time

Most folks are left in the job-hunt routine for a month, 3 months, 9 months, sometimes years, and often are left without work for want of initiative. 21 days is less than 30 days, and definitely less than a year. So why take the 21 days (or less, if you will) and do something with it? It’s a win-win either way you look at it. It improves your value, exposes you to employers, gives you people to turn to for recommendation if you need it, and afterward you’ll have a better resume

      Where Do I Start?

An Important question: Where do I start, and how do I go about an interview project. My desire with this course is not only to do an interview project, but also to use it as a vehicle to explore more of what you love, and to help you get a clearer idea of what you want to do (if for some reason, that’s not already clear). To that end, first figure what you want to learn a lot about. Are there people in your local community already doing that? Start with folks in that industry.

For example, I wanted to learn about business, so I started with small business owners in my community. Get clear on yours and see how an interview project could help you learn a lot more about that and build relationships.