DALE SYROTA

A while ago, I read Lou Alder’s LinkedIn blog,The Most Important Interview Question of All Time, in which he asks, “What single project or task would you consider the most significant accomplishment in your career so far?” He had this article read by over 280,000 readers and received over 1000 comments? He has over 600,000 LinkedIn followers.

I thought this guy must know what he is doing. Here, is a bit of Lou’s bio: Lou Alder, CEO of The Alder Group, best-selling author, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, and creator of Performance-based Hiring, Amazon best-selling author of, Hire With Your Head(Wiley, 2007), and the award winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules, is also a key Influencer, here on LinkedIn. He is a recruiter who has had more than 20,000 recruiters and hiring managers attended his ground-breaking workshops?

His questioning technique fleshes out the talent that lies hidden within a candidate. They give a recruiter a simple path to achieve their needed outcome; to hire a great employee.

I wondered what it would be like to have Lou Alder interview me for a job; to ask me those key questions.

The answer to that question, and ultimately to his interview questions, has set me upon a new career course. I see a very different future. Will I be successful, time will tell. If I am successful, he, unknowingly, will have had a lot to do with it. I hope to keep the LinkedIn readers apprised of my results.

My original thinking was:

1. Answer Lou Alders’ questions
2. Post my answers so recruiters could read them
3. Connect with recruiters and perhaps business owners
4. Get hired

It was that first point that was a precursor to a paradigm shift in my thinking. I’ll get to that, but first, why am I looking for a new job?

I work for a great company. I am able to be very creative in my work and how I manage results. I work in the largest Energy Industrial Park in Canada, in Nisku, Alberta. We have winters that often run to six months where temperatures often drop to -45 degrees. The cold winters have spurred a medical issue in my family. We need to move to a milder climate.

I have had to address many issues along my path to resolve this issue, and we are not there yet. I need to be out of Alberta by the start of winter; 5 now 4 months away.

How could I do a job search without putting my current work at risk? Would my company or my boss understand? I decided to just be open about the whole thing. The family issue, the need to move to a warmer climate, and the need to be gone before summer’s end.

We work in fishbowls; someone is always watching you. With having a website up and sharing this news freely at the office it had the inevitable results. My boss walked into my office one afternoon and asked if it was true that I was planning on leaving in the fall. He already knew about my family illness issue. He was most understanding. He asked if I could make it official. I did.

It is not easy to fill a position like mine; it needs the right person with the right temperament and level of knowledge and most important, right level of experience related to culture change to carry on our programs. It may take the summer to fill my position effectively and I will stay to train a new safety guy, if at all possible.

Therein lays the beginnings of several problems. How long will another employer wait? I have been with my company for almost eight years, which is great; a very stable guy. But, if you look at my bio picture you would not call me a spring chicken. As stereotypically dumb as that is, there is an undercurrent of age discrimination. It is a holdover of a time when work was primarily physical in nature and you had to be young to do it. Since then that thinking has been reinforced with other erroneous factors like using more sick time. I need to take the erroneous age zone considerations into my plan.

How do I address all those issues? I have been working at making others successful for many years now and all I have to do is turn these techniques my way. I used quiet mediation so I could be open to new ideas. I used internet research and overnight leaning methods and taught my reticular activating system to focus in the direction of my research. The answer came.

Use the web, social networking, and open an honest communication, as I parlay the answers to Lou Alder’s 20 questions into a power career change methodology.

STEP 1 - ANSWER LOU ALDERS’ QUESTIONS

I went ahead and answered all of Lou Alders’ 20 questions. WOW! It is not that finding the answers to his questions were life changing; rather it was life--, no career clarifying. I found that yes, I was a guy that did environmental and occupational health and safety stuff, but more so, I was work culture changer. I facilitated the change to a better workplace. I am a grassroots change agent using a very different and vary effective approach to shop floor and glass ceiling enlightenment.

This may not be earth shaking to some but to me the universe shifted. It opened the door to many options;

• · option one, find an open job and fill it
• · option two, create a new position
• · option three, create a new product, package it, and sell it
• · option four, is consult

Option one, find an open job and fill it. If I was to fill a position it would have to be pretty special; it would have to let me apply the change methodology that I talk about in answer to Lou Alders 20 questions.

Option two, is create a position. To do this I would need to work on option three, first. Perhaps over the next several months I will be able to do this. I do have connections in my location of choice.

Option three, is create a new product, package it, and sell it. I have a concept for a product called, “OHS In A Box;” I already own the domain names. It would consist of three parts; one part for the executive, one part for the supervisor and one part for the employee. I my past life, I have done design of curriculum and have created several learning packages. I have been busy writing the executive piece in fable-format. Will this be ready before I have to leave? Time will tell.

Option four, is consult. Doing this piece and having it read by the right person may lead in that direction. If I choose to consult, then the company could still keep their safety champion, who could look after the compliance minutiae that is such a big part of safety; I slayed the safety compliance minutiae dragon, long ago.

As a consultant, my focus would be on slaying a much bigger and more fierce dragon; the pathological non-safety culture. In slaying that dragon we set the company kingdom on the path to a high reliability culture were autonomy, mastery and purpose thrive. What would that look like?

IMAGINE A CONVERSATION WITH AN EMPLOYEE IN THAT KINGDOM

Why do I like working here?

I can change things. If I see an issue that needs correction or improvement, I can make a knowledgeable proposal on how to correct it, get my proposal approved, and be given the support necessary so that I can resolve the issue. We don’t have suggestions disappear into some suggestion box. Not every proposal is approved, but if it is within my abilities to resolve, I am given the support to resolve it. Complex proposals are kicked upstairs and put to a vote to be given support, returned to me for further work or to be killed as not feasible. Yet, even if it is killed I get credit for the idea.

Here, what I have to say, has value. I am taught great change and continuous improvement skills and expected to apply them. If I am really good, I can teach them too. We are the highest paid workers in our industry and we are the most productive and the most innovative too. No other company can even come close. I have learned some very powerful tools. I have become a skilled master in my environment. I am given the autonomy to make a difference. I work with a great team. How can I not like working here?

STEP 2 - POST MY ANSWERS FOR RECRUITERS

So, to answer question #1: Where to post my answers?

After meditation on the question overnight I came up with an answer. I could create a website.

I use Yola.com. I bought a domain for $13.95 for DaleSyrota.ca and went to work on creating the website. It is finished and published, but could use a little more work.

My answers to Lou Alder’s 20 questions are on it. I also have a contact page, and an ‘About Dale’ page.

Now I can direct recruiters, who have that great position available or companies looking for that dragon slaying consultant, to my website.

STEP 3 - CONNECT WITH RECRUITERS AND BUSINESS OWNERS

Recruiters are often the people that find consultant talent. They have a vested interest in making their company a better place to work. Being part of human resource development means that they want to see how to make a change in their companies that can solidify over time. I need recruiters of dragon slayers to see me.

I need to connect with business owners that want their people to answer the question, Why do I like working here, in a way, similar to that which I posted above.

So at my personal website I will create … well I am not quite sure yet, that is the Dark Territory stuff of Star Trek fame.

As I write this post the concept behind idea is sloshing about. Stay tuned to see how I am doing.

STEP 4 - GET HIRED (I GUESS STEP 4 MAY HAVE BECOME REDUNDANT)

Now, I just have to create a product and sell along with the value that I can bring to it. I have done a little of that before. Check out my ReThinkYourMind.ca website. I don’t want to bore you with anymore stuff about me. As a reader, you want to know about you. You want to know how, what I am doing, could help you. Let’s get to that.

SO HOW CAN WHAT I AM DOING HELP YOU

Should you create a personal website? If you do, you are going to metaphorically, bare yourself to the world. Yes, being ready to move to a new job is important. Unfortunately, we are as indispensable as the hole that is left when you put your finger in and out of a glass of water. The hole always gets filled. A little too jaded, perhaps. I was outsourced twice. It hurt like hell but was both times it helped me to grow.

Your employer will probably find out about your personal website. There may be one or two people within your circle looking for brownie points who will tell your boss about your plans. Turn that to your advantage.

Your employer sees you every day but the brain has a way of tuning things out. You and everything else, not in your employer’s direct line of sight, is just so much noise, like the white noise that you might hear on a radio. That great project you just completed…, more white noise. “Oh, you finished the project, well great job, that’s why we hired you (smile smile wink wink), now about this other problem…” Your 15 seconds of fame are gone. After all, at present you are just a cog in the gear wheel of the company; just so much noise.

Your website can be a way of squeaking, as in the squeaky wheel gets the oil. That oil you are looking for is recognition due. Lou Alder’s, 20 questions will shine a real light on what you have accomplished. You will see your single project or task that you would consider the most significant accomplishment in your career so far, in a very different light. Hopefully, so will your employer. Maybe he or she will tune to the radio channel of you, and realise just how precious you are.

Your employer will also know that other companies can see your value too. If nothing happens with your employer, well, now the world is your oyster. When you use the Lou Alder oyster shucking tool (the 20 questions) to open that oyster, you may find a pearl in it, which is you.

I will update LinkedIn readers periodically on how I am doing with my entrepreneurial/employee project. Until then, please check out my website at DaleSyrota.ca and especially Lou Alder’spost.

Dale Syrota is just a regular guy the gets off on work that brings out his creative soul. He is on the move looking for a new roost in a warmer part of Canada. He wants to make work WORK. His mission is to achieve individual and business success by propagating mastery, autonomy, and purpose as a vehicle to engage every employee every day and to enlist the psychology of the mind to help individuals self-improve at work and at home. Unfortunately you cannot Tweet him, Friend him, and/or circle him on Google Plus as he still hasn't figured out that part of social networking thing yet. Give him time; that is his next project. But you can follow him on LinkedIn. It is an easy way to get his next post on how his search is proceeding.

Isn't life grand?