Cisco layoffs a response to industry shift to software, cloud services

by
Antone Gonsalves

Director of News

Published: 18 Aug 2016

 

Cisco layoffs a response to industry shift to software, cloud services

Cisco's decision to cut 5,500 jobs or 7% of its workforce is the latest move to cope with an industry shifting away from the company's core business of selling specialty networking hardware.

On Wednesday, Cisco announced the reductions in its workforce of 73,700 while releasing financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter ending July 30. Cost savings from the Cisco layoffs were earmarked for product lines reflective of where the networking industry is heading, including cloud-based services and software for managing networks.

"Primarily, we are looking at the areas of growth that we believe will grow faster than others," Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told analysts during a teleconference.

Indeed, revenue from Cisco's legacy switching and routing portfolios was flat and down, respectively, for the fiscal year. Switching sales for the year stayed at $14.8 billion, while routing fell 4% to $7.4 billion. Switching and routing accounted for 45% of Cisco's overall revenue for the fiscal year.

Like other older generation tech companies, Cisco has had to restructure its business as customers followed trends that steered them away from the company's traditional product lines. Other larger vendors that have had to undergo major changes to adapt to market-disrupting technology shifts include PC makers Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which split last year into two companies, and chipmaker Intel.

Cisco reported much higher growth in products reflective of those industry trends. Network security, which Cisco delivers as software and as a cloud-based service, rose 16% in the quarter and 13% for the year to $540 million and $2 billion, respectively.

Revenue from the company's software-defined networking platform, called the application-centric infrastructure (ACI), grew 36% in the fourth quarter at a $2.3 billion annualized run rate, Robbins said.

Revenue from Cisco's collaboration product portfolio, which includes its online meeting software, WebEx, and its cloud-based messaging and content-sharing service, Spark, grew by 6% in the quarter and 9% for the year to $1.2 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively.

Overall for the quarter, net income increased 21% to $2.8 billion, despite a revenue drop of 2% to $12.6 billion. For the current quarter, Cisco predicted revenue would fall between a decline of 1% and an increase of 1%.

Robbins attributed the revenue decline in the quarter to a drop in sales to service providers and lower revenue from emerging markets. Sales in the latter fell 6% overall and 12% in China alone, the company reported. Service provider revenue dropped 5%. These customer categories turned negative after three consecutive quarters of growth.

The company expected to take $700 million in charges throughout the fiscal year as a result of the layoffs. The last major round of Cisco layoffs was two years ago when it cut 6,000 jobs or 8% of its workforce.

71 percent of IT execs say cyber talent shortage causing measurable harm

A new report aims to put to rest the question of whether a national and global shortfall of cybersecurity talent is a genuine problem: Several hundred global IT leaders answered with a resounding “yes,” with the vast majority saying government inaction is partly to blame.
The study, developed jointly by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Intel Security, shed light on the extent to which the talent shortage is a problem not just for government agencies, but also for private companies who are usually able to vastly outspend the salaries the public sector can offer.
Of the corporate and government IT professionals surveyed in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and Mexico, 82 percent said they’re unable to fill open jobs with adequately trained and experienced people, and don’t see the picture improving. On average, they expect 15 percent of their critical cyber positions to remain unfilled by the year 2020.

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Of those surveyed, 71 percent said the shortage was already causing direct and measurable damage to their organizations.
“When you have so many positions that aren’t filled, in all probability that means the people you do have are working 24 hours a day and headed for burnout, or they’re not quite as alert the next morning as they might have been,” said Candace Worley, the senior vice president and general manager of Intel Security. “It also means there are things that aren’t getting done. You’re probably going to devote your cyber workforce to the things that are most critical like responding to cyber incidents and breaches that have already occurred, because those are the things you can’t ignore. The less-critical things like patching operating systems and applications are probably going to get traded off.”
As to the reasons for the shortage, 76 percent of IT executives said the problem was caused, at least in part, by the fact that their governments weren’t investing enough in training a workforce with cyber skills.
“The respondents felt, universally across the globe, that governments weren’t doing enough to help build the cybersecurity talent funnel,” she said. “Companies like ours are trying to be proactive in partnership with governments and with other vendors to solve this problem, and part of the answer is to start doing things in schools at a relatively young age. Getting students aware that cyber is an issue and that security is an issue when you’re online starts to plant that seed that computers are more than gaming consoles or social chat. Hopefully, that helps us to have a discussion with them once they get to high school and college about cybersecurity as a career.”
Dr. Phyllis Schneck, the deputy undersecretary of Homeland Security for cybersecurity, said while her workforce within the National Protection and Programs directorate is top-notch, it’s undersized, partially because of the inadequate pool of job candidates.
She said the department is trying to make inroads against the problem by creating more opportunities for workers to move back and forth between the private sector and government — a strategy that’s also better suited to the workforce preferences of a “millennial” generation that sees no particular value in staying in one job from college graduation until retirement.

 

“We want people to be able to get the chance to work in the private sector — build big things and innovate and understand building and shaping a market — but also work in a place like DHS where you’ll see things like you’ve never seen before,” she said. “I can tell you that being in our shop trains you that sleep is overrated. You constantly run, you’re constantly excited, and you will come out of that with the sharpest skills you’ve ever had in your career. We want to give those skills to young students and let them transfer those to the private sector after a tour of duty. Our management directorate calls this a ‘passport,’ so you might not have to do all the forms every time, you just move in and out of the government every couple years. If we do this right, they’ll be making the most money when their kids go to college so that it’s not a financial issue, but you’ll still have seen the best of industry and the best of government.”
Schneck said DHS is also looking for ways to use government funds to pay for students’ college education in exchange for a commitment that they stay in a federal cyber position for a certain period of time.
“Another approach is we would figure out a way to help them in a career path that would be mentored and guided by both the government and the private sector,” she said. “We would build on the success of a program we co-fund with the National Science Foundation called Scholarship for Service. Almost all the students who’ve worked at DHS through that program have said they want to come back.”
An approach that used government positions and scholarships as the launching pad for a cyber career would seem to address another key finding in the CSIS-Intel survey, in which a majority of executives said they wanted job applicants to have a minimum of a bachelors’ degree in a relevant field, but that real-world training and experience put certain candidates above others.
“A technical degree was sort of the third priority for them in deciding whether someone was qualified for a job,” Worley said. “They ranked things like professional certifications and hacking competitions and experience as more important.”
The federal government has been trying to address the broader challenge of quantity and quality within the U.S. cybersecurity workforce for several years. Its main vehicle has been the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NICE framework, first released in April 2013 is due for an update, expected to be released this fall.
Rodney Petersen, the director of the NICE initiative, said it aims to boost the U.S. cybersecurity workforce by expanding the pool of potential job candidates beyond 20-somethings who’ve just graduated college with a technical degree.
“Someone going through K-12 schools and then a university and then to an employer is not the only pathway to getting into cybersecurity, even though we certainly want to invest in that,” he said. “But there are others, including the fact that a lot of professionals could change jobs mid-career and already have a bachelors degree in a field like psychology and want to get some skills and training. Our goal is to nurture a diverse workforce, but also to accelerate learning and skills development. We also have to recognize that the training that’s happening in our high schools and community colleges are sometimes of as much value as what happens in a traditional university setting, so we need to think much more broadly about the diverse learning community, not just the traditional pipeline.”

original post:  http://federalnewsradio.com/cybersecurity/2016/08/71-percent-execs-say-cyber-talent-shortage-causing-measurable-damage-organizations/

How to Deal with a Negative Employee

Kit, the pitcher in A League of Their Own, is negative throughout most of the movie.  Manufacturing sympathy for her is tough.  She is a whiner.  She brings down those around her.  She is frustrated with the sister who has been kind to her and given her support in her life.  She is obnoxious to her teammates.  She is negative about her life and wants to bring others down around her.

How many of these people work with or for us?  And while you might want to fight this person, just as happens in one scene of the movie, work policy is likely to prohibit you from doing so. 

Confrontation is appropriate.  You do not need to allow this person to monopolize your time or to jeopardize the flow of the rest of the team due to such negativity.  It is not okay.

Make the business case first.  Log the hours given in support of this negative person, to try to move him/her beyond the perceived issues.  Log the hours given in support of correction in team communication often displayed in frustration.  Log the hours given in conversation with other team members who struggle to work with that negative person.  Those hours have a cost, with very little ROI.

In restaurant jobs nyc, the typical pattern for a manager is to have all of these conversations, but the functional team dynamic remains the same.  The cycle of engagement is not impacted and the status quo returns a day after addressing the issue.  Management does little usually to course-correct the department.  The symptom gets address – frustration, lack of communication, hurt feelings – but the cause – the negativity of a person – is left because we don’t know what to do.

In all of the hours spent by the manager in dealing with the situations caused by the negativity, rest assured it’s about the same for the team members involved.  They are not on task because of having to address the related issues of the negativity.  It should be very easy to show the negative employee that the team is not here to deal with these issues; it’s not part of their job description.  The cost of lost productivity is real and can be shared as an amount based upon time, hourly rate, cost of goods, and other operational & production costs.

It, also, distracts the staff from representing the brand, the cuisine, the service imperative and other details of the organization to the customer.  That’s money for today and future monies in jeopardy.

Treating the negative person with the respect of truth and fact is the most respectful way to engage.  It will allow the conversation to move away from feeling, which is the default position, and rest purely on fact.  Management must engage on a level that moves the negative person out of his/her own perspective and into one that includes the company’s purpose.  Often, the negative individual sees his/her role as unappreciated at the company, especially for hospitality jobs nyc.  By sharing factual information, the negative person is offered a different (and more correct) view of how the company sees him/her.  When confronted with such information, management can be deliberate about the path of engagement moving forward.

Management will need to follow through on this.  If we’re serious that the waste of time is enough, then we must act upon that.  No more resources of time, team members and operational productivity will be wasted on such negativity.  Everything isn’t terrible, everything isn’t against you and everything isn’t about you.  

Clearly act on this.

And while management may feel that the negative person is too tough to handle, a better view is to think about the team members that aren’t receiving such attention despite the great work being done.  The squeaky wheel getting the grease isn’t a long-term strategy for success.  Affirm the right behaviors more than the wrong; look at the time you’re spending on the wrong and make corrections.

Keep in mind, too, that this negative person can follow the path that Kit did.  She got traded.  Don’t wait too long to trade your Kit.

Does online learning actually lead to jobs?

In this blog post we’ll attempt to answer as many of these questions as we can:

• What is the relationship between online learning platforms and finding a job?
• How do MOOC platforms think about the relationship between learning and jobs?
• Who takes online courseware, and why?
• What are the aspects of MOOC platforms that make them more or less successful for finding work?
• What is the future of this space?

If you’ve ever felt compelled to take an online course on Coursera, Udacity, or EdX, you’re not alone. Millions have. Although these platforms have only been around for a few years, there is no shortage of enthusiasm around their potential impact. As Anant Agarwal, CEO of EdX puts it, they have the potential to “unbundle education.”  

Right now, universities and colleges are full stack- they have to deal with credentialing, infrastructure, staffing, recruitment—all on their own, meaning redundancy, as opposed to focusing on their core value add. It’s a compelling argument. There is no shortage of compelling arguments around why MOOCs matter. But, so far, nobody is addressing the biggest question of all.   

Will MOOCs help you get a job?  

After all, why do people go to University in the first place?

The relationship between education and jobs is the final frontier of online courseware. In the same audio interview cited earlier, Agarwal states that EdX has helped at least 100 people get a job.  If that was the success rate of a college’s career guidance office, the college would no longer exist. Of course, MOOC platforms are not built to be education to job pipelines. They’re built to educate the world.  Even though those are vast and valid ambitions, they’re actually easier than guiding people into careers.

Helping learners find jobs through completing online courseware requires new partnerships and greater widespread acceptance of the validity of near-free online learning credentials. Coursera has its Specializations, groupings of related courses that, when completed together, almost mimic a college degree in a subject area. Udacity has nanodegrees which they deem “credentials built and recognized by industry leaders to advance your career.” Among the larger MOOC platforms, Udacity leads among exploring industry partnerships. Its Open Education Alliance aims to use Udacity to bridge skill gaps created by inefficiencies in traditional higher education.

Of course, there is a mismatch between these ambitions and the current demographic of MOOC students. Both within the United States and globally, a 2013 survey identified that 80% of MOOC students already have a college degree, meaning the ‘education revolution’ targets the top 6% of learners anyway. These are the type of people who already have experience learning, and don’t need these platforms to get their first job. The same study showed that roughly half of all MOOC students take them “just for fun,” while 43.9% aim to use the course to do their existing job better.

The idea of online courseware revolutionizing meaningful access to education as a pathway to jobs is, for the most part, not yet true. Other new education institutions, like General Assembly tap into online learning as a part of the approach. General Assembly aims to train workers specifically to meet emerging skills gaps in technical fields. This focus on job placement, however, is naturally at odds with most large MOOC platforms.

Why MOOC platforms are at odds with job placement:    

Large MOOC platforms are structurally designed to be difficult to aid with job placement.

First of all, they are inherently global. Although this means hypothetical access to the best, most ambitious student body, that also means no geographic base. Unless you are hiring for a remote workforce, partnering with a local university makes more sense than seeking applicants off of MOOCs.

Secondly, their economies of scale are actually a disadvantage. By democratizing access to education, MOOCs mean a potentially limitless student body by size, while employment opportunities are limited. In the best case scenario, you take the top 5% of students by performance and offer them access to interviews and applications. However, this can lead to cheating and trust issues with student performance.

Finally, in the same way the first TV broadcasts were simply Radio broadcasts with a TV camera, MOOC platforms are for the most part the university experience juxtaposed onto a new medium. Because of this, courses appeal most predominantly to people with existing higher education experience, and therefore the audience is double-counted.

In all fairness, this is a new technology, less than half a decade in the limelight.  As these platforms naturally mature, they will differentiate and evolve to fill the ‘jobs’ challenge.

If MOOCs could design processes and training pipelines to target non-traditional learners, online courseware platforms could become much more impactful.

Original post:  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/does-online-learning-actually-lead-to-jobs/

A top 20 skills list for (mostly developer-centric) freelancers

Adrian Bridgwater

19 July 2016 9:12

 

A top 20 skills list for (mostly developer-centric) freelancers

Freelance work website Upwork has released a list of (admittedly US-based) skills in what appear to be mostly technical and highly developer-centric fields. If the US job market (and its technical skills development progression) is any reflection of Europe and the rest of the world (which it largely is), then this list could prove interesting, encouraging or at least mildly diverting.
Key takeaways include the notion that software application development skills account for one-third of the top 20 fastest-growing skills. From web development (AngularJS) to eCommerce development (Shopify) to mobile development (Android, iOS), developers are in higher demand than ever.

Also here… we see that future technologies are driving demand for skills such as data mining, Java and MongoDB competency. Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and robotics are also (somewhat unsurprisingly) on the rise.

In the less technical (but still related) fields we see areas listed including proofreading, SEO writing, animation and video editing.

The list for Q2 2016:

1.User experience design
2.ASP development
3.Shopify development
4.English proofreading
5.SEO writing
6.Animation
7.Virtual assistant
8.Lead generation
9.Data mining
10.Video editing
11.WordPress development
12.AngularJS development
13.Java development
14.Accounting
15.Android development
16.iOS development
17.Zendesk
18.MongoDB
19.Data visualisation
20.AutoCAD

“We’re releasing this skills data to serve as a resource for professionals, educators and policymakers,” said Upwork CEO, Stephane Kasriel.

source:  http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/CW-Developer-Network/A-top-20-skills-list-for-mostly-technical-freelancers

Does the state of cloud report align with your Business and employee skills?

VMTURBO has published the State of Multi-Cloud Architecture survey report.  Here is an excerpt from the survey report.

 

 

Executive Summary
Over the past decade, Information Technology has evolved at an unprecedented rate. Virtualization,
in all its various forms and schools of thought, is in many ways the keystone enabling this evolution.
Loosely defined, virtualization is the act of decoupling one entity from another entity. In our context,
it is the practice of decoupling logic from infrastructure and defining infrastructure behavior entirely
in software. Virtualization has introduced incredible efficiencies and economies of scale to the
data center, and created a platform for automation and workload mobility.

Each wave heralds a new vernacular, which more often than not, takes root and spreads before the
field agrees upon a singular notion of its meaning.

Convergence, hyper-convergence, SDx, the list goes on - but perhaps no wave has engendered
and propagated more butchering than “cloud”: a word so nebulously vague and universally applicable
that any IT newcomer can apply it as a noun (the cloud), verb (cloudify), or adjective (cloud-built/
native/ready) with a high probability of passable usage.

The purpose of this report, The State of Multi-Cloud Architecture, Part One, is to establish a
baseline understanding of the present and anticipated adoption of various cloud formats, and to
explore both the approach and challenges organizations have faced in the endeavor. Analysts and
pundits contend that IT, as a whole, is en route to a construct called hybrid cloud. Though these
sources disagree in some aspects of the path to hybrid cloud - namely the rate of adoption and the
characteristics of adopters - they agree that it is an inevitable wave.

What this and subsequent surveys will strive to answer is, what is the truth? How are organizations
pursuing the path to hybrid cloud, how long will it take them and how much will it cost them? As a
starting point, we assume a bridge to hybrid cloud is a construct called multi-cloud.

To delineate between these models, a set of definitions is in order to ensure consistent and universal
interpretation of the data herein.

 

...download the full report from VMTURBO.com.

 

 

VMTURBO State of Multi-Cloud Architecture

Looking for a job? IBM has 20,000 openings

(CNN) - If you're on the job hunt, IBM has a few openings.
And by a few, we're talking 20,000.

IBM is transitioning from a software business to a company in the cloud.
As such, it's laying off workers that don't have the skillset needed in the new direction.
Last month, the tech giant said it would pink-slip an unspecified number of people in the legacy businesses.

But, they'll hire just as many.

About 7,000 positions are posted online, and the company said there's more coming.
IBM was a bit late to the cloud party, but is now a major player, raking in over $10 billion in sales last year.

Those new bodies can't come fast enough. IBM has rattled off 16 straight quarters of sales declines and last month it announced its worst quarterly sales since 2002.
It wasn't so long ago that IBM was predicting that its profit would reach $20 a share by the end of 2015. That proved to be way too ambitious -- IBM posted earnings of just $14.92 at the end of 2015. (IBM abandoned that $20 target in the third quarter of 2014).

The company was ill-prepared for its customers' sudden warm embrace of cloud computing. Why buy big, expensive IBM mainframes and servers when you can pay Amazon or Microsoft to house all your data for you -- for cheaper? Why spend money on software for your computers, when those programs can be hosted in the cloud?

Over the past several years, IBM has attempted to shift its strategy. It is now a major cloud player, racking up $10.2 billion in cloud sales last year. And it has poured millions of dollars into big data analytics, mobility and security. Its most notable project that fits the "new IBM" bill is Watson.
IBM said sales of those "strategic imperatives" are growing fast -- up 26% in 2015.

But steering a ship as big as IBM in a new direction takes a lot of time. IBM's executive leadership says it expects that its strategy will pay off soon, but Wall Street analysts aren't expecting IBM's sales to grow for at least another couple years.

Despite all the hiring, IBM is getting significantly leaner. IBM employed about 434,000 people when Ginni Rometty took over as CEO in 2011. Its headcount is now below 378,000.

Free 12 Surprising Job Interview Tips

Free 12 Surprising Job Interview Tips

You’re almost there. Your resume landed you an interview and now it’s time to seal the deal. So what’s the best way to prepare?

To find the answer, I looked back on my interviews, sifted through research, and most importantly, asked employees from today’s most coveted companies. I tried to find deep insights beyond the typical “sit up straight!” and “dress to impress!” tips we hear too much.

Below you’ll find the 12 best tips to help before, during and after your interview.

1.    Research Earnings Calls, Quarterly Reports & Blog Posts

In today’s world, content is king. Goldman Sachs publishes quarterly reports, Microsoft records its earning calls, and every startup has a blog.

With so much out there, I’m baffled that few of us look past the company’s homepage. It’s like we’re writing an essay on The Odyssey without quoting a single passage from the book.

Example: If you’re interviewing with Google, here’s two ways to answer: “What’s Google’s biggest opportunity in the next 5 years?”

• Weak: “I think wearable technology will be big because Google Glass and Apple Watch represent a new trend that shows…”
• Strong: “Call me geeky, but I was listening to Google’s quarterly earnings call and was blown away by the fact that display advertising hit over $5 billion in the past few years. Therefore, I think that…”

Neither answer is wrong, but the latter says much more. It shows you’ve done your homework and give answers rooted in data.

2.   Use Google Alerts

Keeping up with company news is hard, especially if you’re interviewing with multiple places at once. That’s why Google Alerts is a savior; it’s a tool that emails you anytime a new story appears for a specific term. That way, you learn about current events without searching for them.

 Example: If you’re applying to Creative Artists Agency, follow these steps:

1. Go to www.google.com/alerts
2. Type in “Creative Artists Agency”
3. Put in your email address if you’re not already logged in to Gmail

Soon enough, you’ll get updates on CAA and have more ammo for your interview.

3. Use Social Sweepster To Clean Your Facebook & Twitter

Nowadays, 91% of employers search your social media for any red flags. While most people tell you to watch every single thing you upload, there’s a much easier solution. Use Social Sweepster, an app that detects pictures of red solo cups, beer bottles, and other “suspicious” objects. It even detects profanity from your past posts! Now, that’s f%$king awesome!

“Too many recruiters reject candidate because of something they found on their social platforms” Social Sweepster CEO Tom McGrath says. “We help you create the first impression on your own terms.”

4. Schedule For Tuesday at 10:30 AM

According to Glassdoor, the best time to interview is 10:30 AM on Tuesday. Remember, your interviewer has a world of responsibilities beyond hiring. They’re responding to emails, balancing projects, and meeting tons of other candidates so it’s crucial to consider when they’ll be in the best mental state to meet you.

10:30 AM Tuesday is the sweet spot because you:

• Avoid the bookends. On Mondays and Fridays, employees gear up for the week or wind down. By the same token, avoid the first or last slots of any workday.
• Avoid lunchtime. Immediately before noon, your interviewer may be too hungry to concentrate; immediately after, they may be in a food coma.

But there’s a caveat. Research shows it’s best to take the earliest interview slot “in circumstances under which decisions must be made quickly or without much deliberation because preferences are unconsciously and immediately guided to those options presented first.”

Bottom line: if the firm is hiring for a job starting in a few months, try to interview late morning between Tuesday through Thursday. If the firm is hiring immediately, grab the earliest slot.

5. Craft Your “Story Statement”

 Though most interviews start with the same prompt (“tell me about yourself” or “walk me through your resume”), we blow it off with boring answers like:

I studied [major X] because I really care about making a difference in [industry Y] as you can see through my last job at [company Z]…

This answer is like tearing out the first 200 pages of your autobiography. You leave out everything that gives meaning to why you want this job in the first place. What was your moment of epiphany? How did your childhood influence you? Why does this job move you? Most people don’t answer these questions. They start and end with their professional experience, leaving little to inspire the interviewer.

Next time, use what I call a “Story Statement,” which is a Cliff Notes of your autobiography.

Example: Here’s an amazing Story Statement that Teach For America fellow Kareli Lizarraga used for her interviews.

I grew up in California and Arizona after immigrating to the United States when I was four years old. Since neither of my parents went to college, I relied on my high school teachers to help me apply to top universities. With their support, I was able to attend the University of Pennsylvania. Then I spent a summer at a Washington DC law firm, which represented low-income students and helped me realize that my passion lay within creating educational opportunities for all.

I decided to become a teacher because I see myself so deeply reflected in the stories of so many students in your schools – and that’s why I’m so excited about the opportunity to interview with you today. Like my teachers did for me, I want to impact the next generation of students by supporting them and understanding the experiences they’re facing.

A Story Statement shows that you’re a person, not just a professional.  It also makes it easy for your interviewer to predict the next chapter of your story. For Kareli, Teach For America is a logical next step. Of course, if she interviewed for Apple, she may change her Story Statement to include an early experience with her first computer and talk about how her passion for tech grew from there. For a Bain interview, she could mention how she started problem solving at a young age and now wants to do it on a big scale.

Chances are, we’ve all had experiences we can connect to where we’re trying to go. It’s just a matter of selecting the right ones to tell our story. That said, if you struggle to craft your Story Statement for a particular interview, you might be applying for the wrong job.

6. Wear a Subtle Fashion Statement

We already know dressing well makes a difference. But what if we took our attention to detail a step further? That’s exactly what Morgan Stanley analyst Julio German Arias Castillo did for his interviews.

“Wear something that represents your culture or background,” he says. “In my case, I always wear a pin of the Panamanian flag on my suit lapel. Most of my interviewers ask about it so it becomes a chance to discuss my upbringing and love of my homeland.”

Julio created a conversation starter with his clothing. Depending on the company, you can be more playful: wear a bracelet from your recent travels to India, a tie with a quirky pattern, or — if you can pull it off — a small mockingjay pin if you’re a Hunger Games fan. As long as it’s subtle and tasteful, your fashion statement can build rapport through fun conversations about your hometown or mutual love for Katniss Everdeen.

7. Prepare for The “What’s Your Weakness?” Question

 Most people overthink this question and give a canned answer like “I’m too much of a perfectionist!” Others give a genuine answer but still fall short of what this question is really asking. It’s not about admitting your weaknesses. It’s about showing how you overcome them. What systems have you put in place? What progress have you made? Include those thoughts to strengthen your answer.

Example:

• Weak: “My weakness is that I struggle to run efficient meetings…”
• Strong: “I sometimes struggle to run efficient meetings. But I’ve worked to improve by drafting an agenda before every meeting, sending it to all participants, and then following up with a recap and clear action items so everyone knows what to do moving forward.”

8. Brainstorm 3 “PAR” Anecdotes

Your interview is as memorable as the stories you share. Many people have fascinating experiences but forget them when they’re on the spot.  To remedy this, have three anecdotes ready to plug into your interview. Your anecdotes should follow a simple format:

1. Problem – what was the situation?
2. Action – what did you do to solve it?
3. Result – what changed afterwards?

With this format, you can adapt your PAR anecdotes to fit a variety of questions such as “tell me about a time you worked with a team” or “when have you struggled most?”

Example: University of Pennsylvania Senior Hunter Horsley has a terrific PAR anecdote for his interviews.

• Problem: “When I worked on Lore, an education tech startup, our big marketing challenge was finding a way to get professors to try our product. Ads are inefficient and competitors like Blackboard and Canvas had sales teams call IT administrators to sign multi-year contracts — a very slow and expensive process. We needed to move faster.”
• Action: ”We realized that students preferred our product so we teamed up with about 200 students from 100 colleges. They developed a custom outreach plan for their campus and we provided resources to support them.”
• Result: “This was highly effective in creating awareness with professors. In fact, it became a competitive advantage. During our first two semesters, our team of 15 people drove adoption that outpaced a competing product launched by Pearson at the same time. An additional benefit was that the approach created brand affinity. Because professors heard about the tool from students instead of an ad, the value proposition came across more authentically.”

DURING

9.    Think Aloud on Analytical Questions

Some interviews include tough analytical questions. Whether you’re solving for an exact number (“what’s the EBITDA of Company X?”) or rough estimate (“how many ping pong balls can fit in a Boeing 777?”), it’s important to talk through your thinking. Don’t just give an answer; show how you got there.

Example: Consider these two answers to “How many lawn mowers are there today in the United States?”

• Weak: After 45 seconds of silence, you blurt out “75 million!”
• Strong: You’re talking the entire way through, sharing your calculations and assumptions.

“Let’s start from the top down. Assuming the US population is 300 million and each household averages 3 people, then we have 100 million families in the US. Let’s assume urban households don’t have lawns to mow and therefore only suburban and rural families buy lawnmowers. If roughly 25% of America is urban and 75% is suburban and rural then we have 75 million households that own a lawnmower.”

(side note: it’s okay to make assumptions and for those assumptions to be off. But that’s why you need to communicate them first).

This is a great way to show your communication skills alongside your analytical ones. Plus, if you make an error, it’s easier to know where you went wrong and fix it.

10. Ask Questions That Kill Two Birds With One Stone

At the end of your interview, it’ll be your turn to ask a few questions. This is a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone – that is, asking a genuine question while conveying something new about you. Most people just do the first part and forgo a final chance to impress the interviewer.

Example:

• Weak: Will this role provide opportunities to work in emerging markets?
• Strong: I’m passionate about languages and minored in Arabic in college. Will this role provide opportunities to work in emerging markets in the Middle East?

• Weak: Are there opportunities for community service?
• Strong: I used to work with Habitat for Humanity and was so grateful for the opportunity to give back. For a full time employee, are there company-wide community service events that I could take part in?

• Weak: What’s [Company X]’s fastest growing division?
• Strong: According to your quarterly report, your revenues grew by 17%. Is that because of a particular division within the company?

This works beautifully if you haven’t found a natural way to bring up an accomplishment or cite a publication beforehand.

11. Grow A Backbone & Ask This Final Question

This one takes guts — and that’s why I love it. Spredfast Product Manager Luke Fernandez says it’s the “single piece of advice that has consistently made a difference.”

Before your interview ends, ask this one last question: “Have I said anything in this interview or given you any other reason to doubt that I am a good fit for the role?”

“It’s bold, but if delivered honestly, it displays true desire and confidence,” Luke said. “I’ve been commended for that specific question in interviews with Google, 

YouTube, BCG, Deloitte, Twitter, and Spredfast. In one situation, the interviewer actually said yes and gave me the chance to clarify something that would have otherwise lost me an offer.”

Talk about badass!

AFTER

12. Email a Personalized Thank You Note

Thank your interviewer within 24 hours of finishing. It not only shows your gratitude, it also combats recency bias if you interviewed early. Not to mention, it opens the door for dialogue even if you don’t get the job. Sometimes, recruiters reach back out on the same email thread months later, mentioning new job opportunities.

Example: Accenture senior analyst Anthony Scafidi shared a wonderful email from Robert Hsu, an interviewee whose follow up email shows how to do it right.

Hi Anthony,

Appreciate your taking the time to chat with me today. I really enjoyed hearing about your two projects so far, how much you love the people at Accenture, and how you’ve been able to continue your community service work even while working. (Hope you had a good meeting with your mentee!) Best wishes on your current project.

Sincerely,

Robert

Jon Youshaei ,  

 CONTRIBUTOR

My claim to fame is having every vowel in my last name. I’m a Google product marketer and graduate of The Wharton School, where I served as Class President and represented 2,500 students. As a first-generation Persian American, I’m amazed by this country’s opportunities, especially for people our age. Today’s 20-somethings truly have the potential to do big things. In writing for Forbes, my mission is to make sure we don’t settle for anything less. I’ll share insights that will immediately improve your life. I’ll interview passionate, proven leaders who will inspire you. But I can’t do this alone, which is why I’m excited to have you here. Feel free to reach out at anytime @Youshaei or EveryVowel.com.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.