Tough Interview Questions: How Did You Learn to Think? | JobSearchTV.com
This is a question that start-ups and small organizations might ask to see if they are interviewing a creative thinker or just another employee. There is no one right answer.
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This is 1 of those tough interview questions I enjoy helping people with. This 1 is a little unusual. Frankly, it’s with a question I’ve only heard asked one time and I thought was a great question for today. The question is, “How did you really learn to think for yourself?”
Lord knows, if you grew up in the United States or India or many other countries where there is a lot of rote learning that goes on, frankly, you didn’t learn to
think in the school system. You learn to shut up, do what you’re told regurgitate a bunch of stuff, do what you were told, deliver product… It’s like you would trade for the workforce except you are in school. Those were the basic lessons of school. Then you get to university it’s much the same thing. There is an implicit threat in the school system that you won’t get into a good college. If you’re at a good college, the threat is that you will get a good job. When you get the good job, the threat is that you will get fired in one day were fired anyway.
The systems are basically set up where there is a fear motivation. You’ve got to deliver products. That’s not thinking. How did you learn to think? What’s the story where you broke out of the box or the cage and start to think on your own? I’m not saying you didn’t take the frameworks you were given previously. But, think about it for a second. I know most of you haven’t really been put into this position before.
Maybe was a mentor while you were at university. Maybe was apparent who, basically, instead of giving you an allowance, you work for it. Whatever it is, you’ve got to tell that story and contrasted it with how you now understand the school systems were trying to prepare you for the world of work.
A company that is going to ask this type of question is more of a start-up environment. It is not going to be a big monstrous bureaucracy because they like conformity, right? I don’t care if you are talking about the most successful investment firm known to mankind or a consumer products firm.. They tend to like this system’s approach that you have been conditioned for.
But, think about it. For a startup with a smaller organization, being asked how did you learn to say or how did you learn to think for yourself is really the pivotal question that many of them need to ask and you need to be prepared to answer.
I’m not an offer you a solution to this 1 because really needs to be a unique story for you. In answering the question,. You need to contrast Yorks’s current circumstances with the conditioning that you’ve received.
Using myself as an example, I would talk about, “I grew up in New York at the public school system. I was conditioned to be a nice conforming individual and they understood that. Along the way, I became involved with local politics. I start to think independently at that point. I saw to see the world for how it was not how I was being told it was.”
I will continue by telling the story of how in the course of doing that work, in the course of being involved. I start to look at things in a different sort of way. I start to go crazy as I start to work in the search business and have basically where is being used for was finding nice conforming people for nice conforming jobs. You get where I’m coming from here.
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When? When the usual suspects declined to assist and I saw an opening and went for it
Any time. When you were 12 or 20 or 40. When did you learn to think for yourself?