Job interviews

Our dear president, Sandra Almeida, started the session of 9th November remembering the taking over of last week session from Sean (“Underwood”) and with a few memes about the topic of the week, the presidential elections of the United States.

Bea García, as the Toastmaster of the day, introduced the session talking about a subject that every one of us has been before, a job interview. She told us that you never know when an opportunity can arise and recommended us to be prepared. A good advice that Bea shared with us was that in these situations a winning strategy is having the mental state that you are choosing them, not the opposite. And as a weird question, she confessed us a funny situation when she was asked years before in a job interview “please, can you define yourself as an object?” (I can’t imagine what she could answer to that!).

Bea proposed us a great way to stay in shape for these situations. She shared with the audience a few job interview questions that some club members had been asked.

Our technical team of the session was composed by Avi Mashiah as Ah counter, Zuzana Smakalova as Grammarian and Morgane Bideau as Time keeper. Avi`s job interview question was “How do you see yourself in five years from now?”. Zuzana’s was “Can I smoke a cigarrete?” (In that case she was the interviewer and the question came by a candidate). And Mogane’s one was “tell me a story”.

Just after was time for the prepared speeches. The first speech of the night was in charge of Joel Fornes and it was his Ice breaker (Competent communicator #1) “Long story short”.

(Just before starting the session Joel gave to the audience little flag of a country)

Joel started his speech asking to the audience: “How would you communicate in these countries?” He mentioned that maybe communicate in English in these countries may not be the best idea as they weren’t countries where English wasn’t the first language.

Joel shared with us some situations in his life where he was in need to communicate in a foreign language and he wasn’t able to. Like that time when he worked as a waiter in the Costa Brava and he had to attend a table of an important German family. He tried to speak in English, but they could only speak in German. After situations like that, he decided to learn the languages he wasn’t able to talk, and he started to become a polyglot. A time after he decided to convert his hobby (learn foreign languages) to his job, and he became a translator.

He described himself as an indefatigable and nonconformist learner, so he had changed of job several times, despite the fact that they were very good positions.

Joel ended his speech with a nice take home message that described his attitude towards life, “whatever you do, do it with passion”.

 Sean Palit brought us the second prepared speech of the session. (Competent communicator #8) “The answer is right after your nose”.

“Do you know what do we do 23.000 times a day?” Sean asked to the audience. And he had the answer, breathe. With that introduction, Sean gave us a few knowledge about an action we do all our life. Like Sean said, “life begins and ends with breath”.

Many people don't know how to breathe in the right way and moreover, many of us think that we do correctly but breathe has its technique.

The fundamental factor that affects breathing is stress. To breathe fast and short is a signal of stress and actually a really bad habit. In these situations, we tend to breathe only with the chest which is a poor form of breathing and bad forms of breathing affect our bodies. How can we mitigate this? Sean brought us an exercise of good breathing technique. First of all, we have to breathe with the stomach, avoiding moving the chest. Secondly, we have to breathe in a 4-4-6-2 tempo, which means, inhale for 4 seconds, hold the breath for 4 more seconds, exhale for 6 seconds, and finally, hold the breath 2 seconds before inhaling again. Sean invited all the audience to practice this technique and everyone could notice a huge difference when they did it correctly.

Sean ended his speech advising that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of breathing because it affects us in several ways, and the most important, our inner state.

To conclude, Sean shared with us a wise quote: “to control your life, control your mind. To control your mind, control your breathe”.

After the prepared speeches, it was time for the evaluations.

Maria Luisa Gomes evaluated Joel, and Laia Arcones evaluated Sean.

Maria Luisa started her evaluation confirming that Joel had achieved all the objectives of the speech. The points that remarked about Joel’s speech were that Joel appeared easy and comfortable in front of the audience, he played with his tone of voice and he finished with a nice take home message.

The points for improvement. She recommended avoiding look to the floor. In the same way, Mª Luisa encouraged Joel to move more through the stage and avoid hand touching.

Right after Laia evaluated Sean. Laia started highlighting Sean’s good structure, the interaction with the audience by doing a practical exercise and the really good informative speech he delivered.

In reference to the points in which Sean could improve, Laia encouraged Sean to use more visual aids. She felt that he could use more visual aids in his speech, like a candle to show to the audience the types of breathing and objects to enhance the message. To conclude the evaluation, Laia changed a little bit the quote that Sean used and she said; “You control your mind, you control your breathe, and you control your public speaking!!” (Nice ending for an evaluation!)

Bea continued the session giving the floor to Isabel Montero, who was the table topics master of the night.

Isabel prepared table topics related to job interviews. The brave volunteers that joined Isabel to the stage were Rayane Bachammar, Marc Majoral and Raffaella Bertolli.

Rayanne was asked to explain in final process job interview and using her body language why she was the right candidate for the position.

Marc was asked to adopt the role of Luis Bárcenas (exgeneral treasurer of PP party) and convince us that he was the best candidate applying for general treasurer for the PSOE party.

And finally Raffaella had to adopt the role of recruiter and had to convince a candidate for the position of golf ball collector, and do it for free (what a challenge!)

All of them succeed and we had lots of fun as always with table topics.

Bea concluded her role and presented Jelena Vetockina, who was the general evaluator of the session.

Jelena highlighted the organization of the room and that everything was ready on time. She congratulated Beatriz for her great job as toastmaster and her good preparation for the role.

The technical team gave us their reports and after Jelena affirmed that both evaluators did a good job giving good feedback to the speakers. In reference to the table topics master, Jelena remarked Isabel’s good energy but encouraged to her and the technical team to have more table topics because there was enough time for more.

To conclude the session, our beloved president gave the ribbon to Joel for his first speech and informed us that Enrique Alvarez and Paul Conde were our club members that represented us in the district contest in Madrid, and encouraged everyone to join them to support their performance.

See you next Wednesday Toasties!

Blogger: Carlos Calvo