I had the pleasure of sitting down with a recruiting executive for an hour-long interview yesterday. It was a joy to sit with someone who had prepared questions, took notes, and actually read the content on my CV. When once this would have been the interview norm, it is now an unusual pleasure.
We are the short-bursty headline generation, aren’t we? Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, but the phenomenon has led to a 140 character “bitelet” attention span. I’ve found myself longing for embedded tiny URL’s when I’m listening to a news broadcast on the radio or TV. I keep wishing I had CTRL-ALT-DEL on a piece of paper I’ve written on. I find myself strangely lonely when my blackberry service goes down when I’m in the heart of downtown Toronto at lunchtime.
The whole human interaction dynamic is changing. It started first with our writing, moved to our reading, and has trickled down into our interacting. Some of the richness of a metered dialogue seems to have dissipated. We rush through conversations and try to catch the highlights. It first struck me when trying to present a deck to a senior leader within a large telecommunications company I worked for. I worked hours to compact my message into three slides, four bullets per slide, size 16 font. I went into the meeting and didn’t get past the title page. I had introduced the topic and the meeting was over.
The instant-on instant-access wave has left a few casualties in its wake, but every once in a while there is a conversation, a speech, or a book that brings us back to the way we once interacted. Yesterday I had the pleasure of a good old-fashioned interview. It was a rare treat! The questions provoked reflection and the interviewer listened attentively to my responses. Like an artisan with her craft she carefully considered the answers, and based on our interaction directed the conversation into different areas and topics. It was likely the most challenging interview I have had yet because I know that I was really heard.
