EXPRESSION

The neighbor girl asked my favorite color…which made me realize something important about myself that I would like to share with you.

If you could take just a moment and glance at the image above, you may be reminded of a friend, a coworker, a family member, or, frankly, yourself. Do you or someone you know have a hard time expressing themselves? Is the elephant in the room you? Be honest.

Over the years, I have spoken with and have even befriended human resource professionals. And one thing they can all agree with, is that sales people are the most difficult interviews. According to my super-smart HR friends, the sales people interviews are one, long, and two, long. Apparently, when asking a direct and decisive question, the interviewee starts with a thought, but in order to finish the thought, they need to take the interviewer around a long stream, gleaming in a wooded area with the sun’s rays barely breaking through the dense foliage, in which rocks are gently tossed and skidded across the calm waters before the question is officially answered.

It turns out that the HR professionals actually don’t enjoy this type of interview. Hmmm. This leaves me with many concerns. And by concerns, I mean, we’ll go over some of them today.

Who doesn’t love a good story?

Fiction book publishing is a billion-dollar industry. The most important thing to keep in mind here is it’s called the Best Sellers List NOT the Best Writer’s List. And call me crazy, but Stephen King alone probably contributes to millions of that number. (Please don’t quote me on this; I’m only making a point.) Let’s imagine for a moment that Mr. King is interviewing for a basic position in, let’s say the automotive industry and the HR professional asks, “Why do you feel you will be a good fit here?” Simple enough, right?

Mr. King, though I’ve never met the man, may take the interviewer on a spectacular journey, through pet cemeteries, monster clowns, and crazy fans with sledge hammers in order to explain that he is an ethical employee who has had successful sales numbers over the past ten years. Don’t you now see how important that twenty-minute answer was? Without mentioning the dead cats, troubled youth, and an imprisoned author, how would the HR professional understand why he’s a valuable employee?

It just makes sense.

But Rebecca, you might ask, what does this have to do with your favorite color? And this is a valid question. Let me answer that for you.

I was recently asked what I do for a living. Here was my response…

“I worked at a yacht club the summer before I started college with a good friend of mine. Every day, she would pick me up in her beat up, yet reliable, Mustang, and we would cross the bridge to start our daily routine of grounds maintenance. We worked with a guy I now call, Acid Tony. He claimed he never did a drug he didn’t research first, and on the occasional day of one of his acid trips, he would weed whack for eight hours. By the time he was done, there was no grass around the base of the trees and we would often watch him weed whack tree limbs, claiming later, that big bugs were attacking him.”

And this, my fine friends, should help you understand why my favorite color is orange.