A few days back, I interviewed some candidates who had applied for summer internships with our organization. The candidates came from one of India's very highly-rated b-schools located in Mumbai.
Before they came for the interviews, I went through their CVs. And there wasn't much in those CVs to really arouse my interest or curiosity. Coming from a b-school like theirs, I expected something really interesting. I wasn't ready to believe their CVs were a good representation of what they were.
So I conducted an experiment. When they came for the interviews, I got them all into a room, gave them some info on our organization and said:
I want your responses to just two questions. One, tell me the story of your life. Two, tell me a story from which you learnt a lot and from which I might also learn something. For the first question, you have 2 minutes. For the second, you have 3. And you have 15 mins to prepare. Post which you can come (in any order that you feel like) and share your stories.
I was expecting something interesting, some stories. But here's what I got.
I introduced one more question for the interviews but didn't tell them in advance. To each one of them I asked, "What were the two questions I asked you to respond to?" Out of 9 candidates 6 couldn't answer that correctly! This is what they said:
Tell me something about yourself… Tell me an incident from which I learnt something…
Imagine! I completed all the 9 interviews in 60 minutes.
I took the three who could more or less repeat the questions correctly. And indeed, the ones who could repeat the questions correctly, also had the most interesting responses/stories to share and also sounded more emphatic.
When one is learning, listening is the most important skill. When undertaking something, you are more likely to get it done when you are listening carefully.
Listening carefully might very often lead to questions. No one, whom I interviewed, questioned why the first question was allotted just 2 mins while the second one was given 3. Story of one's own life would apparently take a lot more time than just a story from which you learnt a thing or two.
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