On the Value of Mentors

When I was interviewing for what was my first job interview in local government, I reached out to my mentor. I said, how should I prepare? Let’s just say there was internet, yes, but the dings and the pings of the AOL dial-up were still a thing. He said he would call the City's former City Manager, who was a friend. He did and he reached out with one piece of advice. He said the ex City Manager, gone some 10+ years from working there, used to always use a particular book for interview questions, a very popular HR book at the time and he guessed that they might still use it. I said thanks, went to the library (yes, the physical library) and, wallah, found the book and read the sample interview questions and techniques in the book. Lots of typical interview questions and then some very unique ones, example “if I was to be in your apartment, what would I find on our coffee table?”  

Fast forward to the interview - and this interview team used 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙗𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙢 the questions from the text, including the coffee table question. I aced the interview, and got offered the job. For those wondering, I ended up placing in advance of the interview, the local newspaper and ICMA’s PM magazine on my coffee table, and my answer was something like “Well, 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘴𝘬, I have PM magazine here and I was just reading about…”  

The moral of the story is...have connected mentors? :)