Author Profile - Paul W. Smith, a Founder and Director of Engineering with INVENTtPM LLc, has more than 35 years of experience in research and advanced product development.
Prior to founding INVENTtPM, Dr. Smith spent 10 years with Seagate Technology in Longmont, Colorado. At Seagate, Dr. Smith was primarily responsible for evaluating new data storage technologies under development throughout the company, and utilizing six-sigma processes to stage them for implementation in early engineering models. While at Seagate, he was a proud member of the team that brought the world’s first notebook disk drive with perpendicular recording technology to the market.
Dr. Smith holds a doctorate in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology, a Master of Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Last night I watched a Peyton Manning interview, right after he had rescued yet another football game from the fire. Peyton appears to love the "test" of the NFL two-minute drill, where over the years he has repeatedly faced difficult odds and delivered victoriously. He is also talented, good looking, humble and articulate, much like the others on his home planet, wherever that might be. For the rest of us earthlings, tests mostly represent an opportunity to expose our weaknesses and reaffirm our secret belief that we are, in fact, a demonstrable failure.
There is, however, a curious magnetism about tests that defies explanation. The internet is permeated with tests which grab your attention and steal your time. There are tests that measure your IQ, tell you if you can retire, or assess the health of your marriage. A few thoughtful clicks can rate your level of depression, or even tell you how much your dog loves you. In many ways, we are obsessed with how we stack up against the average in every imaginable category.
As a college professor, I try to reassure my students that tests are merely another tool to help them plan, assess and correct their efforts on the path to knowledge. Their incorrect answers should not represent the battleground for arguments about grading methods, but rather should form the battle plan for further study. I point out to them that Michael Jordan famously credited his success as a basketball player to all of the various failures he suffered through during his career. Clearly, he saw the long-term instructional value in failure. This viewpoint is not widely shared in my classroom.
In a larger sense, all of the tests we face in life are like this. Our little successes build ego, while our failures are all too often filed away for use in our next self-pity party. Lately, there has been a lot written about job interviews, another dreaded form of test. A weathered veteran of the job market once offered the following advice to a young, inexperienced interviewee; “Just take a deep breath, stay calm, and remember one thing – your entire future depends on how you do in the next 30 minutes.”
My own informal polls indicate that most students favor numerous smaller exams over a single, all-or-nothing final. This approach is forgiving of a “bad brain” day, and most agree that the reduced pressure enhances overall performance. Real life is like this, some of the time. True, we face many daily tests, our responses to which form the sum-total of our overall performance. From time to time, however, the real life version of the “two-minute drill” surfaces, and we find ourselves in the midst of an all-or-nothing, loser-goes-home test. For job seekers who have spent months networking, searching online and attending endless job fairs, this test takes the form of the coveted, dreaded job interview.
Career coaches will advise you to whiten your teeth, darken your hair, press your suit, rehearse answers to the 100 most common interview questions in front of a video camera and, oh yes, don’t forget to be yourself. Experienced interviewers, well aware that the test answers have already leaked, will either revert to even sillier substitutes (“Describe your worst experience on the job.”) or, with a heavy sigh, ask an intelligent, relevant question (“What specifically can you do to help this company be more successful?”) While there may be partial credit for a reasonable, articulate response, the final course grade is ultimately pass/fail.
Ironically, the game in which Peyton Manning is tested is real; the little exam questions (run, throw, right, left?) add up to a quantifiable number, displayed in bright lights for all to see, and a “W” or an “L” in the record books for all eternity. His test ends with the bottom line in job performance. The job interview, on the other hand, is only a poor surrogate for the real test of on-the-job performance. In the end, we alone can choose whether to file the outcome under "evidence of failure" or "blue print for further improvement." Like all tests, we ultimately choose the result ourselves.
By the way, my dog really likes me a lot. If I start buying more dog treats (presumably from the company that sponsored the test), he might actually love me. The choice is mine.
-Paul
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