Improv Comedy Classes May Help Job Seekers Impress at Interviews – ABC News.
Taproot Theatre Company (Seattle) offers a six-week improv course “Improve Your Business Skills.” This column (11.05.09) from ABC journalist Michelle Goodman records her personal experience of taking the course and the creative skills it taught her for improvising and developing flexibility that will make a difference in any interview.
Goodman’s own experience draws from Improv in the Business World, an interview with David Jahns (10.01.09) of Groundlings.
He talks particularly to the importance of:
- Gaining and maintaining eye contact with your interviewer or colleagues in a meeting. Eye contact helps build and maintain trust and respect. The value of eye contact is even more important when so much communication takes place online.
- Listening to the speaker. It’s hard to realize how rare this talent is until you’ve encountered an individual who really listens. More often than not, the person confirms what you’ve said, not simply taking your words and running with them.
Why that’s interesting for creatives, is that you learn to be creative (i.e., improvisational, flexible, versatile, adaptable) in all you do in a business setting. Creativity doesn’t begin in the brainstorming session. It’s something you bring to work and take with you on every Starbucks break, or breathe in every yoga class.
For creatives as business executives, it also provides a healthy reminder to hone your communication and presentation skills beyond what gets posted to your online portfolio or burned on a CD. Clients need to see in person the talent and professional integrity that drives creative ideas. This need cranks up with every zero of ad spending that drives your account list.
On a deeper note, the course demonstrates the importance of personal empowerment both for the creative workforce and business professionals in general.
This is no time to not be flexible.
Waiting in the wings Originally uploaded by krobbie
What experience or advice do you have to share? Do you recall an interview when improvising saved the day (or could have?) Look forward to your comments.
Thanks, Susan L. Reid, for posting Five keys to sales when you aren’t a sales person on Openforum.com
As an independent creative consultant, I found it offers a helpful reminder that personal branding, selling yourself, and marketing your own services doesn’t always come naturally to marketing and creative people. Is it a muscle or skill? Is it our Myers-Briggs profiles? Can we train to become better sellers?
Pause… lightbulb…blog.
The key to selling in the 21st century is read more…
How would you like those numbers? A bookmarking self-portrait
Every measure counts to response-based creative geeks like myself. And never more so than when the market is changing so rapidly. Then there are the Millenials who are leading the way in new marketing and social behaviors and boomers giving up their old behaviors. That recession is here one day and gone the next depending on the latest financial indices. So it’s no wonder this tag portrait is filled with read more…
Here are my top five articles shortened with bit.ly this week. Each was worth a tweet, received a significant number of click-throughs from my Tweeples, and met my blog goals for engagement, enhancement, and empowerment.
As you might expect, there’s still much news of marketing awards, research and advice. Even in a recession, awards, spending, and customer relations goes on. To get similar bit.ly’s in real-time, read more…
Aviatrix and role model Amelia Earhart (1898-1937) equalled Eleanor Roosevelt in inspiring 20th C. American women to seize and achieve life for themselves.
Keyword “empowerment.” 
So, as the new celebrity movie biography is released, it’s no surprise that articles exploring the mystery of the aviatrix’s death are on the rise. A recent discover.com post includes precise, sad conclusions about a safe landing to a remote island where Amelia and flight partner apparently died; suffering the worst fears of tropical island tragedies. One can only imagine the heat and, ultimately, starvation.
From an ordinary female point of view, what a travesty to be exposed to the inept Google ad that follows. It’s ludicrous to be exposed to an ad that sells women’s worst fears and prejudices about body image. We think we’ve come so far — when will advertisers catch up and hucksters go their own way.
Poor ad placement reaps what it deserves
To read the full article, visit: Earhart’s Final Resting Place Believed Found : Discovery News
Posted using ShareThis
A classic MBA-style question ran through my head recently while a hair stylist rocked to the buzz of the lavish blow dry he was performing on my seriously gelled locks:
-
Do you play by the rules and lose the customer (Negative ROI)?
- Or, read more…
Who owns your tweets? Twitter or you? A fellow member of LinkedIn’s Creative Intensive Network (group) posted the question today.
The implications are tremendous as you often tweet news of brand products, retweet postings, and share urls of established media organizations, professional bloggers, or business professionals who blog it for the buzz, leads, and potential revenue. This 2008 video talks directly to the need for licensing that keeps up with the pace of shared culture.
Creative Commons, as you may know, put the process in place to license, share and collaborate online with each person getting their due on their own terms.
What’s your experience?
- Do you license your micro-blogs, bookmark sites, and blogs?
- Have you ever put the weight of your license to work when attribution was missing — either by oversight or intention?
