SKILLS

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How to develop employability skills
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Competency-based questions
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The skills game
SPECIFIC SKILLS
Teamworking
Making effective presentations
Action planning
Decision making
Problem-solving
Time management
Commercial awareness
Spoken communication
Written Communication
Persuading & negotiating
Leadership
Language skills
Computing skills
Numeracy
Striving for excellence
Determination
Lateral Thinking Test
2nd Lateral Thinking
Riddles Lateral Thinking
Lateral Maths Test
Creative jobhunting
Maintaining morale
Assertiveness in interviews
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CHOOSING A CAREER
APPLICATIONS AND INTERVIEWS

LATERAL THINKING SKILLS

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how
they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didnt really do

it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
Thats because they were able to connect experiences theyve had and
synthesise new things.
Steve Jobs
Lateral thinking, is the ability to think creatively, or "outside the
box" as it is sometimes referred to in business, to use your inspiration
and imagination to solve problems by looking at them from unexpected
perspectives. Lateral thinking involves discarding the obvious, leaving
behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions.
It's very important in careers such as advertising, marketing, the
media and art and design where you may get questions in the selection
process along the lines of "Write down one hundred ways to use a
brick/paperclip", but it can also be of value in the jobhunting process
itself.

Lateral thinking in the

jobhunting process
A number of graduates have tried the old
and hackneyed methods of trying to gain
the selector's attention, such as enclosing a
tea bag with their application, so that the
selector could take a break to have a cup of
tea before reading it. Others have send
their CV to newspapers in a magazine
format, but below are a couple of truly
original approaches:
A graduate had been trying to get into investment banking, but without
success and had exhausted all the normal routes. As a last resort, he had
100 postcard-sized CVs printed. He then went round the "Square Mile" in
the City, where all the main financial organisations in London are located
and proceeded to place one of these CVs under the windscreen of every
Rolls Royce and top of the range BMW and Mercedes he came across.
Next day, he had several 'phone calls offering him interviews from the
senior executives whom the cars belonged to. Note that we are not
advocating this approach: one graduate jobseeker put up 200 poster sized
CVs around Hull and ended up being fined for bill posting!
A student wanted to become a trainee journalist on her local newspaper.
She decided to carefully analyse the content of the paper and compared it
with similar local papers. She conducted a small survey of readers'
opinions on the paper by interviewing passers-by in the city centre. Using
this information, she drew up a list of possible changes to the paper,

wrote a sample article to show what she

had in mind and sent these to the editor.
The editor invited her in to discuss her
suggestions - they had a long discussion
and the next vacancy that arose was
offered to her without competition.

Creative thinking is not a

talent, it is a skill that can be
learnt.
Edward de Bono
Intelligence is something we
are born with. Thinking is a
skill that must be learned.
Edward de Bono

One New York graduate who wished to

work in a top advertising agency
Googled the names of the creative
If they give you ruled paper,
directors of these agencies and then
write the other way.
spent just six dollars on a set of Google
Juan Ramn Jimnez
ads that were triggered when the
directors searched for their own names.
If people aren't calling you
The adverts said "Hey, (creative
crazy, you aren't thinking big
directors name), Googling yourself is a
enough.
lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too" Of the
Richard Branson
five directors he targeted, four gave him
an interview and two offered him a job
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRwCs99DWg
The chocolate bar CV. A job hunter made his CV as the wrapper for a
chocolate bar. It turned out to be very popular with recruiters!
www.cnbc.com/id/100482311
For more examples of lateral thinking in jobhunting see our Creative
Careers Search page
and our Riddles test

Lateral Thinking Quiz

The following questions will test your ability to think laterally. If
you get more than 50% of these right you're certainly strong on
your lateral thinking skills (or maybe you're just good at quizzes!)
1. A graduate applying for pilot training
with a major airline was asked what he
would do if, after a long-haul flight to
Sydney, he met the captain wearing a
dress in the hotel bar. What would you
do?

Jackie Stewart, three times

World Champion Formula
One racing driver had
undiagnosed dyslexia and
was unable to complete his
2.
A man built a rectangular house,
school education. He said:
each side having a southern view. He
When youve got dyslexia
spotted a bear. What colour was the
and you find something
bear?
youre good at, you put
more into it than anyone
3.
If you were alone in a deserted house
else; you cant think the
at night, and there was an oil lamp, a
way of the clever folk, so
candle and firewood and you only have
youre always thinking out
one match, which would you light first?
of the box."
4. What can you put in a wooden box that
would make it lighter? The more of them
you put in the lighter it becomes, yet
the box stays empty.
5. Which side of a cat contains the most
hair?
6. The 60th and 62nd British Prime
Ministers of the UK had the same
mother and father, but were not
brothers. How do you account for this?
7. How many birthdays does a typical
woman have?

8.

Why can't a man living in Canterbury

be buried west of the River Stour?

9.

Is it legal for a man to marry his

widow's sister?
10. If you
drove a
coach
leaving

"The fear of making a

mistake, of risking an
error, or of being told you
are wrong is constantly
with us. And thats a
shame. Making mistakes is
not the same thing as
being creative, but if you
are not willing to make
mistakes, then it is
impossible to be truly
creative. I f your state of
mind is coming from a
place of fear and risk
avoidance, then you will
always settle for the safe
solutionsthe solutions
already applied many times
before.
Failing is ne, necessary in
fact. But avoiding
experimentation or risk
especially out of fear of
what others may thinkis
something that will gnaw
at your gut more than any
ephemeral failure. A failure
is in the past. Its done and
over. In fact, it doesnt
exist. But worrying about
what might be if or
what might have been if I
had are pieces of
baggage you carry around
daily. Theyre heavy, and
theyll kill your creative
spirit. Take chances and
stretch yourself. Youre
only here on this planet
once, and for a very short
time at that. Why not just
see how gifted you are?"
Daniel Garr - Presentation
Zen

Canterbury with 35 passengers, dropped

off 6 and picked up 2 at Faversham,
picked up 9 more at Sittingbourne,
dropped off 3 at Chatham, and then

drove on to arrive in London 40 minutes

later, what colour are the driver's eyes?
11. A woman lives on the tenth floor of a
block of flats. Every morning she takes
the lift down to the ground floor and
goes to work. In the evening, she gets
into the lift, and, if there is someone
else in the lift she goes back to her floor
directly. Otherwise, she goes to the
eighth floor and walks up two flights of
stairs to her flat. How do you explain
this?
12. A window cleaner is cleaning the
windows on the 25th floor of a
skyscraper, when he slips and falls. He is
not wearing a safety harness and
nothing
slows his
I once visited a major
fall, yet
pharmaceutical company to
he
discuss their graduate
suffered
recruitment for marketing.
no
They told me that one of
injuries.
the key attributes they
Explain.
looked for was Helicopter
13. The
band of
stars
across the
night sky
is called
the "......
Way"?
14. Yogurt
is made
from
fermented
........

Ability: the ability to soar

above a problem and to
see all aspects of it, to
stand back and see the
bigger picture, the wood
rather than the trees.
Creativity involves being
able to think outside the
box to find solutions to
unpredictable problems.
This needs logic and
analysis, but also the
ability to see the bigpicture and this involves a
creative mind.

15. What do cows drink?

16. The Zorganian Republic has some very strange customs. Couples
only wish to have female children as only females can inherit the
family's wealth, so if they have a male child they keep having more

children until they have a girl. If they have a girl, they stop having
children. What is the ratio of girls to boys in Zorgania?
17. How many hands does the clock of the
tower of Big Ben have?
18. John's mother has 3 children, one is
named April, one is named May. What is
the third one named?
19. You are running in a race. You
overtake the second person. What
position are you in?
20. In the same race, if you overtake the
last person, then you are in what
position?
21. Using just ONE straight cut, how can
you cut a rectangular cake into two
equal parts when a rectangular piece
has already been removed from it?
22. A man and his son were in a car
crash. The father was killed and the son
was taken to hospital with serious
injuries. The examining doctor exclaims:
"But, this is my son!".
How can this be?
23. You have to choose between three
rooms.
The first is full of raging fires
The second is full of tigers that havent
eaten in 3 years.
The third is full of assassins with loaded
machine guns.
Which room should you choose?
24. Three of the glasses below are filled
with orange juice and the other three
are empty. By moving just one glass,
can you arrange the glasses so that the

full and empty glasses alternate?

25. Name three consecutive days in

English without using the words
Tuesday,
Thursday, or
Saturday
26. What's
unusual about
this
paragraph?
Just how
quickly you
can find out
what is so funny about it. It looks fairly
ordinary and plain that you might think
nothing is wrong with it. In fact, nothing
is wrong with it! It is highly curious
though. Study it and think about it, but
you still may not find anything odd. But
if you work at it a bit, you could just find
out.
27. Join all the 9 dots on the right using
four straight lines or less, without lifting
your pen and without tracing the same
line more than once. Do copy this onto
paper if you wish to make it easier.

One student, desperate to get into

advertising, had been rejected by
the main London agencies, so he
decided to try a different approach.
He bought some pink envelopes and
a small bottle of expensive perfume.
He placed his CV in the envelopes
and
wrote Most of the above are what
we call "Insight puzzles".
Research
by Schooler and
and
Melcher (University of
California) found that
people
who wrote down
dared
the puzzles and tried to
was
solve them on paper
were on average 30%
that,
less likely to come up
with the right solution
than those who didn't write
it down and just solved
them in their heads.
Writing down the
puzzles invokes the use
of the left side of our
brain
which deals with
1.
verbal and logical
was
are (algorithmic) reasoning,
rather than the right side
a
which deals with visual and
creative (heuristic)
thinking.
far!
2.

"Private" on the outside. He liberally

sprinkled the envelopes with scent
posted them to the senior agency
partner in several of the biggest
agencies. When it arrived, nobody
to open the letters and the graduate
offered several interviews presumably for his daring. Note
we don't recommend this approach!

Answers:
Offer to buy her a drink! The captain
of course a woman. Many airlines
now hot on equal opportunities and
candidate who had difficulty
envisaging that an airline captain
might be female would not go very

These puzzles tend to

White. Only at the North Pole can all
require creative rather than four walls be facing South.
logical reasoning to solve
them, so we need to use
3. Th
right brain thinking.
e
match!
4. Holes
5. The outside

6. Churchill was Prime Minister twice, from

1940 to 45 and from 1951 to 55.
7. One
8. Because he is still alive .
9. No - because he's dead.
10. The colour of your eyes.
11. The woman is of small stature and
couldn't reach the upper lift buttons.
12. He was cleaning the inside of the
windows.
13. Milky Way
14. Milk
15. Water. After the
previous two
questions, did you
answer milk?
16. About 1 to 1. Any
birth will always have a 50% chance of
being male or female.
17. Eight: there are four faces to the clock
of the tower of Big Ben (now officially
called Elizabeth Tower). See the picture
to the right.
18. John
19. If you overtake
the second person
then you become
second.
20. You can't
overtake the last
person in a race! Although one reader
suggested that you can overtake the
last person when you LAP them.

21. Cut it horizontally half way up (i.e.

parallel to the top) . See right.
Alternative answer provided by a reader
of this page: the above answer in not
the only correct answer, in fact, there
are infinitely many correct answers. One
of these correct answers is this: find the
center of the cut portion of the cake
(which is the point of intersection of the
two diagonals) and also the center of
the original cake (which, again, is the
point of intersection of the two
diagonals). Now a straight vertical cut
along the centers will cut the remaining
cake into two equal parts. This solution
is perhaps better than the one above for
the following reason: quite often the
upper part of a cake is not the same as
the lower part, as they contain different
ingredients. For example, the upper part
may have frosting, unlike the lower
part. My solution above 'guarantees'
not only equal volumes, but also equal
ingredients.
22. The doctor was his mother. Going full
circle, this is very similar to the first
question.
23. The second room. Tigers that havent
eaten in three years are dead!
24. Pour the juice from the second glass
into the fifth.
25. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. One
reader pointed out that Christmas Eve,
Christmas Day and Boxing Day is
equally correct.

26. The
letter e
doesn't
appear
once in
the

paragraph.
27. Here is one possible solution. Of
course you have to go beyond the
boundaries of the square of dots to
solve this.
Out of interest this particular puzzle is
where the expression "to think outside
the box" originally came from.

As several readers have pointed out, there may of course be other

answers to some of these questions. What distinguishes the answers
given above is that they are usually the SIMPLEST reasonable explanaton.
As William of Occam is supposed to have said: "In explaining a thing no
more assumptions should be made than are necessary."

Score

Over 23. You are a true lateral