Personal Flashcards
How would you describe yourself?
*I would say I’m happy to do what is needed and excited about making improvements. Stretch assignments really fascinate me in that they allow me to keep building upon my current skill set. I have an insatiable thirst for learning. I have already completed my Green Belt in Lean Six Sigma and the Black Belt coursework. Now that my MBA is complete, I plan on finishing my PMP certification and then learning languages that will be beneficial to my career.
Can you name some weaknesses?
*I only know one language - While I am able to find short term resolutions as necessary, I am looking into getting more in depth. I regret not doing it earlier in my career as I believe it would have opened more doors.
Being responsible for items out of my control - Learning that it is more productive to focus on what I can personally affect every day by increasing, decreasing, or mitigating the moving pieces around me.
Crisis Management - I never saw some of the events coming when I started working for Walgreens. I have had guns pointed at my employees, customers, and myself. This is something that I was not taught in school. Staying calm and being able to deal with the emotional aftermath.
Define success. Define failure.
*Success is being better than you were the day before. Learning, overcoming obstacles, and teaching others are frequent benchmarks that I use personally.
Failure is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.
Of which 3 accomplishments are you most proud?
*Opening a new store for Walgreens and being open for business in only 21 days. Starting with a shell of a building in the beginning and reaching a day where there is a fully functioning store making sales, doing news interviews, and walking the mayor through operations is fulfilling.
Being in the Top 10% of the company in both Customer Service and Employee Engagement scores. I value these based on increasing future performance and believe they work together hand in hand.
Saving the company a verified amount of $3.3 million per year. More importantly, by getting to speak with people at our corporate office about the understanding that there is a functional multiplier with every task that can be eliminated. It matters to me that I provide significant value above my cost to the company.
Tell me about yourself.
*I am currently the General Manager of a Walgreens. I worked in the busiest store in the district before agreeing to the challenge of opening a new store. Currently, I am working on my PMP certification while I look for new challenges to practice and expand my skillset. I have already completed my Green Belt in Lean Six Sigma and the Black Belt coursework. I am a member of Mensa and enjoy a continuous learning process in my life.
(Focus on what most interests the interviewer)(Highlight your most recent accomplishments)
What do you consider to be your 3 greatest strengths?
*Creativity and Innovation - Sometimes this might involve creating a project that hasn’t been done before (vitamins) and other times it might be finding better ways to find a solution (KPI documents to provide better clarity into training opportunity).
Outperforming Expectations in Challenging Environments - I find it important to be able to help the company in good times and bad. That might be store issues such as fixing up complicated or poor performing stores, or larger issues such as district inventories being half a million below expectation.
Talent Management - While in the Mansfield area opening a new store, I realized that we had no pipelines for talent as we were new to the area. I built a network there which eventually led to the Area Director to ask me to lead the recruiting team for the entire area.
What motivates you most in a job?
*The chance to improve from one day to the next. I don’t think I would be a good fit for a career that didn’t challenge me. There is too much to learn in the short time we have to become complacent. I have always been happy to accept new challenges.
S: A few years back we had a change in District Managers and I didn’t want to take a step back from working directly with the district manager as I had for years.
T: My goal was to make sure that he knew I was not only willing, but appreciative of challenges.
A: When he came in for his second visit we were discussing my past with the company and I explained some of the projects that were not a part of my job duties that I had completed in the past. I asked him if he could use some help lightening his work load.
R: A month later I began my first project with him and have always had a new project to complete. He even mentioned once that during his review he was complemented on some of my work.
Why should we hire you, rather than another candidate?
*I have no doubt that a lot of my colleages are very competitive, but what I can tell you is that I have a compatible and holistic 360 view of business. I can’t speak to what others bring to the table, but I would like to highlight my diversity of knowledge and skills that would benefit the company. I have not only been a successful leader for the past 19 years, but I have done so with engaged employees, increasing profitability, and community involvement. Unlike most candidates, I will be just as integral to the company when the economy struggles. My Lean Six Sigma knowledge and Green Belt will allow me to help in company projects to save capital if ever needed. Any day I could be wearing the hat for accounting, human resources, loss prevention, sales, merchandising, training, or an area representative. This has given me well rounded knowledge to draw from and continue to perform above expectations.
Describe your leadership skills. Give an example of a time in which you held a leadership position.
*It depends on the team and me learning what each person needs. The most important factor in my leadership is integrity. I prefer whenever possible to engage in the four conversations. This allows me to make sure we both have ample opportunity to communicate. By the four conversations I mean an Initiative Conversation when proposing something new or different. An Understanding Conversation when I want to help people relate to new ideas or processes. A Performance Conversation when I need someone to take a specific action or produce a specific result and to be clear on exactly what to do and when to do it. Lastly, when the time comes, a Closure Conversation to summarize their work, officially complete the task, and thank them.
By using these conversations to communicate and spreading a positive attitude, I have been able to be ranked in the top 10% of Walgreens in Employee Engagement the last 5 years.
Where do you plan to be in 5 years? 10 years?
*(Use points from the company) At this point in life I have changed from where I want to be career wise to who I want to be as a person. In five years I want to see a clear difference in personal and professional growth. This will be a catalyst to be comfortable in the choices I make, so that in ten years I will be in a career that uses my professional knowledge gains without compromising my personal ethics.
Do you plan to return to school for further education?
*Now that my MBA is complete, I plan on finishing my PMP certification and then learning languages that will be beneficial to my career.
- What are your hobbies? What do you do in your spare time?
Coaching football and baseball for the past 5 yrs, something we got into recently. Try to find commonality.
HOA eventsIn my spare time I like to teach my son as much as I can about the world he will grow up in. Whether it be simple ethics and life lessons or virtually anything he won’t learn in his classrooms. I am also an avid reader who enjoys getting different perspectives on what is going on in the world around me.
Why are you leaving your current position?
It’s really just mission accomplished at this point. I’ve got to the point where I have opened new stores and fixed up so many stores that I don’t want to be pigeon-holed into cleaning up stores forever. I lead the largest district and area projects and have built them a basis to move forward. The only way for me to continue to grow would be to move and while I’ve been offered positions across the country, I simply can’t do that right now because of my son.
Notes:
Russ Jipson HR Phone Conversation:
Operations - front line
Support staff - supports but doesnt interact (HR, IT)
Pod 25-30 people each (calls from clients/ clinical staff/leaders/issue resolution specailist)
Each has specific lives and clients
Director has 6 pods (they currently have 17 pods)
adding 8 pods reason it’s open
rules and responsibilties in job description movivational leaders!!
kpi’s that need fixed - root cause analysis!! more about member being taken care of than kpi«<
Cross-functional execution working together to understand the pod and its needs
Client engagment - tough calls to level set if needy, coaching pod mgrs to deal with those
On site visit for me to walk them around and explain to them.
Sales cycle runs through October so busy time of year. New lives in January means new hires.
People get 6 wks training 3 class/3 phone must pass test
Intense
intense interview process for them
