Look before you leap

Proverbs 13:16 (NLT)

16 Wise people think before they act; fools don’t—and even brag about their foolishness.

 

A reminder, one should think through their actions before jumping in head first. However there are those who don’t and even brag about their thoughtless actions.

 

 

 

There was a time I performed interviews for job candidates. Our HR department had trained some of us in a specialized way of handling interviews using questions selected towards the job category. One of the questions was “What one thing have you done that you wish you could do over and do it better?”  The idea behind the question was to see if the job candidate would give a technical example of something where they fell short of expectations and later saw how they could improve upon their work skill. Most of the job candidates understood this and would give an example of an error and how they later corrected it.

 

One person we interviewed had a completely different kind of response to the question. I’m going to be a little gentler with what the person actually said, but it went something like this: “I once was told I was getting a job transfer so I decided to cuss out my current boss. I think I went a little over board in some of the language I used. Then I found out I didn’t get the transfer. Next time I would wait for the transfer to happen before actually telling anyone where they could go.”

 

I could tell the other person conducting the interview with me was as taken back by the answer as I was. Here was a person talking not about their technical skill, but instead about their interpersonal skills with others. It became clear we didn’t want a person who thought the answer to cussing out their boss was to wait until a more opportunistic time. We wondered how they would respond to others authority. The two of us interviewing also thought that was probably not an answer we would have given in an interview.

 

 

Wise people think before they act or as is often said “think before you leap”, because there might be something you don’t want to leap into.