“Where do you see yourself in five years?”It’s a stupid interview question. There is no remotely honest way to answer this question in an interview that will please a hiring manager. I always went with something like: “Working in a challenging role in a fantastic company like yours!” Which is a total BS response, but always seemed to satisfy interviewers (Do you have a better answer or a really unwise answer that you regret? Please share.)
But have you ever REALLY thought about where you see yourself in five years? Most of us haven’t — especially in the corporate world. We move from opportunity to opportunity without much thought about the future beyond wanting to keep advancing and making more money (and avoiding the layoff fairy). That’s probably because it’s almost impossible to predict what’s going to happen during five years of reorganizations, mergers, and other fun corporate games.
However, if you’re feeling stuck in a career rut (and even if you’re not), it can be extremely valuable to take the time to visualize who you want to be in five years. Putting aside where you are now and what you think is realistic (at least for the moment), what would you truly like to be doing in five years? Will you be running your own successful business? Will you be selling your own successful business for billions of dollars? Will you be teaching yoga on a beach in Maui?
I don’t pretend to understand all of the mysterious forces of the universe, but I do know that visualization is not just for Oprah and Tony Robbins. Once you can picture what you want, it becomes a lot more likely that you’re going to get it.
Some would say that visualization allows you to attract opportunities (and new cars and other valuable prizes). Others believe that visualization just gives you the clarity to recognize opportunities that are already there (or are right around the corner). All I know is that many of the corporate escape artists that I interviewed spoke about how the right jobs, mentors, or solutions seemed to suddenly appear to them once they could picture what success would look like.
If you don’t decide where you want to go, you run the risk of having that decision made for you. For years, I allowed my career to just kind of happen to me. Yes, I worked hard and had a vague sense of wanting to move forward, be happier. But because I didn’t believe that what I really wanted was possible, I allowed myself to settle for the best of what was in front of me.
For years, I had a vague notion of wanting to “work for myself someday.” But it wasn’t until I figured out a specific vision for the future that something clicked. It was only a few months later that I packed up my desk and left cubicleland to pursue my dream. And I can’t tell you how many similar stories I have heard from successful career changers.
So the moral of my story is: stupid job interview questions can help you change your life. So think about it. Where do you see yourself in five years? Or three years? Or one if you’re feeling really antsy? Can you picture yourself walking into work with a big, stupid grin on your face?
If you’re having trouble imagining the specifics of your deliriously happy future, check out Chapter 3 of Escape from Corporate America for lots of exercises and techniques for finding your true calling.
There’s also a fun and free tool called GigZig that allows you to enter your current job title and generate a list of job titles currently held by people who were doing your job five years ago (along with the average salary for each). It’s fun to play with, even if most of the titles that come up are for corporate jobs.
Is your resume generating disappointing results? Have you been sending your resume for positions that you know you are qualified for, but the phone remains silent? If so, you might want to check it and revise it against these ten common errors.
1. Including an objective statement that tells the reader what you want.
If there is one major rule to keep in mind as you write your resume, it is that all of the content should be written to be employer-centered. Objective statements that tell the reader what you want are inherently self-centered. The more modern way of providing focus for your resume is to include a summary or profile section. A profile is fundamentally different from an objective in that it is employer-centered, conveying to the reader what you offer them, rather than what you want from them.
2. Writing your resume to be intentionally broad in scope.
Many people will write a broad resume out of fear that focusing too precisely will exclude them from certain opportunities. Unfortunately, this strategy almost always backfires. Resume readers are notoriously lazy and give your resume only a few seconds at most before making the decision to screen it out or screen it in. If you are lucky you have 15 seconds to clearly convey your focus (level and type of position you are seeking) and how you would add value within their organization. If your focus is ambiguous and you haven’t made it crystal clear how you will “fit” in the company, you certainly expect the reader to make the effort to figure it out.
3. Including a generic profile/summary statement.
While it has become common and even expected that your resume will include a profile/summary statement, far too often they are just generic statements that do nothing to differentiate the individual from their competition in the job market. What is it that differentiates you and make your contributions to the companies you have worked for better and unique than your peers? What is the value proposition that you are making to the reader of your resume? What sets you apart from the competition and what uniquely qualifies you to meet the needs and solves the problems of the employer? Additionally, it isn’t enough to tell a reader that you have certain abilities or traits; you must show them through examples of past achievements. Prove impact! Forget about cliches and jargon. Soft skills are often important, but even those should be backed up by specific accomplishments that illustrate them.
4. Describing your job scope and responsibilities in detail.
Think about it: Being “responsible for” doing something certainly doesn’t mean a person does it. What a person is supposed to do and what they actually do are two different things. Many people make the mistake of selling features (responsibilities) rather than benefits (achievements/results) in their resume. It is very important to place the emphasis on achievements, quantifying results whenever possible. Document the ways in which your work have benefited your employers and quantify whenever possible. By including past achievements and results, you demonstrate your future potential. Always remember, you won’t get hired for what you know how to do, you will get hired for what you do with what you know how to do.
5. Focusing solely on the achievement and forgetting about the results.
Just telling the reader that you have achievements isn’t very effective unless you present them in terms of the results and benefits they have produced for past employers. You should always try to think in terms of the “so what” of your achievement. What did you improve, save, increase, enhance, etc? What impact did the work you do have on the companies? At the root, every single job is designed to solve a problem, save money, make money, or improve efficiency. It is crucial that you understand and be able to communicate the impact of your performance. Whenever you can do so, you should use numbers to illustrate your results, but even if you are unable to quantify achievements, the emphasis should still be on the results/benefits of your work.
6. Writing an autobiographical style resume.
Your resume is a marketing document. It is not an autobiography. While the decision about how far back to date your resume really depends on the individual circumstances, generally it is standard to go back 10-20 years. If experience earlier than that is still relevant, you can always summarize it in a couple of sentences without the use of dates. Always think in terms of relevance and impact. Does a particular piece of data or achievement support your personal brand and value proposition? Does it help promote your qualifications in relation to your current career goals? If not, you probably should not include it. In fact, by including irrelevant data, you dilute your focus and make the recipient wonder if you truly understand the position you are targeting. If you feel really strongly that particular data may be relevant to at least SOME recipients, you can always create an addendum that you choose to use selectively.
7. Including personal information.
If your resume is meant for the U.S. market, it should not include a photo, your birth date, mention of unrelated hobbies or interests, info about your family, info that reveals your religion, or any other similarly personal data. Including such data in a resume meant for the U.S. market may actually eliminate you from consideration, as hiring decision-makers may be concerned about discrimination suits.
8. Using a template design for your resume.
You should never use a template to create a resume. Your resume should be uniquely designed to highlight your unique qualifications and selling point and to set you apart from other candidates. If you use a template (or a format that looks like a template), you ensure that your resume will simply blend in with all the rest. To really compel action, your resume MUST attract immediate attention and present an unquestionably professional appearance. Create an eye-catching design, but forego the templates!
9. Using the same structure and resume writing techniques that you were taught in college ten years ago.
A common error made by experienced professionals is overemphasis of education. As an experienced professional your history of accomplishments and proven ability to produce and deliver results is far more important than your degrees. Only new graduates with very little or no experience should list education at the beginning of the resume. The most important thing is that you prioritize and organize your selling points, listing categories of primary importance first. The best structure in almost all circumstances is a combination reverse chronological order. This includes a profile/summary section, a reverse chronology of your work history and achievements, education, and other qualifications such as professional affiliations.
10. Listing all your achievements in a section separate from your career history.
It is critical to show progression and a consistent, repeated ability to produce results. By listing your achievements separately from your career history, you lose this. Go ahead and use specific achievements to illustrate the value proposition and personal branding that you convey in your profile. In fact, it is crucial that you do so. But, for the most part, the majority of your achievements are best presented within the chronological and situational context in which they happened. In other words, go ahead and include a SUMMARY of achievements that are selected to illustrate your value proposition and brand, but the body of your resume should also include achievements and results that illustrate your impact in each company or each position.
Do you still feel at a loss about how to improve your resume, even after reading these tips? If so, consider hiring a professional resume writer. Hiring a resume writer is an investment, but it is an investment that will often pay you back many times over by dramatically shortening your job search, positioning you to win coveted positions, and preparing you with the pitch you need to negotiate top compensation.
Start with the present and tell why you are well qualified for the position. Remember that the key to all successful interviewing is to match your qualifications to what the interviewer is looking for. In other words you must sell what the buyer is buying. This is the single most important strategy in job hunting.
So, before you answer this or any question it’s imperative that you try to uncover your interviewer’s greatest need, want, problem or goal.
To do so, make you take these two steps:
Do all the homework you can before the hr interview to uncover this person’s wants and needs (not the generalized needs of the industry or company) As early as you can in the interview, ask for a more complete description of what the position entails. You might say: “I have a number of accomplishments I’d like to tell you about, but I want to make the best use of our time together and talk directly to your needs.
To help me do, that, could you tell me more about the most important priorities of this position? All I know is what I (heard from the recruiter, read in the classified ad, etc
Then, ALWAYS follow-up with a second and possibly, third question, to draw out his needs even more. Surprisingly, it’s usually this second or third question that unearths what the interviewer is most looking for.
You might ask simply, “And in addition to that?…” or, “Is there anything else you see as essential to success in this position?:
This process will not feel easy or natural at first, because it is easier simply to answer questions, but only if you uncover the employer’s wants and needs will your answers make the most sense.
Practice asking these key questions before giving your answers, the process will feel more natural and you will be light years ahead of the other job candidates you’re competing with.
After uncovering what the employer is looking for, describe why the needs of this job bear striking parallels to tasks you’ve succeeded at before. Be sure to illustrate with specific examples of your responsibilities and especially your achievements, all of which are geared to present yourself as a perfect match for the needs he has just described.
So have you ever wondered about what is success? What success really means actually? Well, from dictionary, the definition for success is the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted. This means that, the meaning of success is so wide, anything that you desired for, thought about and planned, and if you achieved them, you are considered a success.
Well, even if you plan to kill someone, and you successfully killed him or her, you are considered a success as well. The definition of success is wide. However, for me, the meaning of success depends on the person who thought about it. For some people, success means having a lot of money. While for some other people, success means having a great relationship with their loves one, or maybe having a great career in their life.
Therefore, the meaning of success is totally depends on you. If you think that having a lot of money is considered success, so be it.
Success Can Be From Many Areas
Yes, success can be divided into many areas. For instance, it can be time, career, financial, health, spiritual, emotional, relationship, and so on. To find out the real definition of success, you will have to dig deep in your heart, ask your value of life and know what exactly you want in your life.
You have to know where your interest lies, you need to find out where are your strengths and weaknesses, ask yourself what thing is the most important in your life. Hence, in order to live a successful life, you have to know what goals you want to achieve in every areas of your life.
For example, you can set your financial goals as to have the net worth of $500,000 at the age of 30, set your career goals as to reach the managerial level in your firm, while in terms of health, set your goals as to jog twice every week. These are the examples of goals you should set for each and every area in your life.
Success Is A Journey
Once you have found out what success means in your life, it will be the time for you to know this fact. Success is a journey, not a destination. What I can see is that a lot of people thought that success is the end and treat it as a result. If you have achieved your goals of making $500,000 at the age of 30, and once you achieved it, are you considered success?
Many people will answer yes for the question above. And indeed that from the definition of a dictionary, success is achieving what you desired for. However, if you see it from a different view, you will find that it is the process that makes you achieve the things that you wanted the most in your life. Meaning to say, success is a journey, it is a process, and not the final result.
Often, too many people put their focus in the end result. Such as if your financial goal is to make $500,000 at the age of 30, and then I’m sure you will focus in the money. In fact, it is the process of taking massive and consistent action that brings you the money, the money is just a score for your game.
So now you can see the big picture about success. How about achieving success? Is there any ’secrets’ or strategies you can use to achieve success? To make it easy, there is a formula which you can follow to achieve the success that you desired for. And that formula is called…
The Ultimate Success Formula
The words say it, the ultimate success formula, with it; you can achieve anything you want in your life. It is a simple formula that anyone can practice and achieve whatever they want; however, it is also something that so simple yet many people do not do it. Basically, the ultimate success formula can be divided into 4 simple steps, and they are…
Success Formula #1 - You Have To Believe It Before Achieving It
The first thing you need to do is to start from your mind. You have to first believe that it is possible for you to achieve the success you desire. If you do not believe in it, it will be impossible for you to achieve it. Take the example above; do you believe that you can make $500,000 at the age of 30? Make this clears, your belief is only real to you, if you believe that you can, and then you can. Just like if you believe that you are someone who is very hard working, then you are. However, for others maybe you are someone who is very lazy.
Everyone holds different beliefs. If I ask you whether it is profitable to sell shoes in Africa, maybe you will answer yes, but there must be someone who don’t agree with you and think that the answer is a no. No matter what you believe in your life, there must be someone who has opposite thinking as you. Therefore, your beliefs are never real to you; they are real to you only if you believe in them. So since you are going to believe in something anyway, why don’t you just believe in something positive? Believe in something that can bring you to your success?
Success Formula #2 - You Need to Have a Goal
If there is one thing that can make you successful, that thing will be goal setting. Goal setting is very important if you want to achieve what you want. You have to write down your dreams, write down you what you want to achieve in your life. Without writing it down, your dream will remains dream. A lot of people underestimate what goals can do for them. The first thing is that goal helps you to stay focused in your course so that you will not run out of your target. I believe that you have seen a lot of people trying to achieve their dreams by trying a lot of ways. In fact, if you just focus in one way, you will achieve much more. And this is what goal setting can do for you.
The next thing you can benefit from setting goal is that it can drive you into taking massive and continuous action. Think about it, when you are trying to procrastinate, and when you see your goals stick on the wall of your room, will you take action immediately? Most of the time you will, this is why goal setting is so important. It can drive you into taking action, and keep you focused in your goals.
Success Formula #3 - Take Massive and Consistent Action
Nothing will happen without action. Even if you believe that you can be successful, and even if you set clear goals, but without taking any action, nothing will ever happen. Beliefs system and goal setting are the vehicles that can help you achieve what you want. Action will be the fuel to drive that vehicle to your goals. A lot of people procrastinate, they rather choose to watch television than reading wealth and success books, and this is why most of them fail. If you are not taking enough action and you feel unmotivated toward your dreams and goals all the time, you have to question yourself whether your goals are consistent with your values.
If your goals are not consistent with your life values, you will feel unmotivated and procrastinate in the end. Find out why you really want to achieve what you want in your life. Once you know exactly why you want something so badly, you will do whatever it takes to achieve it. The reason is the source of motivation that drives you into taking action. Remember, it is the ‘why’ that will drives you into action, it is the ‘why’ that will lead to the ‘how’. That is why you need to find out the reason lies deep inside you. Once you are clear with it, nothing can ever stop you.
Success Formula #4 - There Are No Failures, Only Feedback
Well, if you have gone through the first 3 steps and you have taken a lot action, will you achieve what you want? Maybe yes and maybe no. Success will not come in the first attempt, and that is why this step number 4 is for. You need to understand, there are no failures in your life, there are only feedback. You receive failures because of one thing, the strategies you are using to achieve what you want in your life is incorrect. That means, the failures are nothing but just feedback that telling you it is time to change your strategies.
So the moment you fail to achieve something, treat it as a feedback, and change your strategies. You can also review your beliefs and goals. Change them according to the situation. Whenever you fail to achieve the success you desire, don’t give up and don’t put more effort into it, instead, review your strategies first. Ask yourself whether the strategies you are using are correct. Change your strategies and do it again. If you keep on doing things the same old way, you will receive the same old feedback. This is the real way of achieving success.
Many people seem to not understand about this, they are trying to achieve what they want in their life. And the moment they fail to achieve it, they either try it harder or give up. If you give up, the story ends there. And if you try it harder, you will get back the same old results. Hence, the right way of doing it is to change your strategies before you do it again.
Having said all that, I believe that now you are clear about what success is and how you can achieve it. Bear in mind, you are the one that determine the real definition of success in your life. And always remember that success is a journey, not a destination. Whenever you want to achieve success, follow through the ultimate success formula, if you stick with it, you can achieve basically anything you want in your life.
Gas prices are not going down, which is leading drivers to seek alternatives. One popular method is to convert your car to water. What seemed in the past to be a hoax is quickly becoming an acceptable method to improve fuel efficiency. With fuel costs rapidly depleting wallets, people are willing to look at the seemingly ridiculous for a solution. What they are finding during their research is that is shockingly easy and effective to convert your car to burn water.
With just a quart of water, a home-made hydrogen generator can provide up to 1,800 gallons of HHO gas. When combined with petroleum, your car can travel 50-60% further on a tank of gas, thus slashing fuel costs in half.
What these hydrogen generators do is extract the energy out of water by separating the H20 molecules and creating a highly efficient, burnable gas known as HHO. When injected along with the gas a car is already burning, the result is improved fuel efficiency, higher performance, and a smoother ride.
Traditionally these kits sell for $1,000 or more. Considering the amount of money a regular driver can save, this could be well worth the investment. But the do-it-yourself individual can build a home made kit for under $100.
All the parts can be found at just about any local hardware store, and installation of the HHO system takes minutes. Everything is an add-on to the existing engine components, so nothing is actually altered to the car or permanent. Removal of the systems can be accomplished as fast as it takes to install it.
The system works off your car battery to split the water molecules and inject the HHO gas into the existing fuel system. With clear instructions on how to build a home made kit to convert your car to burn water can be accomplished in just a couple hours. It is as easy as assembling patio furniture, and does not take much technical skill or knowledge about how cars work. If you can follow directions, you can get your car to start running on water today.
Find out more about how to convert your car to water and download a step-by-step guide to building your own hydrogen generator. In just a couple hours from now, you can cut your fuel costs by 60 percent. Find out how by visiting http://www.water-engine.factfriend.info
What is life? Do we have to take it so seriously after all? What we all want in life is to be happy. We have been thought that to be happy, we need a lot of money, a lot of “success” and many material things. Therefore, we spend our life looking for those prerequisites for success, contemplating the day we will be happy after having all those nice things. We then go on our journey looking for those things that have the power to make us happy when we finally have them. Finally, one day, we have many material things and we are still not happy. We then think that the things that we possess may be the wrong types and start looking for the “right” things, the ones that our neighbors struggled all their life to have. We finally get them and are still not happy. We finally realize that the material things that belong to the neighbors do not fit us. We decide to go back to the things that we had. By this time, we are old and our life is almost over.
Our life might have been easier if we lived, if we enjoyed what we had in the first place and did not try so hard to “have” what others had
Do not get me wrong. This does not mean that you have to live in the woods and having one shirt and a pair of trousers. It’s being yourself and defining how you want to live your life instead of having other people tell you how to run it. You may be “different”, people may think that you are “weird” or strange but at least you will be at peace with yourself.
Probably one big mistake that most job seekers make when writing their resume is including irrelevant information. These are details that do not impact on the satisfactory performance of the role being applied for. As such, it has no place in a resume and should not be included.
Details like age, ethnic background, religious beliefs, political inclinations, and marital status are not critical in performing a job. There is no need to include these details in your resumes as well as those details that disclose such information.
There have been instances too, when job seekers include a photo of themselves when submitting a resume. Unless you are particularly attractive, this will be more detrimental than having none. Don’t let yourself be judged by looks. Sell yourself with your professional skills and competencies. Photos are not for job resumes, unless required. Modelling agencies often require photos but for the corporate world, photos in resumes are inappropriate.
What about your hobbies and interests? Should you include these in your resume? There have been a lot of contradicting ideas whether to include hobbies and interests or not. If you browse resume samples and resume templates from the internet, there will be some with hobbies and interests as a section while others will not have any.
The decision to include hobbies and interests in your resume should be based on whether it supports your resume objective and whether it will provide more information to help an employer decide your suitability for a role. Information included in your resume should all be geared on showing the employer that you are the best candidate for the job. You are only allowed a few pages to sell yourself. Do it by presenting relevant information.
If you are applying for an entry-level role as a technician in an electronics firm and one of your hobbies is fishing, do you think the employer will be interested in you if you list it in your resume? Certainly not. But if one of your hobbies and interests is assembling and testing electronic circuits or gadgets and you enjoy doing electronic repairs, then it would be worthwhile to mention this relevant information aside from your employment experiences.
Hobbies and interests are best listed in a functional section of your resume. This is particularly applicable in a functional resume format. Taking the example above when applying as a technician, you might have a functional section about “Soldering Ability” or “Soldering Skills”. Under it, you can then provide information on how you mastered this skill through electronics assembly as one of your hobbies.
In closing, hobbies and interests do have a place in your resume. Ensure, however, that these hobbies and interests support your resume objective and help with the performance of the role.
You will not be able to succeed or achieve anything significant in your life without having motivation, the fuel that pushes you to get things done. You will either remain where you are at now, or you will progress through life at a slow pace.
You need motivation to get out of bed, to go to work, to exercise, to go to a movie. You also need motivation to help you quit any habits that you do not want, such as quitting smoking or alcohol.
You need a certain level of motivation to do everything in life. Motivation is central for personal and professional success, and in all areas of your life.
For you to be successful in any chosen area, you will need to be motivated to take consistent action. It is your motivation that will drive you to take action to succeed in all that you do.
So how do you acquire motivation? Your primary step is to set yourself a few goals. Decide on what areas you want to improve on and what it is that you want to improve or have.
It is important to note that you must make these goals realistic and achievable, yet not easy to attain; they must require some effort on your part.
For example, in your financial area, for you to set a goal to have an income of £1M in one year where your present income is £25,000 makes the goal unrealistic. It is best to increment your goals realistically until you achieve your goal of £1M.
By setting yourself very high goals you may set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Make sure your goals are achievable, yet they allow you to stretch yourself to get the job done.
Once you have decided on your goals, write them down by hand and read them on a daily basis; or even better, write each goals 10 times every morning upon awakening and last thing before bed. This way you are constantly reminding yourself, consciously and unconsciously, what you are striving for.
For added motivational power, set yourself a deadline for when you want to achieve each goal. Again in your financial area, your goal could be, “I am earning £5,000 or more every month by 31st December, 2008.”
This goal is realistic and it excites you, it motivates you, it pushes you to do what it takes to achieve it. An exciting goal is a great and very powerful motivator.
Your next step is for you to be committed to keep after these goals until they are achieved. Keep your goals in sight, feel what it would be like to have achieved your goals.
Keep pushing yourself. Never give in. Never look back on any failures, or as I call them ’success gone astray.’ Should you have a setback, learn all that you can from it and move on. This setback has given you the opportunity to know what did not work, and that is a step in the right direction. Now you can try out another strategy or action.
Learn from your mistakes, but do not dwell on them. Regain your motivation by reminding yourself of your goals and how much they mean to you; why you must have the goals.
A powerful way to keep you motivated is to reward yourself every time you take a step up the ladder of success on the way to the top, where your goal awaits you. By rewarding yourself you keep the momentum of your motivation going strong and gaining in strength with every step you take.
Remember, you can be motivated to be successful in all that you do when you set realistic goals, and your purpose to reaching your goals is powerful enough to keep you committed to the end.
By becoming and remaining motivated you will achieve what it is that you are after.
So if you are stuck where you are and you wonder why you have not progressed to achieve a better quality of life, it could be due to your lack motivation.
Initiate and boost your motivation by knowing what it is that you want, set a few goals with deadlines and go for it. Keep in mind, motivation is driven by passion and purpose. Find your passion and purpose and commit to it.
Oil and natural gas together make up petroleum. This compound of carbon and hydrogen can be found in many forms. Petroleum literally means “rock oil”, which refers to its solid state called asphalt. Petroleum can also be found in two types of liquid form. Crude oil is dark and sticky. It’s called condensate if it’s clear and volatile. Condensate evaporates very easily. In the semisolid state, petroleum is called bitumen. So what is petroleum actually made of? It looks like a simple black gooey mass, but it is actually a mixture of many chemicals, formed by decomposed remains of living things. Different chemicals can be separated out at refineries and petrochemical plants. Then the chemicals or chemical groups can be made into a huge range of different things. Companies like Western Pipeline Corporation help find the oil, drill it and get it into production so that we can enjoy many of the products we use today. Polyurethane skateboard wheels, impact absorbing helmets and pads, even the polycarbonate case on your laptop are all produced from oil. Petroleum in its thickest form is called bitumen. Bitumen is mainly used for paving roads. Bitumen is also popular in waterproofing roofs. It can be mixed with sand or clay and water to produce what is known as oil sands. Oil sands are similar to tar, but the materials are naturally occurring. Bitumen is a nearly solid form of oil and is very expensive to process into gasoline or other usable fuels. Therefore, oil sands are being mined almost exclusively to extract the oil, convert it into synthetic oil, or it is being refined for other petroleum products, such as plastic. Crude oil is a form of petroleum that is in a more liquid state than bitumen. It is mostly black or brown, but can also be yellow or green depending on its components. Crude oil from Sudan is black and North Sea oil is dark brown. Oil from Utah is amber while Texas oil is more yellow. “Sour” oils contain more sulfur and need extra processing in refineries. “Sweet” oils are much easier to refine. If someone mentions sour crude oil, they are referring to the heavier oil. Sweet grade oil usually refers to the lighter crude, found in places like Texas. The lightest hydrocarbon molecules are so volatile that they evaporate very easily and form natural gas. Nearly every oil deposit contains at least some natural gas. Some have so much of these molecules that they are almost completely natural gas. Natural gas is a very clean burning resource that we use to cool and heat homes and businesses. It is used to generate electricity. We use it in many of the products that we utilize daily such as carpet, medicine, medical equipment, plastics and fertilizers
. I always went with something like: “Working in a challenging role in a fantastic company like yours!” Which is a total BS response, but always seemed to satisfy interviewers (Do you have a better answer or a really unwise answer that you regret? Please share.)