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"Multi-tasking" and "project completion" and the cursed compulsion to be honest...

TenebrousReflection

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"Multi-tasking" and "project completion" and the cursed compulsion to be honest...

While filling out lots of job applications, a couple topics have come up on a regular basis that give me a lot of trouble.

The first is "do you see all of your projects through to completion" (or some variant of that). Well, in a work enviornment, yes, but at home, i frequently start projects that never get finished. Unfortunately these questions are always in the form of a yes or no question. It should be easy to make the assumption they mean in a work setting, but it still feels dishonest to answer "yes" even if thats what they are talking about.

The other is multi-tasking (sometimes its an essay question on an app, sometimes they wait til the interview to bring it up). I am of the belief that multi-tasking decreases efficiency and increases the probability of errors (at least for me it does), but there seems to be a high demand for people with multi-tasking skills in many of the jobs I have applied for. Unfortunately I think if I were to answer that with how I feel about multi-tasking, I think that would be a good way to be eliminated from consideration very quickly, so I have tried to come up with examples and such, but in the end, I just feel like I'm verbally juggling/re-wording the description of time slicing to make it sound like multi-tasking which I don't feel very good about and I suspect most HR people can probably see through anyway.

These experience have made me wonder if there are some types that have a natural ability to multi-task. With the expectations of it, it seems like it must be a common ability and that I seem to be the minority in lacking that ability. If multi-tasking could be tied to Se that would probably go a long way toward explainign my ineptitude at it. Are there other non-multi-taskers out there that have encountered this in their job search efforts and if so, how have you dealt with it?
 

Eilonwy

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Not that the people interviewing you will want to hear this, but there really is no such thing as multitasking:

NPR story

APA story

I wouldn't recommend trying to convince an interviewer of this, so take the information and use it to bring you to an answer that you can live with.
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
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I thought of references like Eilonwy's when I read the OP. One response that might be acceptable and accurate in job applications is to point out that some tasks lend themselves to "multitasking" more readily than others. The key is to be able to concentrate on an individual task that demands it (say a mathematical calculation), and to juggle several things at once when that is necessary (answer phone, greet visitors, file paperwork, etc.) This shows that you understand different tasks require different skills and approaches.

As for completing projects (or anything else), what you do at home is no one's business, unless you have been out of work for awhile and are trying to show how these activities translate into job-related skills.
 

Metamorphosis

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Luckily what you put on those ridiculous job application quizzes doesn't have to have any correlation with real life.
 
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