Situational interview questions
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The Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve, and informally as the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics. Over time, the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System have expanded, and its structure has evolved. Events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s were major factors leading to changes in the system.
The U.S. Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. The first two objectives are sometimes referred to as the Federal Reserve's dual mandate. Its duties have expanded over the years, and as of 2009 also include supervising and regulating banks, maintaining the stability of the financial system and providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions. The Fed conducts research into the economy and releases numerous publications, such as the Beige Book.
The Federal Reserve System's structure is composed of the presidentially appointed Board of Governors or Federal Reserve Board (FRB), partially presidentially appointed Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), non-presidentially appointed twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous privately owned U.S. member banks and various advisory councils. Nationally chartered commercial banks are required to hold stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of their region, which entitles them to elect some of their board members. The FOMC sets monetary policy and consists of all seven members of the Board of Governors and the twelve regional bank presidents, though only five bank presidents vote at any given time: the president of the New York Fed and four others who rotate through one-year terms. Thus, the Federal Reserve System has both private and public components to serve the interests of the public and private banks. The structure is considered unique among central banks. It is also unusual in that the United States Department of the Treasury, an entity outside of the central bank, creates the currency used.
The U.S. Government receives all the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained. In 2010, the Federal Reserve made a profit of $82 billion and transferred $79 billion to the U.S. Treasury.
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The Bank of England
The Bank of England, formally the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world and the world's 8th oldest bank. It was established to act as the English Government's banker, and is still the banker for the Government of the United Kingdom. The Bank was privately owned by stockholders from its foundation in 1694 until nationalized in 1946.
In 1998, it became an independent public organization, wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government, with independence in setting monetary policy. The Bank is one of eight banks authorized to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom, but has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee has devolved responsibility for managing monetary policy. The Treasury has reserve powers to give orders to the committee but such orders must be endorsed by Parliament within 28 days. The Bank's Financial Policy Committee held its first meeting in June 2011 as a macro prudential regulator to oversee regulation of the UK's financial sector.
The Bank's headquarters have been in London's main financial district, the City of London, on Threadneedle Street, since 1734. It is sometimes known by the metonym The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street or The Old Lady, a name taken from the legend of Sarah Whitehead, whose ghost is said to haunt the Bank's garden.
Mark Carney assumed the post of The Governor of the Bank of England on 1 July 2013. He succeeded Mervyn King, who took over on 30 June 2003. Carney, a Canadian, is the first non-British citizen to hold the post.
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Guns versus Butter
In macroeconomics, the guns versus butter model demonstrates the relationship between a nation's investment in defense and civilian goods. In this example, a nation has to choose between two options when spending its finite resources. It may buy either guns (invest in defense/military) or butter (invest in production of goods), or a combination of both. This may be seen as an analogy for choices between defense and civilian spending in more complex economies.
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The "gun or butter" model is used generally as a simplification of national spending as a part of GDP. The nation will have to decide which balance of guns versus butter best fulfills its needs, with its choice being partly influenced by the military spending and military stance of potential opponents. Researchers in political economy have viewed the trade-off between military and consumer spending as a useful predictor of election success.
Typically, this model does not correlate well with free market economies. One theory on the origin of the concept comes from William Jennings Bryan's resignation as United States Secretary of State in the Wilson Administration. At the outbreak of World War I, the leading global exporter of nitrates for gunpowder was Chile. Chile had maintained neutrality during the war and provided nearly all of the USA's nitrate requirements. It also was the principal ingredient of chemical fertilizer in farming.
With substantial popular opinion running against U.S. entry into the war, the Bryan resignation and peace campaign (joined prominently with Henry Ford's efforts) became a banner for local versus national interests. Bryan was no more pro-German than Wilson; his motivation was to expose and publicize what he considered to be an unconscionable public policy.
The National Defense Act of 1916 directed the president to select a site for the artificial production of nitrates within the United States. It was not until September 1917, several months after the USA entered the war, that Wilson selected Muscle Shoals, Alabama, after more than a year of competition among political rivals. A deadlock in Congress was broken when Senator Ellison D. Smith from South Carolina sponsored the National Defense Act of 1916 that directed "the Secretary of Agriculture to manufacture nitrates for fertilizers in peace and munitions in war at water power sites designated by the President". This was presented by the news media as "guns and butter".
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Complementary Currency
Complementary currency is a voucher meant to be used as a complement to another currency, typically a national currency. Complementary currency is sometimes referred to as complementary community currency or as community currency. The term local currency, describing a complementary currency which is limited to a single locality, is sometimes used interchangeably with complementary currency. There are, however, some complementary currencies which are regional or global, such as the Community Exchange System, WIR and Friendly Favors, or the proposed global currency terra.
A complementary currency is an agreement to use something else than legal tender (i.e. national money) as a medium of exchange, with the purpose to link unmet needs with otherwise unused resources. Complementary currencies describe a wide group of exchange systems, designed to be used in combination with standard currencies or other complementary currencies. They can be valued and exchanged in relationship to national currencies but also function as media of exchange on their own. Complementary currencies lie outside the nationally defined legal realm of legal tender and are not used as such. Rate of exchange, scope of circulation and use in combination with other currencies differs greatly between complementary currency systems, as is the case with national currency systems.
Some complementary currencies incorporate value scales based on time or the backing of real resources (gold, oil, services, etc.). A time-based currency is valued by the time required to perform a service in hours, notwithstanding the potential market value of the service. Another type of complementary monetary systems is the barter; an exchange of specific goods or services is performed without the use of any currency.
In 1982, the most widespread auxiliary currency system – the Local Exchange Trading Systems was created. It regulates the exchange of goods and services between the members of the cooperative. Examples for an investment system of complementary currency are the Automatic Social Financial Network (ASFN) and the international crowd sourcing and crowd-funding community Evolution whose members use their own complementary virtual currency “Сyber-gold”. The introductory fee paid by the new association members is subsequently directed toward investments in a variety of commercial projects. Some complementary currencies take advantage of demurrage fees, an intentional devaluation of the currency over time, like negative interest. This stimulates market exchanges in the devaluating currency, propagates new participation in the currency system and forces the storage of wealth (hoarding) ability usually reserved for currency into more permanent and better value holding tools like (property, improvement, education, technology, health, equity securities, etc.) all of which are sheltered from the currency-based demurrage fees.
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Other experimental complementary currencies use high interest fees to promote heavy competition between participants, and the removal of wealth from long term wealth holding structures (natural/material wealth, property, etc.) to aid in the process of rapid industrialization, mass production, automation and competitive innovation. Monetary speculation and gambling are usually outside the design parameters of complementary currencies. Complementary currencies are often intentionally restricted in their regional spread, time of validity or sector of use and may require a membership of participating individuals or points of acceptance.
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History of Dollar
In the 16th century, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins known as Joachimstalers (from German thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley", cognate with "dale" in English) , named for Joachimstal, the valley where the silver was mined a part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Joachimstaler was later shortened to the German Taler, a word that eventually found its way into Danish and Swedish as daler, Norwegian as dalar and daler, Dutch as daler or daalder, Ethiopian as talari, Hungarian as tallér, Italian as tallero, and English as dollar.
The coins minted at Joachimsthal soon lent their name to other coins of similar size and weight from other places. One such example, was a Dutch coin depicting a lion, hence its Dutch name leeuwendaler (in English: lion daler).
The leeuwendaler was popular in the Dutch East Indies and in the Dutch New Netherland Colony (New York), and circulated throughout the Thirteen Colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. It was also popular throughout Eastern Europe, where it led to the current Romanian and Moldovan currency being called leu (literally "lion").
Among the English-speaking community, the coin came to be popularly known as lion dollar – and is the origin of the name dollar. The modern American-English pronunciation of dollar is still remarkably close to the 17th-century Dutch pronunciation of daler.
By analogy with this lion dollar, Spanish pesos – with the same weight and shape as the lion dollar – came to be known as Spanish dollars. By the mid-18th century, the lion dollar had been replaced by the Spanish dollar, the famous "piece of eight", which was distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in the Philippines. Eventually, dollar became the name of the first official American currency.
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Dollar Nicknames
The colloquialism "buck" is often used to refer to dollars of various nations, including the U.S. dollar. This term, dating to the 18th century, may have originated with the colonial leather trade. It may also have originated from a poker term. "Greenback" is another nickname originally applied specifically to the 19th century Demand Note dollars created by Abraham Lincoln to finance the costs of the Civil War for the North. The original note was printed in black and green on the back side. It is still used to refer to the U.S. dollar (but not to the dollars of other countries). Other well-known names of the dollar as a whole in denominations include "greenmail", "green" and "dead presidents" (the last because deceased presidents are pictured on most bills).
A "grand", sometimes shortened to simply "G", is a common term for the amount of $1,000. The suffix "K" or "k" (from "kilo-") is also commonly used to denote this amount (such as "$10k" to mean $10,000). However, the $1,000 note is no longer in general use. A "large" or "stack", it is usually a reference to a multiple of $1,000 (such as "fifty large" meaning $50,000). The $100 note is nicknamed "Benjamin", "Ben", or "Franklin" (after Benjamin Franklin), "C-note" (C being the Roman numeral for 100), "Century note" or "bill" (e.g. "two bills" being $200). The $50 note is occasionally called a "yardstick" or a "grant" (after President Ulysses S. Grant, pictured on the obverse). The $20 note is referred to as a "double sawbuck", "Jackson" (after Andrew Jackson), or "double eagle". The $10 note is referred to as a "sawbuck", "ten-spot" or "Hamilton" (after Alexander Hamilton). The $5 note as "fin", "fiver" or "five-spot". The infrequently-used $2 note is sometimes called "deuce", "Tom", or "Jefferson" (after Thomas Jefferson). The $1 note as a "single" or "buck". The dollar has also been, referred to as a "bone" and "bones" in plural (e.g. "twenty bones" is equal to $20). The newer designs, with portraits displayed in the main body of the obverse rather than in cameo insets upon paper color-coded by denomination, are sometimes referred to as "big face" notes or "Monopoly money".
Dollar Symbol
The symbol $, usually written before the numerical amount, is used for the U.S. dollar (as well as for many other currencies). The sign was the result of a late 18th-century evolution of the scribal abbreviation "ps" for the peso. The p and the s eventually came to be written over each other giving rise to $.
Another popular explanation is that it comes from the Pillars of Hercules on the Spanish Coat of arms on the Spanish dollars that were minted in the New World mints in Mexico City, Mexico; Potosí, Bolivia; and Lima, Peru. These Pillars of Hercules on the silver Spanish dollar coins take the form of two vertical bars (||) and a swinging cloth band in the shape of an "S".
Yet another explanation suggests that the dollar sign was formed from the capital letters U and S written or printed one on top of the other. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.
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The Robin Hood Tax
The Robin Hood Tax is a proposed series of taxes, which if approved, would be payable by financial institutions when doing business with one another. The idea is currently being proposed by a campaigning group in the United Kingdom and supported by associates around the world. The group, consisting largely of non-governmental organizations, sees it as a way to raise money to protect public services and to tackle climate change and poverty.
The Robin Hood tax, or the Tobin Tax, was the idea of the Nobel Prize winning American economist James Tobin, who was concerned with the negative effect of fast moving international financial transactions. So he developed the concept of charging them a small tax on each international transaction, which could be ploughed back into local economies and infrastructures as well as helping in international development through organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. In other words, he was planning taking money from the rich to give it to the poor, just like the mythical Robin Hood did. The campaign to have the Robin Hood Tax introduced is being supported by a coalition of over 100 charities, NGO's, faith organizations and advocacy groups such as Oxfam, Barnado's, Salvation Army and Tearfund. World leaders such as President Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain are behind the idea, as are prominent business people such a FSA Chairman Lord Turner, financier George Soros and entrepreneur Warren Buffet. In April 2011, one-thousand economists wrote to G2O ministers in support of the tax, signatories included Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University who is an influential adviser to Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations; Dani Rodrik from Harvard, and Ha-Joon Chang, from Cambridge. There is also support at a grass roots level; the organization's website claims there are campaigns in twenty-five countries with millions of supporters.
Social media has been utilized by campaigners to help promote the Robin Hood Tax. Facebook is the primary tool. The Robin Hood Tax Facebook group has 248,680 members. Members can view content, policy, updates and news posted by the group administrators and other members. It provides a platform for communication, collaboration, co-operation and connection. Recruitment and exposure to the campaign is facilitated by the connectedness of Facebook. The Robin Hood Tax Youtube Channel has sixty-seven videos uploaded. These videos provide information about the campaign, news, interviews and more. The discussion through comments on the individual videos allows for ongoing dialogue among the audience. As of May 9, 2011, the videos have been viewed by nearly 800,000 people. The Robin Hood Tax Twitter account focuses on the use of micro blogging. The account is updated regularly with news, related information, links, and multimedia. It is currently being followed by 6,489 people.
The Robin Hood Tax was tried in Sweden in the 1980s unsuccessfully, but a similar system can be found in Hong Kong, India, South Korea and South Africa – where it works. Now 10 out of 27 EU countries in favor of it want to introduce it, but it will be impossible without the support of the majority of the EU nation states, so we don’t if or when this will happen.
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Why Not To Hire Your Friend
If you’re running a startup or planning to start one, you might have thought about getting a friend or someone from your family to work with/for you. That can be the worst decision of your life. You can hire someone you know if they are the best person for the job but even that comes with its disadvantages. Like the popular saying says “never mix your personal and professional life”. Why? Here are some reasons.
When you are looking for the best person for a job you will often be biased towards people you know. You might reject someone with a better skill-set simply because you want to hire someone you know. But in business emotional decisions rarely pay off. You should always think of the business first. As a startup you cannot afford to not hire the best. It will cost your company a lot in lost time and wasted potential.
Having someone you know work for you, especially someone close, will make every moment in the office and outside awkward. You cannot behave with them the same way as you do with the rest of your employees. It’s hard to tell them that they are not performing up to the expectations. Discussions about compensations will always be like walking in a minefield. The emotional stress that comes with hiring a friend is just too much hassle for not much return in value.
Besides that your personal life is bound to get affected by this decision. You cannot simply hang out with them anymore without worrying about its implications for your company. They might constantly push you for more perks or promotions that you cannot afford. This will ruin an otherwise good friendship.
Think about what if the person you hired becomes a liability. You have an emotional connection with them and losing a job can be devastating for them. This makes you reluctant to even talk about firing them if they can’t offer the expected value.
In most cases you will let your company suffer at your friend’s expense. You need to keep a rational approach when dealing with your employees. Involving people you are close to can cloud your judgments and can keep you from making the best decisions.
If you have a friend working in your office with other employees then they will most likely take advantage of the fact. Some might even assume authority that you never gave them and make decisions on your behalf. The rest of the staff can become reluctant to complain about bad behavior of your friends. Many will feel that you focus more on your friend than other employees, even if you don’t. All of this is bad for your company culture. When employees don’t feel comfortable working in your office their productivity will take a hit.
On top of you being reluctant to address any flaws in their work, there is a high possibility that they will treat you more like a friend than a boss. They might ignore your warnings thinking that they can get away with it and they most probably will. This will only further encourage them to be more careless about their attitude towards you.
These are just some of the reasons why you shouldn’t hire friends and family members for your company. There are a lot of other things you have to consider when thinking about hiring someone you know. But generally it is a bad idea to hire friends. This kind of mixing personal and professional life can only complicate things.
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Narcissism in a Workplace
Narcissism in the workplace is a serious issue and may have a major detrimental impact on an entire organization. Narcissistic individuals in the workplace are more likely to engage in counterproductive work behavior especially when their self-esteem is threatened.
Narcissists typically perform well at job interviews and have a good success rate for landing jobs. Interviews are one of the few social situations where narcissistic behaviours such as boasting actually create a positive impression. There tends to be a higher level of stress with people who work with or interact with a narcissist, which in turn increases absenteeism and staff turnover.
The narcissistic manager will have two main sources of narcissistic supply: inanimate (status symbols like cars, gadgets or office views); and animate (flattery and attention from colleagues and subordinates). Teammates may find everyday offers of support swiftly turn them into enabling sources of permanent supply, unless they are very careful to maintain proper boundaries. The narcissistic manager's need to protect such supply networks will prevent objective decision-making. Such a manager will evaluate long-term strategies according to their potential for gaining personal attention.
According to Alan Downs, corporate narcissism occurs when a narcissist becomes the chief executive officer (CEO) or other leadership roles within the senior management team and gathers an adequate mix of codependents around him (or her) to support the narcissistic behavior. As a result, a certain kind of charismatic leader can run a financially successful company on thoroughly unhealthy principles for a time.
In 2007, researchers at San Diego State University, USA, found that narcissism revealed a positive relationship with bullying. Narcissists were found to prefer indirect bullying tactics (such as withholding information that affects others' performance, ignoring others, spreading gossip, constantly reminding others of mistakes, ordering others to do work below their competence level, and excessively monitoring others' work) rather than direct tactics (such as making threats, shouting, persistently criticizing, or making false allegations). The research also revealed that narcissists are highly motivated to bully, and that to some extent, they are left with feelings of satisfaction after a bullying incident occurs.
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Workplace Bullying
Workplace bullying occurs when an employee experiences a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes harm. This form of bullying can include such tactics as, verbal, non-verbal, psychological, physical abuse and humiliation. This type of workplace aggression is particularly difficult because, unlike the typical forms of school bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society.
Bullying is seen to be prevalent in organizations where employees and managers feel that they have the support, or at least implicitly the blessing, of senior managers to carry on their abusive and bullying behaviour. Furthermore, new managers will quickly come to view this form of behaviour as acceptable and normal if they see others get away with it and are even rewarded for it.
When bullying happens at the highest levels, the effects may be far reaching. That people may be bullied irrespective of their organizational status or rank, including senior managers, indicates the possibility of a negative domino effect, where bullying may be cascaded downwards as the targeted supervisors might offload their own aggression on their subordinates.
Because it can occur in a variety of contexts and forms, it is also useful to define workplace bullying by the key features that these behaviours possess. Bullying is characterized by:
repetition (occurs regularly);
duration (is enduring);
escalation (increasing aggression);
power disparity (the target lacks the power to successfully defend themselves);
attributed intent.
This distinguishes bullying from isolated behaviours and other forms of job stress and allows the term workplace bullying to be applied in various contexts and to behaviours that meet these characteristics. Many observers agree that bullying is often a repeated behavior. However, some experts who have dealt with a great many people who report abuse also categorize some once-only events as bullying.
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Types of Interview
Interviews may be 'structured', 'unstructured' and composite: i.e. comprising a combination of both types. There are also a large range of more specialized interview approaches. Interviews typically take place face-to-face, though other modes such as telephone or video are increasingly used.
Structured interview
In interviews that are considered "structured interviews," there are several types of questions interviewers ask applicants. Two major types are situational questions and behavioral questions. Both types of questions are based on "critical incidents" that are required to perform the job but they differ in their focus. Critical incidents are relevant tasks that are required for the job and can be collected through interviews or surveys with current employees, managers, or experts. One of the first critical incidents techniques ever used in the United States Army asked combat veterans to report specific incidents of effective or ineffective behavior of a leader. The question posed to veterans was "Describe the officer’s actions. What did he do?" Their responses were compiled to create a factual definition or "critical requirements" of what an effective combat leader is.
Some studies have shown that situational type questions have better predictability for job performance in interviews, while, other researchers have found that behavioral type questions are better at predicting future job performance of applicants. In actual interview settings it is not likely that the sole use of just one type of interview question (situational or behavioral) is asked. A range of questions can add variety for both the interviewer and applicant. In addition, the use of high-quality questions, whether behavioral or situational based, is essential to make sure that candidates provide meaningful responses that lead to insight into their capability to perform on the job.
Situational interview questions
Situational interview questions ask job applicants to imagine a set of circumstances and then indicate how they would respond in that situation; hence, the questions are future oriented. One advantage of situational questions is that all interviewees respond to the same hypothetical situation rather than describe experiences unique to them from their past. Another advantage is that situational questions allow respondents who have had no direct job experience relevant to a particular question to provide a hypothetical response. Two core aspects of the SI are the development of situational dilemmas that employees encounter on the job, and a scoring guide to evaluate responses to each dilemma.
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