I know this sounds too easy-too common sense-too logical, but it"s not. In my experience, few job hunters spend time thinking about how their experience and skills relate to a job until they"re actually asked. I"ve seen people blow it when they were asked the simplest questions: "What do you know about our company?" That is the perfect opportunity to explain what you"ve learned and how your experience makes you their perfect candidate. Too often, even the most senior people "wing it."
Draw a line down the middle of a page. List the employer"s needs on one side and your skills and accomplishments that prove you can do the job on the other. In the interview, you"ll be able to point out these compatible a.s.sets for the employer. You"ll stand out as organized and prepared. Grab a blank sheet of paper and do it now. (You can recycle this exercise in your thank-you note.)
a.n.a.lyzing Your Strengths and Weaknesses
All employers ask you about strengths and weaknesses. It"s one of the few questions you can absolutely guarantee. Yet, it"s numbing how little forethought most people give to this question. This might sound asinine, but I"ve actually had people who, when asked about weaknesses during an interview, either couldn"t come up with any or replied, "I don"t believe I have any." Candidates who say they have none-I guess they are, in their own mind, perfect-Mr. Employer will view them in a highly negative light. So much so, that once they state they have no weaknesses, the game is over. And I mean over. These are disastrous interview blunders! a.s.sess your weaknesses in advance of an interview.
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GUERRILLA MISSION.
Strengths Now that you"ve completed a needs a.n.a.lysis with the T-account exercise, you need to list your top 10 strengths as they pertain to the job you are seeking. Grab a piece of paper and list them in bullet form. Stop. Do it now. This is important.
Now look at your strengths. Which of those applies to the job for which you are being interviewed? If you were the interviewer, would that be enough? Would you spend your last dollar to acquire you? If your answer is yes, proceed to the next exercise on weaknesses. If you said no, congratulations for being so honest; you have just saved your interview from certain disaster. You"re running these exercises because, like a pro sports coach, you understand that practice makes perfect and game day is no time to practice. Run through this exercise until you"ve listed 5 strengths to support the job"s requirements.
Weaknesses Run the same exercise, only this time list your weaknesses as they apply to the job. Now pick a weakness you"ve been working on and detail what you"ve done to correct it. Are you short-tempered? Don"t mention that one! This is not true confessions time. Interviewers expect you to pick something "light." That"s what candidates do. Please don"t disappoint them. What you"re going to do that most candidates don"t think to do is demonstrate your follow-through. Right after you reveal your weakness, you"re going to explain what you"ve done to correct the matter.
You might prepare an answer like this: I was told a few years ago that my budgeting wasn"t good enough. I had never received any formal training, so I immediately registered in a night cla.s.s. On my last review, my supervisor noted how much improvement I"d made. My budgeting skills are now well above average. He did me a big favor.
Congratulations. In this example, you told the interviewer:* What the problem was (budgeting)* Why it was a problem (no training)* What you did to correct it (night cla.s.s)* What the results were (improved skill level) Moreover, you"ve also shown that you are open to constructive criticism and most importantly, that you are prepared to act on feedback. Most employees are not. If the interviewer is keeping score, you just received double bonus points because employers will hire someone with average skills and great att.i.tude over a self-confessed superstar any day.
Build Your Story Book
Following the T-account exercise, you need to turn your strengths and accomplishments into memorable stories because everyone likes a good story. More importantly, people retain ideas more easily if they"re presented in the form of a story. After hours and hours of interviewing, it"s often difficult for interviewers to remember one candidate from another unless one of them-that"ll be you-really grabs their interest with a great story.
Storytelling has other advantages: * When you link ideas for the interviewer, you"re far more likely to engage the listener"s interest and leave a favorable impression.* The conversational tone relaxes your interviewer and will turn an interrogation into a conversation.* Storytelling appeals to an interviewer"s "gut-feel" and innate ability to hire people with "promise."* Given 2 people who are equally qualified on paper, an employer will tend to hire the best storyteller because the person is perceived to have superior communication skills.
Unlike the fairy tales you heard as a child, your stories are based on facts. They portray you as a modern-day hero-confident but not arrogant, decisive but not overbearing, driven but not maniacal. You must provide accurate ill.u.s.trations of the significant goals you"ve achieved and the skills and training you mustered to achieve them. You get to play the part of the "hero" who invented the new product, closed the big deal, or in some other way vanquished the dragon.
Which accomplishments prompted the employer to want to meet you in the first place? Those are the stories to use. The key elements of each story relate to the requirements-be they in sales, marketing, engineering, or something else-you outlined in the T-account exercise.
For example, you have discovered from your research that the employer needs to be able to bring new products to market in a timely manner and you have 10 years" experience in new product development. Your story might sound something like this:
Mr. Employer, in the summer of 2009 our major compet.i.tor, in an attempt to run us out of business, began giving away a product that they claimed had the same features as our mainstay product. Not surprisingly, revenue plummeted 90 percent in our next quarter. The bottom fell out of our stock. Several of our key development and salespeople quit. In response, I led 2 small teams of 6 engineers on a mission to develop our next-generation product and to expose the weaknesses in the compet.i.tor"s offering. Within five weeks, we discovered serious design flaws in the security layer of their software that made the user"s data vulnerable to hackers. We staged a demonstration of our findings for our sales and marketing team. They designed a counterattack that stopped our compet.i.tor in its tracks. Meanwhile, my second team added major functionality to our core product. When the flaws in our compet.i.tor"s product became front-page news, my team was ready with a bulletproof upgrade. We did all this in less than nine weeks. Company revenues surged 15 percent higher than our previous best quarter.
What is the interviewer likely to infer from this story?
* You rise to the occasion when confronted with difficult situations.* You can lead under pressure.* You can execute a strategy.* You"re a team player and a team captain (because you kept saying "we" not "I").
You"re a . . . . . . you"re a you"re a . . . . . . It"ll be a long list of positive attributes leading them to conclude, "We"ve gotta have you on our team!" and that"s what you want. It"ll be a long list of positive attributes leading them to conclude, "We"ve gotta have you on our team!" and that"s what you want.
The interviewer will infer all positives and will start to ask "how" questions: * How do you manage?* How did you keep them focused?* How-how-how.
Guerrilla, they"re hooked. This is exactly how you want them to react. Now you get to lead them into a natural discussion on the similarities between what you"ve done and what they need. Make sure you prepare a few more anecdotes to reinforce your positive attributes.
Rehearsing Your Message
From your T-account, pick out instances where you used those skills successfully. Prepare 3 relevant stories for every interview. Use these to create a.n.a.logies during the interview. Starting with your most relevant accomplishment, write a 2- or 3-paragraph story. Bulleting the sequence of events may make it easier to write the paragraphs. The act of writing forces you to organize your thinking and etch the details in your mind for easy retrieval. Now read the paragraphs out loud. Does your story sound like you"re talking or does it sound like you"re reciting something you"ve memorized? Your story must be delivered in a conversational tone.
Practice telling the story until your words and facial expressions appear natural. In an interview, your ability to retrieve information quickly is important. It"ll boost your confidence and surprise the interviewer who"ll expect the usual period of silence while inadequately prepared candidates contrive their answer.
Your ability to rapidly recall the details of a story affects whether you"ll get an offer and if you"ll be invited back. I recently watched a VP sales candidate crash and burn during an interview. While his answers were perfect and naturally delivered, he paused for 3 or 4 seconds before he answered each question. In an interview, that"s a long time. For every moment an employer watches you think, you lose credibility. You need to be prepared to speak within one short breath after they stop talking. The employer must see you as "all together."
Interviews aren"t real life. Everyone knows that, but it won"t stop the interviewer from forming a real-life opinion on your candidacy. You can know your job better than anyone in the world, but if you freeze during the interview process, the interviewer isn"t likely to care. If you can"t just naturally "flick a switch" and perform like a Holly-wood actor, you"ll need to rehea.r.s.e with the zeal of a drill sergeant. If you practice long enough, you, too, can deliver an Oscar-winning performance.
GUERRILLA INTELLIGENCE.
Tales from the Trenches Kevin Watson
Few hiring managers interview well. A manager may hire as many as 100 people in his lifetime or, put another way, spend a total of 400 hours of effort. Compare this with the 6,000 hours that he will spend at lunch, and it is obvious to see why so little emphasis is put on doing hiring correctly and why training is virtually nonexistent.
Recently, I had a headhunter phone to ask if I would be interested in looking at an opportunity. I received a link to their web site containing the job requirements and skill set required. It was a perfect fit!
So with all the appropriate preparation and an updated resume, I proceed to the interview. At the start of the interview, they asked if I had any questions. What questions could I have? The company is well known within the community, the balance sheet is fantastic, and I had a complete list of the skills and requirements for that position.
The interview proceeded as planned (both on their side and mine). I was to the point for every question asked. I gave specific examples to show I possessed all the skills they needed [based on the job description I had received]. As the interview wound up, I was confident that I proved to them I could manage and lead a development team.
There was only one problem. The job posted on the web site was already filled. The company had decided to split the original position into 2 positions. They had filled the position posted on the Web but never bothered to update the original job description.
I had interviewed for the wrong position!
It hit me like a 2 4 across the head. Most interviews are full of nonspecific questions that are designed to act like an atomic accelerator-shooting high-speed electrons at atoms to see what falls out. Would I have conducted any other business meeting that way? Would a salesman sit in front of a customer and explain to them the feature set of a product without first asking what they were trying to use the product for?
If the interview was approached like any other business meeting, the outcome would be quite different. First, the meeting would start by listing the requirements followed by solutions that fit the problem trying to be addressed. In my case, if I would have gone to the white board and ask these simple questions (and written the answers to them):* What is the goal of this position?* What are the responsibilities of this position?* What do you hope this person will accomplish in this role?* Is this a new position? If no, what did the previous person do really well and what did that person do really poorly?* How do you know if a person is successful in this position?* What is the reporting structure-what about the "dotted lines?"* Are there any direct reports? Does one of them want this position?
As the questions and answers begin to fill the white board, you now have a structure in which you can hang your experiences. If done correctly, your "white board" resume will fit exactly their specific requirements. Doing this at the start of the interview would have told me what position I was applying for and would have made me look like a leader rather than a follower.
Kevin Watson, www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwatson/.
HOW TO ANSWER QUESTIONS
Answer questions with a 1-2 punch-a short answer followed by a long answer. For open-ended questions, I always suggest you say, "Let me give you the short version. If you need to explore some aspect more fully, I"d be happy to go into greater depth."
Answers of less than 30 seconds are generally insufficient, but answers over 3 minutes are too long. This is an important detail. In the first instance, you"ll come across as light, lacking knowledge, depth, and insight-not the impression you want to be making. Long answers right off the bat, though, could brand you as being too technical or boring. You need to strike a fine balance and this 1-2 punch does it. In the end, a question like, "What was your most difficult a.s.signment or biggest accomplishment?" might take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes depending on the detail-but let the interviewer draw the details out of you.
Always remember that the interviewer is the one who asked the question. Tailor your answer to what the person needs to know without a lot of extraneous rambling or superfluous explanation. Why give a sermon when a short prayer will do?
Preparing for Typical Interview Questions
The interview isn"t just about your stories. Beyond the purely technical questions specific to each job, I have listed the typical questions interviewers ask. These are behavior-based interview (BBI) questions. If BBI is new to you, don"t panic. It was designed to reduce hiring errors by focusing on a job hunter"s past experience and behaviors instead of relying on an interviewer"s gut-level decision-making ability. BBI questions actually focus on the core components of your accomplishments. That"s good for you.