Interviews – Be Prepared to be the Decision Maker
Prepare yourself for interviews in a manner that ensures you are the decision maker at the end of the process. If you have prepared correctly, at the end of an interview process one of two things should happen.
1. You are made an offer for employment and you make the decision to accept their offer or you able to communicate back to the company why this position was not a good fit from your point of view.
or
2. Your skills sets were not a fit and you completely understand why. It really stinks when you get a no and you don’t know why.
It is often said that looking for a job is a full-time job itself. A tremendous amount of time can be spent scouring job boards and company websites. In tough times like these, you can send out dozens of resumes and get few if any responses. That can be extremely frustrating. When we do get selected for an interview with a potential employer that feeling changes and it can suddenly be very exciting and invigorating. We finally have some progress! Unfortunately, at the end of the interview process, if we don’t receive an offer, we can be left feeling deflated and confused. Why didn’t I get that job? What could I have done better?
To avoid being on this emotional roller coaster and having to ask these types of questions, prepare yourself to provide solid, meaningful information to employers and be ready to gather meaningful, useful information for yourself. Prepare to tell employers about your experience, skills and desires. Help them learn about you. They will be able to get a clear picture of you and you can get feedback immediately and directly from them. It equally important to prepare your own set of interview questions to determine if this is an employer that you want to go to work for. Take the time to research the company and your interviewers and come up with good questions for them and about them.
As a start, here is some homework to get you ready to talk about yourself. These steps are taken from the behavioral interviewing method but, will prepare you to quickly and confidently talk about your experience regardless of the interview format. Behavioral interviewing is based on the assumption that past performance is the best predictor of future performance. The value for you is that it is much more powerful to talk about what you have done versus what you can or should do. Providing concrete examples is always much more powerful than using hypothetical situations. Taking these steps will set you apart from the competition.
Homework #1 Getting Prepared to Talk About Yourself
Write (handwritten or electronic) the 5 accomplishments in your career you are most proud of. These should be times you avoided disaster, completed a huge project, met a tough deadline or saved/made money or time for your organization. These are your notes so use whatever medium makes the most sense for you to record your thoughts. Written, digital and audio have all shown to be effective, but record your notes and be organized with your thoughts now so they will be organized when communicating them in an interview.
Organize your thoughts using the acronym STAR
1. Situation
Write down a couple of bullet points describing the organization and team you were with and what was going on in the environment at the time of this accomplishment.
2. Task
The Task can also be addressed with just a few bullet points describing the problem, opportunity, project or deadline you were faced with.
3. Action
This is where you will spend most of your time thinking. This section might include 8-10 bullet points or more. Be as specific as possible about each individual action YOU took to finish the project, meet the deadline, take advantage of opportunity or avoid disaster for your team and organization. It is acceptable to talk about what you did in the context of working within a team but, be very specific about what YOU did to contribute to that team’s success. This is the time to brag about I. What did you do that you are really proud of? Take your time with this section and remember, that that these are your notes for your eyes only. Write down some notes and put them away for a bit if you have time. Your brain will continue to try to remember the details of each accomplishment and you can come back to your notes and fill in the details. This is an exercise for you to remember the details that you may have lost over time so that you can speak about them easily and confidently in an interview situation. You are not going to use these notes to prepare scripted answers, but if you put effort into this portion of preparation, you will be able to quickly and confidently come up with examples of when you have DONE. You will be able to relate those examples to any question that they ask you.
4. Result
In the last section of each accomplishment tie it all together with a few bullet points describing the result in as concrete business terms as possible. You should talk about what could have happened if you had not found or fixed the problem expertly or the number of days of work you saved on the project or implementation. Perhaps you can document the money made or saved by taking advantage of an opportunity or streamlining a process or procedure. You want to demonstrate that you understand how the results of your work affect the success of the business.
You probably will not have an interview where you are asked the perfect question and you are prepared to recite back one of these 5 accomplishments. The purpose of this exercise is to help you remember the details of the things you are proud of in your career. Writing these accomplishments down will help you remember the specific skills you used, and tools you employed, to solve that problem, meet that deadline or take advantage of the opportunity. You will be able to give examples of how you used those skills and tools in the past and how you can use them again to the benefit of your new employer.
Getting Ready to Learn About Them
Your questions should fit into three buckets:
1. Questions about the company, job, nature of the work, culture, etc.
These questions should be based on your knowledge of the job description, company research and any news articles about the company you have been able to find. What were you not able to find that you want to know? What peaked your curiosity and passion that you want to know more about? Interviews are not the time to ask about compensation, benefits, opportunities for promotion, flexible work arrangements and time away from work. At this point, in the process, you want the interviewers to feel like this is the only job in the world for you and that you are not just looking to get a foot in the door to move onto another role. Interviewers should believe that you are most interested in the job, company and work and not salary or benefits. You can get all of the answers to those other questions when you have received an offer and you are the decision maker.
2. Questions about your potential manager and other interviewers.
The number one factor you should be using to assess a new position is the quality of your new leader. Your manager is going to have direct effect on your career by influencing how much you learn, grow and get exposure to new challenges. Come up with some good questions for them about them. Find their profile on Linked In if possible and study their background.
Why did they work for the companies they did?
Why did they choose to come to this company?
Why do they choose to stay?
What are their biggest challenges in the next 6 months? The next two years?
How do you hope that I can assist you with those?
Ask these same questions of other managers or future co-workers that you are given the opportunity to meet. The information you gather will be invaluable in helping you understand the culture of the company, the team and the personalities of the people you will be working with. Good decisions are driven by good information and this is great information to help you decide whether this is the right company and job for you.
3. Questions to determine if the employer thinks you are a good fit and if not, why?
Wouldn’t it be nice to walk away from an interview with a good understanding of where we stand as a candidate in the mind of the employer? These questions are direct and are usually reserved until the end of the interview when both parties have had a chance to ask and answer all questions. If you are interested in the job at the end of an interview, ask for feedback but demonstrate your interest first. You want to ask these questions at the time of the interview because it gives you a chance to correct any misconceptions they had about your experience and gives you a second chance to address any question they had that you might have misunderstood. It is almost impossible to change those perceptions later.
Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I am very excited about this position because… (list the things you learned about that excited you).
I want this job and am ready to move forward. What is the next step? Will we be moving forward to that step?
Is there anything you see in my background or learned from our discussion today that you think would keep me from being successful in this role?
Is there any additional information that I can provide that would help you make your decision?
If you do your homework on yourself, your interviewers and the job you will be the driver’s seat when it comes time to accept an offer. At the very least, you will understand why you didn’t get an offer and can better prepare yourself the next time. Be prepared to be the decision maker.