7 great tips for rocking the interview and getting the right job (for the interviewee)

Interviewing is one of the most stressful activities imaginable for most people.  One of my clients actually moved to mainland China because she hates interviewing so much that she has a habit of taking the first job offered to her.  She became a client after realising how much she hated living in China and that she needed help feeling more confident with interviewing skills.

Most people don’t feel confident because they are not adequately prepared.  Here are some easy tips to help you become more prepared and to nail every interview you go to.

1. Research the company

• What does the company do?  What are their major products and services?
• Who are their competitors?
• What opportunities and challenges are ahead of them (and how you can help)?
• What is the press is saying about them (a quick Google search or search in your local paper can tell you that).
• What is the “word on the street” about them?
• What is their financial position?

2. Research the interviewer

• Do you know someone who works in the company?  Find out what you can about the interviewer and drop little hints throughout the conversation that shows you’ve done your research.
• Look them up on Linkedin to familiarise yourself with their background.
• See what Google has to say.
• Look at their Facebook account (if it’s public).

3. Know how to answer their questions

• Statistics show that people who “win” interviews take between 30 seconds to 2 minutes to answer a question.  Anything less than 30 seconds is not thorough enough, anything more - you’re waffling - no matter how interesting you might think you are, an interviewer loses attention (and patience) after about 2 minutes.
• Prepare your answers in advance.  Get a list of Behavioral Based Interviewing questions from the Web (there are loads out there and most interviewers don’t put a lot of thought into their questions so you’ll find 80% of what they will ask you from one of these lists of questions), choose 10 questions that you might ask if you were interviewing you for the role and write out your answers. 
• It’s very important to write your answers out so you can recite the details comfortably in a stressful situation.
• It’s also important to answer these questions with real, live examples of what you’ve done in the past and not what you would do.
• Know your strengths and your weaknesses and don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  There is nothing worse than drawing a blank to this question.  It’s one of the most common questions asked and being unprepared for it demonstrates a total lack of preparedness.
• Don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  Very few people do this well, it’s trite and inauthentic.  After all, everyone has weaknesses, no one is perfect. 

4. Know how to ask your own questions

• Companies find out as much or more about you by the questions you ask them than by how well you answer theirs.
• Challenge yourself to ask questions no one else may have thought about.  Business related, thought provoking questions.  Pre prepare based on your research.
• Ask the interviewer about their background, people love to talk about themselves.  It may also give you insight into the company culture.
• Determine the qualities you want in a boss and ask them questions about how they would handle situations.  Interviewing is a 2 way conversation.

5. Don’t let nerves get the best of you!

• Prepare the night before so you know what to wear, where you are going and where your notes are.
• Make sure you’ve got the name(s) (spelled correctly!) of the people you’re meeting!
• Show up early!
• Make sure you ask for a glass of water (don’t bring your own bottle) so that you can stall or pause as you’re structuring your answers!

6. Make a great first impression

• With a great smile, direct gaze and firm handshake.

7. Follow up

• Ask for the job (even if you don’t want it, you can always turn it down later!)
• Send both Email and Snail mail thank you notes.
• Give detailed feedback to your recruiter including positives, negatives, your interest on a scale of 1 - 10 and how the opportunity compares to any others you may have in the pipeline.
• Follow up with the company 1 day after they tell you when they will make their decision or take the next step.

If you follow all of these steps I promise you’ll never be nervous again and you’ll have much greater success moving through the process and securing those offers!

Interested in more job search strategies?

You're only looking for one (job that is)

A participant from the US in last week's free call on Career Management and Job Search issues has been out of work for awhile and I asked her what she'd been doing to find a job.  She replied by saying that there were 'no jobs in (her) industry!' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. 

I wanted to laugh because there are always jobs available.  No matter how bad the economy is, people are being hired every day.  Cry because this is the prevailing attitude of so many people I see.  And as a result, they just give up.  And the saddest thing I've ever seen, is someone who has given up: given up on themselves.  Given up on their resourcefulness. 

I've worked with people professionally for over 30 years.  First as a waitress (Red Lobster and Swensens), then as a Front Desk Clerk in a hotel (The Hermitage Hotel in Nashville), then an Accountant with with a Big 4 CPA firm (pauses for flashbacks), then as a Recruiter with several firms and finally as a Career Coach, Speaker and Trainer.

If there's one thing I've learned from 30 years of working with people it's that they are endlessly resourceful once they put their mind to something.

And, in this economy resourcefulness is just what's needed.

So think of your job search as a target.  Your Bulls Eye is obviously a role in the same industry you've worked in.  But let's say that's not available to you.  Your particular function is being phased out for some reason.  Go to the first circle away from the bullseye.

What other functions can you do within your industry?  No job is strictly one dimensional.  People have been asked to do more with less and have been actively cross training for the last 20 years.  What other skills could you bring to the table doing something that is needed in this economy?

No ideas?  Okay, let's say for arguments sake, that there really are NO jobs in your industry.  For some reason, your particular field was made completely obsolete overnight by some new fangled invention that just hit the market.  That's actually the ONLY way that there would be NO jobs available, by the way.  There may be fewer jobs and they may be in different geographies, but there are always SOME jobs.  You may need to employ different strategies to find them, but they are out there.

Then what?  Time to move to the second circle around the Bulls Eye.  What other industry would LOVE to hire someone with your skills?

Still no options there?  I find that extremely difficult to believe, but okay I'll run with it.  Maybe it's time to think about what you would you have done had you not trained to do what you've spend the last X years doing?  Is that an option now?

How about owning your own business?  Statistics  show that more start up SUCCEED in a down economy than a buoyant one. 

Seriously, the target actually doesn't have to get that big to find a niche you can slide into if you are flexible, persistent and use multiple strategies to source work.  

So, if something isn't working (job search strategies, industries or functions you are targeting) try something else.  And if that doesn't work try something else.  And if that doesn't work, try something else.  See where I'm going with this?

I will always remember the advice I was given as a young accountant (pauses for more hideous flashbacks) looking for my first role outside of the Big 4.  I had applied for a job with Coca Cola. I remember being so excited when I got a call from the recruiter handling the role.  I put on my pin stripe suit and little silk bow tie (hey, it was 1991!) and went to meet him.

He informed me that I was one of 400 people that had applied for the same job and was probably one of the least qualified to do it.  My face just dropped. 

Then he looked at me and said the words I will never forget.  'Don't worry, it doesn't matter how many hundreds of people are looking for jobs.  You're only looking for one.  You may not get this one, but as long as you don't give up, you'll find one that's meant just for you.' 

I found my job within a month.  Those words changed my life because they changed my attitude.  And attitude is everything.  

So don't give up.  Get flexible and stay persistent.  Resourcefulness will prevail.

4 Critical Skills Everyone Must Master for a Great Career

I introduced the third step in the Critical Path to Career Management (which I am now calling The Critical Path to a Great Career!), “Mastering Your Skills”, in my last newsletter.  As I mentioned, these skills actually fall into 3 different categories; Career Management Skills (what the Critical Path is all about), Job Search Skills (taking control of your job search not not relying exclusively on recruiters) and the 4 Critical, Non-Technical skills essential for every business person regardless of function.  

Today I’d like to talk about the 4 Critical, Non-Technical skills.  What are these 4 skills and why are the non-technical?  I’ll answer the second part of this question first.

Every profession, every function within an organisation, has technical skills that are required to do the job.  Accountants need accounting skills, Doctors need medical skills, Executive Assistants need secretarial skills, Chefs need cooking skills.

But over and above these technical skills, it is essential for everyone to master 4 additional skills what I call the Critical, Non-Techical skills.  And in my 16 years as a recruiter and now an Executive Coach and Trainer, I’ve seen many more people become derailed by not sufficiently mastering these non-technical skills than by not keeping up with the very skills required to do their job.  Sounds counter-intuitive, I know.  But 16 years of experience does not lie.

What are these Critical, Non-Technical skills?  They are, in no particular order (with the exception of the last one that I will talk about down the page): Technology, Managerial Skills, Communication and Innovation / Strategic Thinking / Problem Solving.

Technology

Technology is the first skill on this list.  Not because it’s the most important, but because it’s the most obvious.  Whatever our function, new applications are automating what we do and helping us become more efficient and (hopefully) more effective. 

For some professions this is very obvious.  Accountants, for example have been able to automate most of the routine tasks, making life easier for both them and their clients (internal or external).  The advantage of learning technology is less obvious for other functions.  Why would a Chef, for instance, need to learn the computer?  There are actually plenty of things that are now automated in the kitchen, from menu planning to staff scheduling, to ordering.  Not to mention the fact that Chefs typically deal with a lot of outside people, necessitating the use of email. 

There are very few professions that technology does not touch.  In order to stay on top of your field you will need to stay on top of the latest technological developments.  And for those especially technologically savvy individuals out there, I’ll go one step further and advise you to become a super user in your particular software.  It’s one of the best ways to make yourself indispensable to your employer.  No one wants to let the ‘go to’ person for their system go.

And, by the way, Social Media / Web 2.0 applications such as Linkedin, Twitter and even Facebook now apply to this category.  How are you using social media?

Managerial Skills

Whether or not you manage staff, managerial skills are extremely important.  Whether it’s managing projects, resources, finances or simply your own time, you can’t live without solid managerial skills.

Communication

Until the latest economic downturn I used to say the most important of these non-technical skills was communication.  But it’s more than simple communication: I like to call it information delivery.  More accurately, it’s information analysis and delivery.  It’s the ability to communicate your area of expertise into laymen’s terms - in both oral and written form.   Information sharing is a key aspect of any role today. Most professionals must be capable of not only delivering their KPI’s, but also interpreting them for external audiences to see the business implications of them. The complexity of today’s business environment underscores the need for good communication and other soft skills such as diplomacy and persuasion.

Mark T. Bradshaw, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School says that the most successful individuals in this new environment will be those who possess the applicable technical skills and interpersonal skills in nearly equal measure.  He goes on to say, “The ability to communicate concepts is key.  And the bottom line is the way people communicate will determine how high they can rise in their organizations.”

Innovation / Strategic Thinking / Problem Solving.

Like I said, until a few years ago I used to say that Communication was the most important of these skills.  However, I believe it has been surpassed by the ability to solve problems.  Sometimes the ability to solve problems is masked as innovation or strategic thinking, but the purpose is the same.  The conversation goes something like this, “We haven’t seen a problem like this before.  We have no idea what needs to be done, but we need you to figure it out and to do something about it.” I think we can all agree that we are facing more problems, both business and otherwise, than we have before in our lifetimes.  And, especially since the downturn, everyone is being asked to do more with less resources.  Everyone is being asked to solve increasingly complex problems at increasingly lower levels of the organisation.

Mastering These Skills

Most of the time it is quite easy to develop and keep on top of your technical skills: those essential skills you need to do your job.  More often than not though, these non-technical skills are more of a do it yourself project.  You may or may not be given the opportunity to learn these skills from your employer.

How do you go about developing them, then?  Actually, it’s easy enough, but it takes life long education.  Taking courses through your local universities or functional trade organisations is a great start.  But there are also more non-traditional routes such as Toastmasters, Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins courses.  Specifically in the area of problem solving I quite like the work of “The School of Thinking” developed by Australian, Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson after working with Edward deBono in New York.  There are many tutorials on the website on critical thinking.

Practicing These Skills
 
But education is not enough.  If you want to get fit it’s not enough to go to the gym and simply study the gym equipment.  You must actually use it.  Flex that muscle and apply what you know.  Volunteer for project leadership roles or interim operational roles.  Volunteer for additional responsibility in the absence of a co-worker.  Volunteer for cross-training opportunities.  You can also volunteer outside of work as well: at your kid’s school or at your church.  Take every opportunity you can to learn and practice these critical skills.

But what happens if you don’t develop these skills?  One of the saddest experiences I’ve had in the 15 years I recruited was getting a call from the Country Manager of one of my clients.  I’d never spoken with this guy in my life, but he knew I’d done considerable work for his company.  He wanted to let me know that he was going to make his CFO redundant.  This conversation I might add, happened a full two months before the CFO knew himself.  He wanted me to know so that I could look out for other opportunities for the CFO.  Why was my friend, for indeed the CFO had become a friend as well as a client, retrenched?  What did his successor have that he did not?  I quote the country manager, “commercial sensitivity”.  The ability to drive the business forward, not simply to account for it. 

My friend the CFO was a great technician and a tremendous manager, his staff loved him.  What he was not was a strategic thinker.  He had not developed those skills (or found someone to work under him whom he could leverage off of) and it cost him his job, and ultimately stalled his career.

In the 15 years I was a recruiter, I’ve seen a number of situations like this one.  I used to get calls every day from candidates whose skill sets had become too narrow to take the next step up.  Candidates who had become comfortable in their roles and didn’t up skill themselves, who were then faced with either having to look for another role due to redundancy or wanting to look for another role due to boredom. 

The dirty little secret that recruiters don’t usually share is that they can usually only help 1 out of every 8 to 10 candidates who walk through their door.  Believe me, that 1 candidate has done exactly what I’m going to suggest you do… waste no time in mastering these skills.  Look for training courses to help you develop them and volunteer opportunities to help you practice them. Not only will keep your career on track this way, you will also become infinitely more valuable to your employer and infinitely more marketable to subsequent prospects.




Step 1 on the Critical Path: Set Your Course (How to determine your 3 - 5 year career plan)

In the 15 years that I was a recruiter I saw many talented and able individuals go from strength to strength in their careers.  People who successfully navigated their way to the Board Room, managed to build a brilliant career around their family life, or opted for a life of excitement, variety and travel, but never lost site of where they wanted to head professionally.  Unfortunately I saw many more, equally talented and able individuals plateau, or senselessly slide backwards as they neared their goals. 

I studied the differences between these two groups of people and I distinguished 4 things that the first group did differently than the second.  These 4 distinctions became the 4 steps on the Critical Path of Career Management.



The First Step: Set Your Course

Whether you are contemplating changing jobs, completely reinventing your career or you just want to ensure that you reach your goals without being sidetracked, the first and most important step on the Critical Path is to Set Your Course.

What do I mean by that?  I mean that it is imperative that you have a 3 - 5 year career plan. 

When I started in recruitment in 1994 I used to help my candidates figure out what job they wanted to retire from and then set their course for that job: realistically look at where they are now, and then ‘mind the gap’ between there and where they wanted to end up.  What jobs do they need to take as interim steps?  What skills and abilities do they need to master to get there?

Now, back in 1994 that advice may have been appropriate.  But in 2010, with all of the changes we are experiencing in market conditions, technology and globalisation, you cannot possibly know what job you want to retire from.  In fact, depending upon your age, it may not have been invented yet!

Does that give you license not to plan?  Absolutely not!  All this means is that the time frame just got shorter.  That’s why I now advise people to set their course for a 3 - 5 year time frame.  But it’s absolutely essential that you do know where you want to be in 3 - 5 years.  If you don’t, you may be tempted simply to walk through doors that are opened for you, without giving much thought to where they will ultimately take you.



The Destination is Far More Important than the Vehicle

Unfortunately most people begin with the wrong question when starting this process.  If they do any planning at all, most people start by trying to determine which job to take or career path to go down. 

I liken this to planning a holiday and spending most of your time to deciding whether you want to take a plane, a train or a car to get to your destination, as opposed to really thinking about whether that destination is really where you want to go!

Even though you can’t realistically plan your professional goals much past 3 - 5 years, you can certainly plan your lifestyle goals.  And these goals are what I refer to as your destination.  What do you want to create from your professional life?  How does your professional life fit into your personal life. 

So take a step back and ask bigger questions.

Questions like: 

• Do you want to get to the Board Room (i.e. reach the most senior levels of management or leadership)?  Do you want to manage your career around your family?  Do you want to be able to do different things, live and travel different places and fill your life with excitement and variety?
• Where do you want to live (country, city, split your time between countries or constantly be on the move?)
• Do you want to work virtually, be part of a team or both?
• What type of people do you want on your team?
• Are you more comfortable with a routine or set job description or do you want to have the freedom and responsibility of ‘making it up as you go’ as long as you achieve your KPI’s? 
• Do you want to work for someone else or be your own boss?  Or do you want the best of both worlds by having an autonomous role in an established firm, giving you the security of a regular paycheck?
• What are your ultimate monetary goals and how do you want to get there?
• How many hours per week do you want to work?  Or is that even an issue...if you’re doing what you love there’s really no reason to talk about work / life balance...it’s all part of the one.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to start you thinking about your own goals...what’s important to YOU?

And remember, these goals may change over time.  Your 3 - 5 year plan may be part 1 of an overall plan that will lead you towards your ultimate lifestyle.  Note here I say ultimate lifestyle and not ultimate job.

When I work with clients I use a tool that helps them really get to the heart of these questions.  It’s a deck of 52 Career Values Cards that help you determine what is really important to you professionally. 



Now for the Vehicles

Only after you’ve made some decisions about they lifestyle you want to create and what you want to achieve professionally is it appropriate to look at different options (or vehicles) that can get you to your destination. 

Now it’s time for another set of questions:

• Can you accomplish these goals doing the job you’re in currently?  Maybe with a few minor changes (working part-time or from home part or all of the week)?
• Could you achieve your outcomes by doing the same function in another company or industry?  And beware, the grass may NOT be greener.  The next article in this series will deal with finding your passion in your current job instead of continuously chasing windmills to find a job you can be passionate about.
• Or maybe, you do you need to look at other career options?

If you do need to look at changing jobs or careers drill down further and ask yourself:

• How do you want to spend your time in your job (be as specific as possible)? 
• What is your current expertise or training?
• Are you willing to retrain?  If so, how long do are you willing to spend?
• What jobs or careers intersect what you love doing and what your expertise is in (or will be in)?
• What kind of work do you want to do? 
• If you’re going to remain employed, what kind of company do you want to work for?  What do they do?  What are their values?  What is their culture like?
• What type of staff does this company have?  Who are their customers?
• How far is it away from home? 
• What hours do you want to work?
• What else is important to you?

Again, the Career Values Cards will answer a lot of these questions for you...but it really takes some brain storming.  At the end of this process you should come up with 3 - 5 options or vehicles (steps to take within your own company, jobs or careers) that you can use to meet your goals (reach your destination) that you can then choose between.

But How Do I Decide?

This process can take a lot of thought.  Do as much research as you can on the various options by talking to people within those jobs or companies.  Get a clear idea of what their lives are like on a day to day basis and then do your Decision Matrix.

What’s a Decision Matrix?  It looks a lot like a pros and cons list.  Each option has it’s own set of pros and cons but then goes 1 step further and assigns a value of 0 - 3 to each pro and 0 - (-3) for each con which correspond to your emotional charge on that item.  How strongly do you feel about each individual pro and con?  Then it becomes strictly a numerical exercise.  You add up all of your pros and subtract all of your cons and narrow down your options to 1 or 2.  Again, there is an example of this on my website that you can copy www.mycriticalpath.com/career-management-tools/.

Mind the Gap

If you’re going to stay in your present job great!  What skills, abilities and experience do you need to get you to your goal?  Find the gap and then mind the gap.

If you’re going to change jobs or careers that’s great too!  Now you’re finally ready to update that resume, hone your interview skills, dust off that network of contacts, make sure your online profile is robust and start hitting the phones and emails. 

At last you are ready to get into that vehicle and take it for a spin.

Unemployed Need Not Apply!

A recent CNN Money article that's getting a lot of play on the various social media sites is talking about a practice in the US to 'discriminate' against unemployed workers.  http://bit.ly/b6yV02

If you're in charge of hiring staff I'd love to hear your views on this subject.  Please comment below or feel free to email me directly.

Here was my comment on a Linkedin discussion this morning talking about the practice:

I hate to break this to everyone but this is not a new practice. I started a 15 year recruitment career in 1994 and worked in 6 cities in 3 countries prior to becoming a full-time Executive Coach and Trainer. And I can say with authority that employers have always favored employed candidates over unemployed candidates.

Do very qualified candidates get overlooked as a result of this practice? Absolutely. Does this make this practice wrong or unfair? Maybe not.

Why do I say that? Because, setting aside those candidates who are unemployed because they are not good at their jobs or did something silly to get fired (who should be at the bottom of the pile when being considered for new roles anyway), I believe that sometimes becoming unemployed is more than just bad luck or bad timing. It's a result of making bad career decisions.

Career management is a critical skill that is not taught in schools. As a result, many people simply walk through doors that are opened to them without much consideration as to where the door may lead them or how it will help them attain their professional goals. Quite frankly, only a minority of candidates that I've  worked with through the years have stopped to define their professional goals.

This can very often lead to someone being in a role they are unhappy in or not suited for...and guess who's the first to be let go?

This is why I'm so passionate about helping people manage their careers! I've seen so many people make so many bone headed decisions and completely derail themselves professionally that they end up in a downward spiral and become less attractive to employers.

For this and a few other reasons that I don't have time to go into, I don't necessarily think this practice is unfair, from an employer's standpoint.

We certainly don't need government intervention.

What we do need is education and more people taking a proactive stance on planning one of the most important things in their lives, their career. Specifically so they do not get caught out in a situation like this.