Career Planning:

Interviews
  

 compliments of FutureVisions^SM

Check Your Attitude

We offer a new approach to thinking about your work. What does that have to do with interviewing? Everything ­ because the attitude you reveal about your work in an interview tells an employer how you will likely tackle the job he wants to hire you to do.

Employers want workers who can focus on doing their work. After all, we spend much more time doing our work than doing interviews. But then, so do managers who interview prospective employees. Interviewing is really a very small part of our work lives. To get an employer's attention, focus on your job and your work, not on the interview.

Learn to see yourself not as a job seeker, but as a good worker: is the way an employer wants to see you. If "I'm here to get a " is the attitude you project in the interview, you will lose. Employers aren't in the business of giving out jobs. They're in business to produce a profitable product or service. And during an interview you want to act as if you're a person who's there to deliver profitable work. That attitude will make an employer hire you.

Because employers are not consciously aware of this, your attitude is critical in leading them to a positive conclusion. A powerful work attitude will help you to talk with an employer about doing and winning a job; it will also help you to be effective worker the employer will want to keep. And perhaps most important, this attitude reveals that you accept responsibility for proving your worth.

Responsibility

In too many areas of our lives, we give up responsibility for things are important to us, either out of habit or because someone offers us an easy way out. We like quick solutions. We want someone to tell us what the rules are so that we can follow them. Many job hunters blindly follow someone else's rules as they conduct their job search.

They believe that if they follow all the rules set up by personnel jockeys - reading ads, sending out CVs, sitting through interviews, and answering questions - they will be on the way to their next job. This kind of job hunter is deceiving himself. By relinquishing to an interviewer the responsibility for deciding whether a job is right for him the job hunter diminishes his own power.

Here's how a responsible job hunter would view an interview: I will not let someone interrogate me so that he can decide whether I can do a certain job. I will decide whether I can do that job before I meet with the interviewer. I will attend the interview so that I can show him what I can do and he can see why he needs to hire me. That's how I will demonstrate my respect for him and his business.

Job hunters respond to want ads because it's easier than identifying good companies and calling on managers who might need help. Job candidates sit and answer questions because they don't know enough about the job to stand up in an interview and demonstrate that they can do it. The consequence of this atti­tude-"you figure out if this job is for me"-is that job hunters leave responsibility for their careers up to employers. Good employers don't want this responsibility.

Be the Right Candidate

The suggestions you will encounter in this section will not only help you to be the right candidate for a particular job, but also help you to be a good worker. If you want to meet the manager on his terms and at his level, and have a meeting of the minds with the employer rather than get interviewed by him, it is vital that you focus on the work you do. You can't do this if you're busy trying to beat the interview and get the job. You can only do it if you convince the manager that your goal is to do the work.

In selecting an employment opportunity, keep in mind that not all jobs will be "winnable" for you. Don't delude yourself. You have to be realistic. Ask anyone who has gone on five or ten inter­views. How many offers did he get? If most interviews weren't a waste of time, the job hunter would have five or ten job offers to show for his trouble.

Most interviews are a waste of time because they are the wrong interviews. People typically go on interviews simply because they are invited. It takes a lot of research and a lot of thought to identify the right interviews to go on. If you go on the wrong interview for the wrong job, nothing will help you except luck. When someone tells me they went on an interview but did not win an offer, I always ask the same two questions: "Was it the right job? How do you know?"

Beware of claims that special interview techniques are the key to job offers. Some "employment experts" would have you believe that your interviewing skills are as important as your work abilities, and that with the right interview skills you can handle any interview. Their claims miss the point: companies seek people who can do the job, not people who are expert at doing interviews for any job that comes along. I urge you not to try to get as many interviews as you can; in fact, I suggest that you do the opposite: go on fewer interviews. Don't be a clever candidate. Be the right candidate.

The path from being "the right candidate" to "a good worker" lies in your understanding of the difference between someone who is out to get a job and a worker who is out to do a job. This is the single most important distinction between a rejected job hunter and a successful one.

Don't Play Games: Do the Work and Win the Job

If you've already studied up on interviewing techniques, you're pobably focusing too much on the interview process and too little on the work you want to be hired to do. Interview skills are not work skills. People often are hired just because they are clever interviewees. All that proves is that some employers are as haphazard about whom they will hire as job seekers are about whom they will interview with. Good luck to you and to the person who hired you if you get your job this way. You'll both need it. More and more, managers tell me that there is little correlation between how well a candidate interviews and how well he does on the job. Lots of sharp interviewees turn out to be poor workers. Eventually, they end up paying the price by starting their job hunt again.

There's nothing wrong with preparing to meet someone and preparing to answer questions. But you will sell yourself short if your preparation is focused more than 10 percent on the formalities of interviewing. Ninety percent of your preparation should be spent on answering the  Four Vital Questions; that is, on understanding the employer's business, your skills, and your ability to do the work.

Does this mean that you must do more than read this book if you want to succeed at your next interview? That's exactly what it means. If you spend a few hours reading and studying the ideas in this book, you should spend several days studying the job for which you are applying. We cannot teach you how to interview for the specific kind of work you do. Ideally, there would be a special interviewing section for every occupation; but there is not. You have to do that research for yourself.

Interviews are not stage shows; you won't be expected to do tricks. Consequently, you won't find us recommending a collection of fancy techniques designed to impress an interviewer who is more interested in style than substance. This is not to say that some interviewers won't expect a contrived performance from you. But in such interviews, it is up to you to turn a sideshow into a professional problem-solving meeting. Clever tricks won't accomplish that. Solid, commonsense business skills will enable you to put a' bad interview on the right track. The same skills will help you to terminate an interview that is going nowhere fast.

Nothing is more frustrating to a good manager than a candidate who sits and spouts rehearsed answers to his questions; therefore, I will not offer you the "right" answers to "typical" interview questions. No interview is typical, unless you let it become so-and then you lose. It’s worth knowing about these typical questions and answers but an interview should never be a rote rehash of every other interview-otherwise, why not just hand the interviewer a copy of those pages? It isn't a game. You want to stand out, remember?

You can improve your chances of winning the right offer for the right job by focussing on the work. This attitude will make you the most powerful job candidate the employer ever meets.

Interviews

Too many workers go on interviews for the sake of going on interviews. Job hunters interview without knowing anything about the job, the company or the problems the employer needs solved, other than what they read in the want ad. They then expect to b e given a jo b because they sat and answered questions, not because they arrived at the interview with some well-thought-out solutions to the employers’ problem. Maybe you still believe that you go on the interview to find out about the job and so the interviewer can find out about you? No.

The next time your boss asks you to meet with him/her to discuss a new project, are you going to sit like a bump on a log and wait for him/her to figure out whether you have the smarts to do the work? Or, are you going to take the initiative and SHOW how you are going to get this project done on time and within budget?

Are you going to act like someone off the street who has no idea how to tackle the project? Or, are you going to act like a trusted employee who has done his homework and is ready to take this project off the manager’s hands? Now ask yourself why you would do anything differently for a meeting with your FUTURE boss to discuss anew job with his company? Think about what you can do for your next employer.

When you walk into an interview, it has to be for a job that you carefully selected – a job that you are ready and able to do. You have to take responsibility for controlling the interview and for helping the employer break out of the traditional interview process. Don’t wait for the employer to figure out whether you are worthy of the job. You are not there to be interrogated. You are there to solve the manager’s problems. You are not there to do the interview. You are there to do the job.

Here's an example. In the middle of an interview, Jan stood up and walked to the door. She led the manager who was interviewing her to the trading floor, telling him she was going to show him what she could do. She worked the floor for half an hour, with the manager in tow. He made her an offer right there and then.

Turn your interview into a meeting between two people who share a goal and who are motivated to explore how they can work together to get a job done in the best way possible. Approach your interview as an opportunity to solve problems and demonstrate your skills. Spend your next interview doing your job in the company of someone with whom you may decide to work for the next several years.

Respect the Employer's Power - then TAKE CONTROL

If you want an offer, you have to control the interview. You must rise up and reveal your power (but with respect). How? Make it your responsibility to ensure that the needs of the employer are met. Don't wait for him to do it, because if his needs are not met, he will blame you.

As soon as you have shown the employer that you are the person who can meet his needs, the power in the interview will tip in your direction, because you will have made him need you.

Ultimately, the act of doing the job in the interview gives you power because it reveals that you can satisfy the employer's needs. His challenge now is to hire you. If some of what follows sounds obvious, bear with me. Ideas that contain truth are usually simple and they sound correct. These ideas are often the most difficult to assimilate into the way we think because we are so accustomed to thinking another way.

Interviews did not become senseless and unproductive overnight. It took employment experts years to program us to waste one another's time by chasing inappropriate "opportunities." Creating a powerful approach to interviewing involves relearning some basic skills. In particular, it is important to understand the subtleties of how people communicate about the funda­mental topic of working together as employer and employee.

This brings us to a simple, straightforward strategy for interviewing that works. A candidate needs to accomplish four tasks to succeed in an interview:

1. PROVE to the employer that you understand the job to be done.
2. DEMONSTRATE that you can do the job.
3. DEMONSTRATE that you can do the job the way the employer wants it done.
4. SHOW how the company will profit from hiring you.

 Summary

There is an enormous distinction between "doing work" and "having a job." There is likewise a distinction between hiring the right person to do work and filling a job. The employment system is not geared toward hiring anyone to accomplish work that needs to be done. Only an actual hiring manager can do such hiring. When a bureaucratic infrastructure gets in the way, all a company can do is fill jobs. The infrastructure simply does not know the work the way the manager and the worker know it. As a result, the wrong people are hired altogether too often, and some of the best people for a job don't get hired.

The system is not sophisticated. It follows a simpleminded set of rules that, as a job hunter, you can easily beat. Cut to the core of what hiring is all about: helping the employer be more successful by doing what you do best -profitable work. When you can do this, the system can't touch you. Individual hiring managers need your help. Just make sure what you're offering is help - and that you're not wasting their time.

1. Take control of the interview.

Carefully select the right companies, the right managers, and the right jobs. Talk only to the manager who needs to hear what you have to say. If you're ready to walk in the door and be expert at solving a manager's problems, then he'll always be ready to talk to you. Know your value. You will never have to impress a personnel jockey again.

2. Master your attitude.

Don't be someone standing lamely in line waiting for a job, amidst competitors who have no idea what the employer really needs. Be ready to act like an employee by demonstrating your ability to do the work.

3. Master the information.

No one will prepare you to perform this compelling demonstra­tion. You've got to do it on your own. You must gather and master the information you'll need to solve the problems the employer is facing. For every personnel jockey who doesn't understand the work you do, there's a hiring manager who cares about nothing but the work you do. Be totally prepared to address this manager. Have something valuable to say and be ready to follow up with that demonstration.

4. Do the job to win the job.

In essence, you are tackling a project as you do on any job. You must impress the employer just as you would want to impress your boss-with your ability to deliver, to do the job.