Interviewing the Interviewer!

Most people, when interviewing for a new job, forget the process is supposed to be a 2-way street.

It’s as important for you, as a candidate, to determine if the job, the company, the culture, and the work environment is right for you as it is for the company to determine if you’re right for them. You do yourself no favors by accepting an offer for a job that is not a good fit. It will make you miserable, your employer dissatisfied, and likely not end well.

In order to make a rational judgment as to the fit, you must have your criteria figured out in advance. Very often, when you’re in the middle of an evaluation process, it’s easy to rationalize all the things that don’t feel right to you because you want a job, any job, so much. Having a list of criteria that you created before you’re in the heat of the process helps you tremendously in determining if this role is a match, or not.

Then, it’s up to you to ask the questions, and do the digging necessary to see how well the position and the organization matches your list. No one, no company, and no position will ever be perfect. However, you will be much more aware of what fits and what doesn’t, and make wiser choices.

Possibly, due to your financial situation, you may need to take an offer you know is not a great match for you in order to pay the bills. However, in that situation, at least you are going in with your eyes wide open instead of deceiving yourself into believing you’re taking your dream job and find you’re disappointed later. Most people want to believe that any new job they take is the ‘perfect’ job for them. Know if that’s the case for you before you jump in.

So how do you determine the fit?

First, create your list.

Take the time to truly determine the things important to you…

- What kind of physical work environment suits you best?
- What characteristics are important to you in a Manager / Supervisor?
- What management style enables you to do your best work?
- Do you thrive on office politics or whither in a highly political environment?
- What are your true “values” in your job or environment?
- Do you work better as an individual contributor or as part of a team?
- Are you looking for mentorship or an opportunity to be a mentor?
- Are you ready to step up to new responsibilities or still need time to develop?
- How far are you willing to commute to work each day?
- Do you work best in a very structured environment, or with a great deal of freedom?
- Are you looking for an opportunity to be creative, or work within established guidelines?
- Do you like the buzz of a downtown position, or like outlying locations better?
- Do you prefer an environment that allows you to build relationships easily?
- Do you prefer an environment where people tend to keep to themselves?
- Do you prefer a role with a lot of contact with others, or one where you work on your own?
- Do you want to work for a company that is socially responsible, or meaningful in some way?

These, and many other questions help you craft an ideal for your personality, work styles, and preferences. Once you have your criteria, you can be much more deliberate in the interview process.

Interviewers respect and expect questions that seek out answers to those kinds of questions. A good hiring manager will appreciate your desire to determine the fit for you as much as they are determining your fit for them. They want a good match… from both perspectives.

Throughout the process, ask questions at appropriate times like…

- Describe the group I would be working with?
- How would you gage if someone has been successful in this role 6 months into it?
- Where do you see someone successful in this role going next?
- What personality characteristics tend to be most rewarded in this organization?
- What’s the difference between successful people here and ones that only get by?
- Would you say this is a very structured environment or not… can you give me examples?
- What, if any, leadership traits are you looking for in this role?
- How would you describe the company’s values?
- What do you enjoy most about working here?
- What surprised you most after you started working here?
- Tell me about your own path in the company.
…and many others.

Depending on your personal criteria, your questions will vary based on what’s important to you.

Asking these questions throughout the process has multiple benefits…

- They provide the answers you need to make an informed decision.
- It distinguishes you from other candidates that don’t ask those introspective questions.
- It shows you are thoughtful and gather good information in your process.
- It shows you’re not just desperately seeking any new job.
- It shows a sincere interest in knowing about the company, the role, and the people.

These are all good reasons to make sure you’re interviewing the interviewer as much as they are interviewing you!

The process should be a 2-way street.

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“Forget my past… I can do this job!”

“Past performance is the best predictor of future success.”

That’s a phrase many hiring managers live by when evaluating candidates for a job opening. HR Managers often preach that mantra, and it certainly is the safest route to take when they want to be sure of making a good hire.

Job seekers, on the other hand, often want the company to overlook their track record and see the unproven potential they have for a particular role. Their mantra often is “Forget my past… I can do this job!”

So, what if your past performance hasn’t been stellar, or you haven’t had a great deal of related work experience that’s required for this role? How do you stay in the running even though you’re not what they think they are looking for?

There are no “magic bullets”, however, here are some ideas and suggestions that can improve your chances…

Know your strengths and weaknesses – you can’t emphasize appropriate strengths to them well, if you’re not confident about what they are. Take the time to assess  yourself in multiple ways… for help, read: “Know Yourself!”

Gather up your applicable skills – Compile a list for yourself of the skills, traits, talents, and experiences you’ve had (in a job or outside a job) that are directly relevant to the position you are pursuing. Document specific examples and testimonials you may have received. Know what you have or what you’ve done that would be of value to the employer for this role.

Script it! – Don’t rely on your ability to ‘wing it’ when you make your case to the hiring manager. Write out exactly what you will say when presenting your qualifications. Read it, edit it, hone it, practice it, memorize it, try it out on a spouse or a friend, hone it some more, practice, practice, practice. Even if you’re someone that speaks very well ‘off the cuff’, you will be much better if you’re well prepared. Write scripts for yourself and you’ll make a better presentation.

Find the sizzle! – A great steak tastes good… but it’s the sizzle when it’s first served that really gets your taste buds interested. The same is true in an interview. The company is probably talking to multiple people that have the skills for the job. Some are likely to have a job history that backs up their claim that they will do well in this role. In order to intrigue them enough to consider you over the others, you must help them understand the value you will bring that no one else can. What makes you unique? How will you solve their problems or fill their needs better than the others? What do you offer that the others don’t?

Demonstrate professional enthusiasm! – Companies want to hire people that are passionate about their work, show initiative, show creativity, and show they want to be there. Make it clear that you are that person. Be careful not to exhibit false, or over-the-top enthusiasm, however, in a well communicated, professional way make it clear that you will bring more, do more, and contribute more each day than anyone else they are talking to.

 

Even if your resume doesn’t show the ideal background or record of success for a particular role, you can be the one they select if you can credibly demonstrate that you know yourself well, can relate appropriate skills and experiences, are well prepared, can show how you are unique, and express it professionally!

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Know Yourself!

In networking, job interviews, and in your career… self awareness is critical to success.

When people don’t really know their strengths and weaknesses, they often can’t answer questions well, sell themselves effectively, or emphasize their key qualities.

In order to help someone help you when job networking, you must know what you are looking for and be able to articulate it well. When you are interviewing for a position, you must be able to show with credibility what you know and what you do well, to be considered for the role.

Taking the time to really examine and discover your strengths, talents, and abilities will give you greater confidence and go a long way to helping you land your next position. Most people never do an honest self-appraisal and assume things about themselves that may, or may not, be true.

So, how do you do that effectively?

It should probably be done in a variety of ways…

Self Assessment – Take time to thoroughly review your career. Ask yourself introspective questions, and write out your honest answers.

What have been your wins, and what have been your set backs? What jobs have you liked the most? What tasks have you enjoyed the most? What gave you the most satisfaction? What came most easily to you? What jobs or tasks seemed most chore-like? What manager did you like to work for the most? Why? What manager got the most productivity out of you? Why? What was your greatest achievement? What caused that? What was your greatest set back? What caused that? If you were to do your career over, what would you change? What characteristics do you have the most confidence in? What characteristics have held you back?

Asking yourself these questions and more will force you to articulate the pluses and minuses of your career and your self-characteristics. Don’t assume you know what you think you know. Think through examples in your past that confirm those characteristics to you… or perhaps cause you to question them. The process may be very enlightening to you!

Reference Assessments – Find out what others really think of you. Often we don’t necessarily know how others see us and we might be surprised.

Compile a list of 4 or 5 questions to ask others you’ve worked with in the past. Questions of what they see as your strengths, weaknesses, biggest accomplishments and achievements. Send it out to 5 or 6 people that know you well enough in a work environment, and whom you have a good enough relationship that they will give you an honest answer.

Many times people are surprised to learn that previous colleagues think they have an exceptional skill or strength that they never thought they possessed. A task may come easily to you because you’ve done it so many times and you don’t see anything special about it. Others may see it and marvel at how you do it so easily and so well while they struggle with it. Be sure to know those things about yourself… get the opinions of others.

Assessment Tests – Finally, take tests that can effectively determine some of your strengths and weaknesses as well. Getting an objective determination can add credibility to statements you make in your job interview.

One of the best, and most reasonably priced, resources I’ve seen for this in recent years is a book and test called: StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths

It’s proven to be incredibly accurate, and very insightful. It will most certainly help you understand yourself and your motivations better. It will help you figure out many of the “why’s” in your behaviors, your accomplishments, and your achievements. Take the test and fill in some of the gaps in your knowledge about yourself.

 

Examining yourself in these three different ways will give you a much better understanding of what to emphasize in your conversations with others, and what to minimize.

Take the time to know yourself better. It will pay dividends in many surprising ways!

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Don’t Be A Stealth Job Hunter!!!

Are you trying to find a new job without letting anyone know you’re unemployed? Many people try, very few succeed. Especially in today’s job market, it is extremely difficult to get a new position without extensive networking!

That word seems to scare many people. In their minds it conjures up images of glad-handing Multi-Level-Marketing salespeople who wants to show their “plan” with the “perfect” opportunity for you without knowing anything about you. Or it draws memories of the brother in-law who became a life insurance agent and has been haranguing every distant family member for months to buy a new policy from him.

Those bad memories are caricatures of networking or sales, and not the image you would create by effective networking for a new job.

Don’t hide from the people that can help you! Here are some thoughts and some practical help to do it right…

Especially now, there is no shame in losing your job! Often, I hear people say they don’t tell others they are looking for a job because they are embarrassed over being unemployed. Too often they blame themselves somehow when in fact market conditions can make anyone a casualty of a lay-off. When companies are forced to make drastic cuts in their expenses, they often have to cut broadly and deeply. Often they will cut a whole department, or a straight percentage from every department. The decisions of who stays and who goes are often made very arbitrarily with the bottom-line the primary concern. Survival of the company is more important than cutting carefully with a scalpel.

Over the past 2 years, virtually everyone recognizes that no one is immune. There is no stigma to a lay-off as there may have been years ago. There is no need for embarrassment, or shame. It is what it is and generally people don’t view your unemployment as a reflection on you, but rather a sign of the times. I was told of someone recently that didn’t tell his wife that he had been laid-off for 3 weeks. He rose, dressed and left for ‘work’ each morning just as he always had so his wife wouldn’t suspect, but spent his day at a coffee shop. Now that’s stealth, and not at all a good idea.

Who do you tell? Everyone! You never know where your best leads will come from, and usually they come from the most unlikely sources. Make a list of everyone you know. Studies show that most people, on average, know more than 350 people. Create lists in groups to help jog your memory. List ALL your family members, close and extended. List friends. List ALL your previous co-workers from everywhere you’ve worked. List service providers like your doctor, accountant, lawyer, real estate agent, dry cleaner, mail carrier, etc. List other parents on your kids’ sports teams. List other parents you know from your kids’ school. List people you know at church, temple, or mosque. List people you know from former vendors, customers, trade associations, user groups, or professional associations. List alumni from your schools. Hopefully, you get the idea… make lists of everyone you know!

Then gather contact information… find where they work on LinkedIn, call the main number of the company and call them. Gather email addresses if you have them. Google their name to find something of theirs with contact information. Use resources like Jigsaw.com, ZoomInfo, or the phone book!

What do you say? That will vary with how you know them, how well you know them, and what position they hold. However, as a general rule, one thing you don’t want to say is: “Do you know of a job opening?” The vast majority of people you talk to will not know of something off-hand and then the conversation becomes awkward and cut short.

As a suggestion:

“I’m connecting with everyone I know in order to network effectively to find a new position. I realize you may not know of a specific open position in my field. However, I figure my job while I’m looking is to keep adding links to my chain of people, connecting one to another until I find the right opportunity.

I’m hoping you may be able to give me names of a couple of people that you know that would be worthwhile for me to talk to… either anyone else you know in my field, someone that you might reach out to if you were in my situation, someone that just seems to know a lot of people, or anyone you know at companies that seem to be doing well.

I’d be grateful for any specific job leads if you know of one, however, I’m really only hoping for the next couple of links in my chain.”

 

People can’t help you if they don’t know you are looking! Don’t keep your job hunt under wraps. Let everyone you know you are looking, touch base with them regularly (every 4 to 6 weeks), and keep adding to the links in your chain until you reach someone with the right opportunity for you!

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5 daily goals that will dramatically improve your job search!

As a job search drags on, it’s often difficult to keep feeling like you’re being productive from day to day.

Daily planning and daily objectives will make your job search move forward at a better pace. You never know where your best leads will come from so you need to pursue all you can.

Here are five daily goals that will make sure your job search continues to keep gaining ground in that daily uphill battle…

 

1 – Start each day by charging your batteries! As I tell people often: “Maintaining a positive attitude is one of the most important, and most difficult things to do during a job search.” A positive, optimistic attitude is extremely attractive to potential employers, and helps you keep doing all the things you need to do in your search. However, a positive attitude is easily diminished by the 'hurry up and wait’ nature of the job search process, and the inevitable set-backs.

Zig Ziglar, the well-known motivational speaker and trainer says:
"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well neither does bathing - that's why we recommend daily."

First thing each morning read something that gets you in the right frame of mind and gets you excited about the prospects you have before you. Whether it’s scripture, a motivational book, encouraging poetry, an inspiring biography, or whatever else works for you. Do not fill your mind with things that discourage you or bring you down. Things like the news, or some dark novel, or anything else that damages your sense of optimism rather than boosts it. Charge your batteries each day to get off to a good start.

 

2 – Make 2 new networking contacts. If you make only two new contacts each day; 10 per week; 40 per month, you will quickly build your number of connections to a level that will ultimately lead you to your new job. Certainly you’d like to find new connections at companies you are pursuing. However, you never know who anyone knows! You may find your grandmother’s friends each have children in hiring roles in companies all around your area. Who does your grandma know? You may find connections at companies you are interested in but the connection is not in your field. They are very valuable contacts as well.

Your question to each contact you make shouldn’t be “Do you know of a job opening in my field?”, but rather “Who else do you know that would be worthwhile to talk to?” Your objective is to build a chain of referrals from one person, to the next, to the next until you reach the person that might have the right position for you. Your goal with each contact, is to get at least a couple of additional contacts… to build the next link in your chain. Once you’ve made connections, you can stay in touch with them monthly to continue to build relationships and gain more leads and ideas.

Get at least 2 new contacts each day, and you’ll always have people to call.

 

3 – Make some kind of connection at one of your target companies. If you haven’t a list already, you should create a list of 10 to 15 target companies. These are companies at which you would most like to find a role. Each day, determine that you will connect in some way to at least one of those companies.

That connection may be a follow up email to someone you know there. It may be a phone call to a new contact that you found through LinkedIn, Twitter, a networking meeting, or from one of your new networking contacts. It may be sending a Thank You to someone else you spoke to recently at that organization. It may be asking for another contact from someone you’ve spoken to at the company before. It may be sending a coffee mug with your resume to someone you’d like to meet with and asking if you might buy them a cup of coffee.

Be creative, be professional, be well prepared, be concise, but be “Pleasantly Persistent” and make at least one contact to a target company each day.

 

4 – Do something related to your field or industry. As your job search drags on, it is easy to begin feeling out of touch with what is happening in your field or industry. As you interview for a new position, and your resume indicates you’ve been unemployed for an extended period, it becomes an obvious question to the potential employer as well… “Is this person still current?”

If you can show on your resume, and describe in an interview how you’ve made extra efforts to remain ‘plugged-in’, it will go a long way to overcoming any questions they may have.

Find free industry, technical, trade, or User Group meetings, seminars, or presentations. Look into taking a class, reading a book, working on a certification, or creating a group yourself.

In addition to keeping yourself current, most of these venues are excellent opportunities to network with people targeted to your job search. Find something related to the jobs you are pursuing each day and get ‘plugged-in”.

 

5 – Learn and apply something new for an effective job search. This site and so many others online are tremendous resources for improving your approach in your search. There are books, magazines, job search presentations, webinars, and other avenues to gain ideas and applications to becoming a more effective job hunter.

Learn how to use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites as effectively as possible. Find other tools to help you find contacts, manage your activities, or make effective connections.

Just like most anything else in life, you improve in your results as you continue to learn, practice, and apply new ideas and skills. Learn something new for your job search each day.

 

If you set out to accomplish these 5 goals each day… your job search will definitely be more productive!

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Are you willing to step off the beaten path?

A job search, in itself, is an uncomfortable activity for many people. They may have been in their last position for 5, 10, 20, or more years and the skills used in an effective job search have simply been something they haven’t had a need to develop. So being thrown into the ‘deep end’ as a result of a lay-off or other circumstance creates an immediate ‘fish out of water’ feeling.

Most people quickly fall into a routine of doing their job search the same way most everyone else does theirs… search for online job postings, apply, wait for a call, do some networking, apply, wait, repeat. The problem is, when you only do the same things everyone else is doing, it’s very difficult to distinguish yourself from the dozens, or hundreds of others pursuing the same jobs.

Those activities can become a comfortable groove to get into. At the very least, you can look around and feel like you have plenty of company because it’s the same thing everyone else seems to be doing for their job search as well. If those activities aren’t producing results for you though, you have to consider changing something in order to reach your objective.

It may feel uncomfortable to try something different… it’s outside of your comfort zone. However, you have to decide if you are going to operate only within your comfort zone, or if you are going to do what it takes to get a job! If you decide that getting a job is more important, the rest becomes easier.

An excellent book: Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0: 1,001 Unconventional Tips, Tricks and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job can give you several great ideas on how to do things differently than everyone else in order to get noticed.

When companies receive dozens, or hundreds of resumes for each job posting, each one is nothing more than a piece of data. When they see so many of them that can clearly do the job, they become indistinguishable from each other. The candidate that gets noticed and considered is the one that professionally does something different from crowd.

This book gives you excellent ideas, tactics, and strategies to set yourself apart. Things that will get you noticed, and things that will attract them to you to find out more.

Sometimes it’s something simple like mailing your resume in a Thank You card… a Thank You card is much more likely to get opened and looked at than a standard business envelope. Other tactics are more involved. Are there risks? Yes. Do these ideas take extra effort? Of course. Are they unconventional? Yes… and that’s the point. In this job market, only executing a conventional approach will rarely produce effective results.

Are you willing to step off the beaten path? Are you willing to try new things in your job search in order to make progress that has eluded you so far? Check out this book and take a walk outside of your comfort zone!

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