UNDERSTANDING HOW AN interviewer thinks, and on what criteria hiring decisions are based, is an important career management skill.
No employer wakes up in the morning saying, “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood; I think I’ll hire an accountant in need of a job.” Staff is only ever added to the payroll in the belief that the additional costs inherent in a new hire will be exceeded by the contributions that hire makes to the bottom line, by earning or saving money, saving time, or otherwise increasing productivity.
An integral part of every employee’s responsibility is the identification, prevention, and solution of problems within her area of responsibility: problems that throw a wrench into the moneymaking machinery. Because these responsibilities are integral to every job, they are part of your job too. You get hired to contribute to the bottom line in some small way, to prevent any problems within your area of expertise that get in the way of this, and, when prevention isn’t an option, to solve these problems.
Whatever your job title, that job is a small but important cog in the complex moneymaking machinery of the corporation. Your cog has its own problem identification, prevention, and solution functions and must simultaneously mesh seamlessly with other cogs, working in harmony to execute tasks beyond the scope of individual effort.
There are five criteria that smart hiring managers apply to every hiring decision to help ensure a successful outcome; for you, these are the five secrets to turning a job interview into a job offer. These secrets are based on the logical evaluations that interviewers make when hiring for any job, at any level, and in every profession. Understanding the five secrets of the hire will revolutionize the way you perform at job interviews; and applying them every day in your work will propel your climb up the professional ladder on your next job and throughout your career.
Saying, “Hey, I can do this job—give me a shot and I’ll prove it to you” is not enough to land a job offer. You have to prove it by demonstrating a combination of all the skills that define your ability to do that job. You bring two sets of skills to a job:
1. You must demonstrate an ability to do the work, that you are in full possession of the technical skills required for execution of your responsibilities. And you have to show a clear grasp of the job and the role it plays in the department, as a small but important cog in the complex moneymaking machinery of the corporation.
2. You must also establish your suitability for the job. You possess a body of professional/industry knowledge that helps you understand “the way things get done in banking/agribusiness/pharmaceuticals.” These ways differ from one industry to the next. It must be obvious that you speak the language and understand the protocols of your profession.
For example, a computer programmer working in a bank has technical skills. She shows ability to do the job by demonstrating possession of the skills and how to apply them in writing good code. She shows suitability for the job by demonstrating an understanding of how the program will be used in application and why it will be used that way. That comes from a familiarity with the operations of the financial world and the terminology used to communicate within that professional community.
But wait, you say, a computer programmer doesn’t have to know banking: She can pick that up fairly quickly. It’s the programming skills that are important. I don’t disagree, but if you were hiring and you had to pick between two programmers with equal technical skills, who would you hire, the one who knew your business or the one who didn’t?
Given the transferability of certain technical skills, suitability is one of the biggest hurdles career changers have to overcome in both their resumes and in the ensuing interviews.
If you are considering a career change, you can use understanding of this first secret of the hire as part of your preparation to make that career change. Take time to find people already doing this work in your target industry/profession who can explain the mechanics of the business and the reasons for those mechanics, the professional protocols that have been developed to deal with the realities and contingencies of that world, and the terminology professionals in the field use to discuss them, so that in turn you can make the connections between your credentials and the new world in which they will be applied.
Regardless of profession or title, at some level we are all hired to do the same job: We are all problem solvers, paid to anticipate, identify, prevent, and solve problems within our areas of expertise. This applies to any job, at any level, in any organization, anywhere in the world, and being aware of this is absolutely vital to job search and career success in any field.
Once you have identified the particular problem-solving business you are in, you’ve gone a long way toward isolating what the interviewer will want to talk about. The TJD exercises helped you identify the problems that are the meat and potatoes of your work and gave you plenty of examples of your use of critical thinking skills in the problem resolution process. When you can tell stories of problems you’ve dealt with efficiently, it helps interviewers visualize you solving their problems—on their payroll, as a member of the team.
Identify and list for yourself the typical problems you tackle on a daily basis. Come up with plenty of specific examples. Then move on to the biggest, dirtiest problems you’ve faced. Recall specifically how you solved them.
Here’s a technique used by corporate outplacement professionals to help people develop examples of their problem-solving skills and the resulting achievements (you went through a similar exercise while developing your resume):
1. State the problem. What was the situation? Was it typical of your job, or had something gone wrong? If the latter, be leery of apportioning blame.
2. Isolate relevant background information. What special knowledge or education were you armed with to tackle this dilemma?
3. List your key qualities. What professional skills and professional behaviors did you bring into play to solve the problem?
4. Recall the solution. How did things turn out in the end?
5. Determine what the solution was worth. Quantify the solution in terms of money earned, money saved, or time saved. Specify your role as a team member or as a lone gun, as the facts demand.
Interviewers are impressed by candidates who ask intelligent questions about the job, because those questions demonstrate the depth of that candidate’s understanding. You can definitely help your candidacy by asking questions about the problems that lie at the heart of your job; it turns a one-sided examination of skills into a two-way conversation between professionals with a common interest. Very few candidates understand this. When you ask about the problems, challenges, projects, deadlines, and pressure points that will be tackled in the early months, you demonstrate the critical thinking skills that underlie your problem-solving abilities, which proves you will be able to hit the ground running on those first critical projects.
Show this in the way you answer questions, and in the questions you ask, and bells will ring for the interviewer; indeed, the poor old dear might drop dead and go to heaven on the spot.
Professionals are seen to be professional because they behave in a certain way. Solid possession of the transferable skills and professional values informs your judgment, opinions, and conduct; it is your embodiment of them in everything you do that does most to convey quiet professional confidence. These are the skills and values that get you hired, get you noticed, land you top assignments, and lead to promotions and raises; they enable you to succeed in all your professional endeavors. Just to refresh your memory, here are those skills and values again. Keep referring back to them—they’re one of the most valuable things you’ll take away from this book.
Technical
Critical Thinking
Communication
Multitasking
Teamwork
Leadership
Creativity
Motivation and Energy
Commitment and Reliability
Determination
Pride and Integrity
Productivity
Systems and Procedures
Showing your possession of transferable skills and professional values, with illustrative examples you give in answers to interviewers’ questions, is your passport to success at any interview. They give your answers substance and a ring of truth.
KNOCK ’EM DEAD TIP
There are seven transferable skills. Apart from the technical skills of the job, all these skills are transferable between all jobs in the same profession and all jobs in different professions. However, with technical skills, it is likely that only some of them will apply to jobs in different professions.
Motivation is one of the professional values that all employers like to see in their employees. From the employer’s side of the desk, the preference for motivated, intelligently enthusiastic candidates is roughly this:
• The motivated and intelligently enthusiastic candidate will work harder and will turn in a superior work product.
• Someone who really enjoys his work and is engaged in his profession will be easier to work and get along with, and that will be a positive influence and a welcome, happy addition to the team.
• Someone who is enthusiastic and motivated by his work is likely to have a greater understanding of the job and therefore a greater commitment to taking the rough with the smooth.
In a tightly run job race, when there is really nothing to choose between two top contenders, the job offer will always go to the most intelligently enthusiastic candidate. However, interviews are stressful situations, and when you are stressed, your defenses are up and you retreat behind a wall of stiff professionalism: The natural enthusiasm and motivations that normally are part of your professional persona are restrained.
So, the fourth secret of the hire is an admonishment to allow your natural enthusiasm for your work and for this job opportunity to shine through, rather than hide it because of interview nerves or a misconstrued sense of professionalism.
When it comes to a tightly run job race between equally qualified candidates, remember that the offer will always go to the most intelligently enthusiastic candidate. Show enthusiasm for your work, your profession, and the opportunity; it just might be the tiebreaker for your ideal job.
Teamwork relates to your ability to function productively as a member of a group focused on achieving large-scale goals. Working on a team takes patience, balance, tolerance, and an ability to assert your own personality without overpowering everyone else’s. You don’t have to like everyone on your team; but you have to be able to work with them, and that requires emotional maturity. Your willingness to be a team player and your ability to function as an integrated member of the team is critical because many of the contributions your department must make toward the smooth running of the corporate machine are beyond the scope of your individual contribution.
When you embrace and apply the five secrets, you will turn job interviews into job offers, and applying these secrets on your new job will steadily increase your credibility and visibility, simultaneously delivering greater job security, forward momentum, and marketability.
You need to have the right focus going into the interview. You are not going to the interview to decide if you want the job, because you have nothing to decide until an offer is on the table. You go to any job interview for one reason only: to get a job offer. Nothing else matters. Turning interviews into job offers is a critical professional survival skill, and of all the professional skills you possess, this one is almost certainly a weakness, and needs to be strengthened. In the following chapter, I’ll show you how to make it one of your most powerful tools.
If you read and absorb this entire section on interviewing, you will be well prepared for the worst that any interviewer can throw at you. That won’t stop you worrying on your way to an interview or waiting in the lobby. Much better that you focus on positive matters that can impact your interview performance. Here are seven meditations for before battle that will get you in fighting trim:
1. The job you are interviewing for exists to help the company make money, save money, or increase productivity in some small way. When you increase productivity you save time and money, and that makes more time to make more money. Your job fits into one or more of these categories—decide which.
2. The department you are interviewing with is a cog in this moneymaking machinery. Think through how it contributes to the overall company goal of achieving profitability.
3. Your target job is a smaller cog within the department’s machinery that contributes to profitability. When you understand how this target job relates to the department’s role, you are also able to relate your work to the company’s overriding mission: making payroll and a profit.
4. You know the experience and skills for which the company is looking and the deliverables that are expected as a result. And you know that your job exists to help the company make money within your area of expertise, by your anticipation, prevention, and solution of the problems that get in the way of the profit.
5. Look at each of the job’s requirements in turn and determine what you do with each to anticipate, prevent, and solve the problems that get in the way of profitability. You deliver on all these requirements with the way you do your job—by the way you anticipate and solve the problems that are dumped on your desk every day.
6. These issues are what your job is about, and you love dealing with them. Knowing the issues allows you to talk intelligently about the job and simultaneously gives you intelligent questions to ask.
7. When your answers are built on this awareness, you come across as informed, thoughtful, and intelligent. Tag questions about the real guts, the real challenges of the job, and you turn a job interview from a one-sided examination of skills into a two-way conversation between a couple of professionals with a common interest—this is interpreted as intelligent enthusiasm.
In every tightly run job race, when there is nothing to choose between the skills of two top contenders, the job offer will always go to the most intelligently enthusiastic candidate because that candidate will be seen to work harder and smarter, produce better results, be a better team player, and be easier to manage. That candidate is you.