Recap of REAPRICH Steps in Order
“Practice is the best of all instructors.”
—Publilius Syrus
Don’t quit now! Review and practice to be the best you can be. Effort, grit, and practice often outperform native intelligence. Practice also allows behaviors to become natural, requiring less thought. Once you’ve practiced REAPRICH, you won’t have to stop to think about the parts of the process; it will become intrinsic to the way you conduct yourself.
Let’s review up to this point …
R: Results, E: Energy/Enthusiasm, and A: Attitude
These first three elements are inextricably tied together. When you walk in the door for your interview, you should be ready to talk about your results. The manager is either going to spend a few moments building rapport with you, or will say something like, “Thanks for coming in today. Bring me up to speed on your experience.” Your response: “Thank you for your time. I’m excited to be here!” Follow this with your practiced results statement. Make it quick—no more than ninety seconds—and concise.
As you talk, go back over the last ten years of your experience. For example, “I was number one at this company. I won an outstanding achievement award in 2012 at this organization. I built a top-performing team that won the company’s President’s Award five years prior to that, and I’ve been in the top 10 percent every year since, meaning I’m a very consistent achiever. I’ve been on the same accounts for the last fifteen years, so I have great rapport with my customers.” Remember: your results should align with the first two bullets on your résumé.
You’re going to deliver this information with energy and enthusiasm, which will be apparent from the moment you walk into the office wearing a warm smile and making eye contact with those who engage you. Because you’ve practiced, visualized success, and meditated on a positive outcome, your attitude is positive, and that shines through as well.
P: Process
Immediately go into explaining how you got to the results you just recited. What’s your working style? What makes you better? Are you independent? Do you need a lot of handholding? (I would hope not, and that you don’t say you do in the interview, though if you work better as a part of a team, that’s something you could mention.) Are you collaborative when you need to be? Do you bring teams together to talk about things? Provide the manager with the information he or she needs to feel secure that you actually achieved those results, and that you have processes in place to replicate them in your new position.
At this point, you’ll want to pause to give the interviewer a chance to ask questions about what you’ve presented so far. Answer any questions thoroughly but succinctly, then move directly on to the next step.
R: Relationships
What are the relationships you bring to the table? Who do you know that would be of value to the company? Can you bring other people with you to be part of the organization? Talk about the relationships you have, as well as your skills for building new ones, in a way the hiring manager will find exciting.
Let’s say you’ve just graduated from college and have little or no work experience. That doesn’t mean you have no relevant relationships. You might want to talk about some that you built playing sports, or perhaps via an internship you did to gain experience in a specific area. How did you differentiate yourself? Talk about what made you stand out in those opportunities, whether it was getting good grades in high school, participating in team sports, belonging to clubs, volunteering, or learning something about the company’s field. Bring up things that will help the manager understand that you know how to build relationships and open doors.
Insider Secret #9:
The most successful interview candidates aren’t necessarily the most experienced, the most educated, or the most qualified for the job. They are the best prepared.
Internal collaboration—getting people to do things for you in major companies and be part of your team so you can reach your goals—is a critical component of relationship building. You want the manager to think, “If I bring this candidate in, she’s going to get along well with the team. This person’s going to be able to forge relationships that involve bringing different parts of the organization together for approval.”
Once you have covered Results, Energy/Enthusiasm, Attitude, Process, and Relationships, and the manager has a clear sense of these things, it’s time to move to the point where you turn things around.
I: Interview the Interviewer
During this step, you’ll utilize some of the thoughtful, intelligent questions you prepared beforehand, questions that will elicit positive responses from your interviewer.
Many managers are watching for this. They want you to do it; not in a cocky or arrogant way, but with genuine interest and curiosity. It tells the manager not just that you want to know more about the business, but that you took the initiative to find out enough about the company to ask cogent questions.
You can start by saying something like, “What made you decide to join this company? What are the key points from your personal experience here or that I might not see on the website?”
Project class and be polite, but be direct in the way you pose your questions. If you know that the company has had difficulty in a certain area, avoid asking about that, even though you may have opinions or ideas about what went wrong and how to fix it. If you have genuine concerns about that issue, this is not the place to bring them up. Research it on your own and decide whether or not it’s a deal-breaker for you as a potential employee.
C: Close the Interviewer
After you finish interviewing the interviewer, you’re going to close. This is where you begin to secure the job for yourself, where you get the manager to say yes, or where the company makes a commitment to you about becoming an employee.
If the manager is not willing to commit, seems to be on the fence, or won’t give you an answer, it’s important to know why. Return to interview mode and ask probing questions. “What kind of experience do you want to see beyond the job description?” is a good one. Or, “Is there some area of specialization you feel is important that we haven’t talked about?” The manager may respond, for example, that the company needs someone with CAD experience. You may not have brought it up, but you have CAD experience. So you can say, “I started working with CAD in high school,” and give quick, solid examples of where you have used it.
That’s why probing is important. You would never have known that the manager had a concern about this area, but now you’ve covered the issue and laid any concerns or objections to rest.
Once you’ve done that, return to closing. Say, “That’s great. I’m glad I could elaborate on that for you. Are there any other areas you’d like me to cover?” If the manager says, “No, actually, I feel good about you,” that’s an opening for a close. At this point, you might sum up things by saying something like, “I really like your background and how you run this team. I think I could learn a lot from you. I’m looking to grow as a person, to be mentored, and increase my knowledge base. Are you going to generate an offer for me to join the team?”
This is a way of asking direct questions and complimenting people at the same time. Be energetic and enthusiastic but don’t fawn. As always, maintain a polite and professional demeanor.
H: Humanity
Humanity is the final step and may be as simple as giving someone a really warm handshake and smile and telling him how wonderful it was to meet with him. It could also be your beginning a discussion based on what you can derive personally about them from the walls of their office. Remember to take the focus off of yourself when leaving the interview and to visualize a positive outcome.
REAPRICH Recap Worksheet