Interview Questions - How to ace what you just learned

An interview is one of the more stressful events that a person can attend, it is all about talking about you and about how good you are and what you have done and where you are good and where you are bad. It can be very revealing and for the most part it is one of the most important meetings you will ever attend with people you may never meet again.   If you are like me or like any true professional you don't like touting or focusing on your accomplishments as a way to get ahead, you would hope that others recognize your accomplishments and reward you accordingly. However in the job hunt this is not the case and your accomplishments are just another list of things. Things that are said without any real proof, visible affirmation, or way to know if what is said is true.  SO here is what I believe is a winning strategy to ace the interview and provide the new potential employer with a lasting impression during your one time decisive meeting. 

First review the job description, position listing, or whatever information you have that is specific to the duties of the job. If it is not listed and you have a recruiter that has contacted you or you have contacted ask the right questions before the interview to allow you insight into how to prepare for the interview.

Here we go. First ask what the daily duties consist of? Or ask what are the common problems encountered? Then ask what is the basic overall responsibility of the position? By asking these questions we can begin the basics of our interview response and our speaking portion of the interview planning.  The goal is to plan out exactly what you intend to say, not allow the interviewer to only hear answers to questions they have canned that are an attempt to pull information out of you that relates to the job. By only providing an answer you fall into the same rating scheme as the others that have come before you. If the interviewer is not taking active notes then you will probably be forgotten or at the very least marginalized to only a few bullets about what is good….or what is bad.  SO here is how it would go.

You come into the room, you introduce yourself then you go right into answering that first question. "So tell me a little bit about yourself.". If this is the typical recruiter interview or hiring manager interview that is the start, primarily because they have to ask similar questions of all candidates to cover their legal butts and not seem biased in doing more for a specific candidate.  After that you go into a little bit about what they expect and if your lucky they ask how you can contribute. Then they may ask some canned questions about your strengths and weaknesses, maybe how you handled a problem or what you did to make your company money. Then they ask if you have any questions. FINALLY your chance to take over the interview.  This is where you turn the whole thing around, take control and show them you understand the position, know some of what their challenges are and have real experience that will help them.

Your talking piece should be centered around these items. Let them know that through your research of the company. (Really its just asking the recruiter questions) you believe that there problem with X is something that your experience with Y would help them to solve. Go into detail with how your experience and situation relates to theirs and give some good details of how that situation does have a solution and you can help.  By doing this you directly relate yourself to that position and your experience to the solution.  Doing this also gives them an impression of your drive, real world understanding of their company and details that may have been lacking through the previous portions of the interview.  If possible have two to three good examples of how YOU match their job responsibilities

Having your resume printed out and available for your own reference will help you to be able to point to the specific job and section that relates to the story of how your experience can help them.  What this does is give a longer memorable element that is not tied to their "legal" format and allows you to expand into areas that they may not be able to because of the interview constraints put on them by their legal departments.

The Person…Part 2

For my second post on "the person" I'm going to talk about, attitude. Attitude can be everything in an interview. I sat in one interview where the person I was interviewing came across OK. That’s it just "OK" that meant to me in my head that I could either hire or not and it made no difference. So I was continuing on with other scheduled interviews, and then all of the sudden this same lady came back into the area where I was conducting the interviews, waited till there was a break and walked over to me and my partner and told us thank you and handed us a card. The card was hand written, it thanked us for our time and then went on to tell us about what else she could do and how she felt she was a great fit for the position. Immediately it moved her to the top of the list, primarily because her attitude was I am going to get a job, do my best and I want to be remembered that I have the initiative to get done what needs to be done. I cannot share all of the information that she wrote in the card but it was an entire inside of a card written to describe all the good things about hiring her and thanking us. There was no bribe, no promise of extraordinary things or outright declaration of abilities that she didn't have, but it was a simple statement of I will do more, and I will do it with the right attitude. Internally this was a move from just OK to on the hire list. Of course she already had a resume that matched the basic skill requirements so that part was a given, the rest and the primary reason for the in person interview was fit with the team. All Interviews are meant to get a feel for how the person is …...in person and settle in the hiring managers mind whether someone can fit with the team. Your attitude, if you make it to the in person interview or over the phone interview should be one that portrays your willingness to get the job done. Understanding your own limitations but conveying your willingness to succeed. Of course answer all the questions but when you have the chance, just as in the hand written card, explain to the person you are speaking with how you are a great candidate, your skills are a good match and where there are shortfalls you will make up for it with initiative, determination and hard work. This gives the impression that not only will you meet the basic requirements but you will meet the "intent' of the job and that is to go above and beyond to get the job done. Your body language, tone and overall curiosity should be the primary focus points for your own "how do I act" thought process going into the interview. These areas will help you to convey a positive image. Don't slouch, try not to interrupt, and ask genuine questions about the job not the basic questions like what are my hours and how many people will I work with. Many of those things will not affect hiring and will be made available after you are hired. Asking questions about the organizational culture, is there a work life balance mentality within the company and are there specific technology's that the company is looking to move to in the future will help the hiring manager to see you are thinking about more than just working there. So the difference between just "OK" and "On the Hire List" should be the goal for everyone. Getting there is a self taught journey that we focus on when we are looking to be hired, but what isn't as apparent in the everyday work we do is the fact that we are building our resume and increasing our experience everyday. Keep in mind getting to the interview is the last step in being hired.

The Person ... Part 1

One thing about being a hiring manager that is different and exciting is the fact that you get to give someone a Job. On the other hand it is not that fun having to go through 100s of resumes looking for the right person. It means putting forth an effort to find someone that you believe will do the best job, complete the work assigned and not be a pain in the butt. How do you make this determination? Well first off almost every time I have the NEED. NEED is what is supposed to be accomplished. I NEED 1 person to do X. If I have the need I can make a pretty good determination on the skills required and then I can match up the person to the need, when I say match up the person, I mean the whole person. What is "the person" well in my experience it is a combination of two major items. First I will cover RESUME and then I will cover Interview and attitude, all in all they make up a whole. So to get started lets go with Resume. RESUME this is a document that tells your job history story. It tracks each job and the efforts (work) that you have done. Typically they are chronological and they encompass your entire work history from the time of your professional life forward, depending on where you are in your job/career lifespan it will include things from your professional career forward, SO if you had a High School job working at a Grocery Store as a check out clerk and you are 42 years old and have held multiple positions in Information Technology fields, you may not want to include this as it does not pertain to what you may want to portray as professional experience. You would however want to have jobs that relate to whatever job you are potentially applying for and so you would want anything that had a technical or IT related description or job responsibilities. When thinking of the sections of your resume you should have jobs in chronological order with the most recent job listed first. You want a Job Title, Company you worked for and date time span year to year. Hopefully without any breaks in employment. If you do have breaks in employment be prepared to answer questions about them and describe the why, the what you did, and your thoughts on breaks in employment. Another thing is if you are a job hopper, someone who has 6 month jobs then move to another and another. This would generate a question. Also the title and job listing should match. If your title is Software Engineer then you should have a lot of statements about Writing Code, Gathering Requirements and troubleshooting issues, your job write-up should match the position title. You also don't need a long drawn out job write-up but one that describes your major responsibilities. Be prepared to talk about each position with an example of something that you specifically did during each job time period. Next you should have Education. This should list your highest education accomplishment first. Whatever Degree you have with the School name, and Dates. This should list only accomplished and finished degrees, listing what you are working on should be left for conversation during the interview. If all you have is a High School diploma or GED you can skip the education section if you want and not have an education section, but again this depends on the type of resume and job you are applying for. If it is for a technical position a degree will help. The last item that you would want to include is certifications, this will help to identify the items that you have actually studied for and tested to assess aptitude in a particular specialized area. I used to think that certifications were just a good list of things that someone knew. Then the more I reviewed resumes it seemed I focused on those who had certifications more than others that were in the pile. This then led me to believe that even though the certs in my mind had marginal value they did make people rise to the top in getting more views. If you are following what I am saying is regardless of what your personal opinions are on certifications if you have them list them if they get you more views then so be it. In the next section I will post more about the interview and attitude. Bottom line getting hired is a lot about what you know and your experience but its not the only factor going into getting you that job you know you deserve. Remember your resume is the story of you and it may be the only thing a recruiter sees that they can use to make a determination if they want to talk to you more or not.