Category: interview

How to prove you are the right fit for the JOB?

Extensive experience as a Career Strategy Consultant, recruiting operations manager, writer, and developer of development of career tools has taught me that our ability to hire and retain the right consultants (or employees) and nurture them to value their talents, explain their skills, and offer resolution suggestions, is necessary to the successfully delivery of projects, and it can enhance employee retention.

In addition, teaching consultants and employees how to present their interests and career goals is an essential skill and one that is necessary to achieve one’s career goals. Working for oneself or developing one’s own business takes the fine-tuning of employee talents to another level.

Success also depends upon choosing my clients well, which helps to ensure that the job is done correctly and delivered in the agreed timeframe. Extensive experience in management roles at major corporations, small and large consultancies, and my current position helps. Writing a resume is more than cataloging skill sets and expertise. The resume is an advance picture of the person who will attend the interview. Hence all of our resume services include interview preparation.

In addition, to providing Resume Writing and Interview Preparation to jobseekers, my current projects include training managers in interview practice. These projects allow me to continue to learn from managers regarding what they seek in a resume and their goals when interviewing candidates. This combination of manager and jobseeker client interactions informs and continually updates my resume writing and interviewing training skills.

Where candidates often go wrong is thinking that they need to sell themselves at the interview. The resume has already done that, and since no one interviews an unqualified candidate, your job at the interview is to validate the fit. Let us help you by creating a resume that will parse well on ATS’ and work with you on interview preparation, so you can validate that you are the right choice/fit for the role for the team.

Be Your Authentic Self at Interviews

I recently heard a colleague tell a candidate during Interview Preparation to be her “authentic self during an interview.” This led me to muse, is there an authentic interview self? Or is the interview a performance where you need to play a prescribed role?

How do you convince someone hiring for an important project to “choose you” for this perfect of all roles? How do you appear confident and competent but a good listener and note-taker? This interview approach, while not precisely straightforward, is entirely doable. First, be your authentic self. In short, “Just do you.” This tactic may evidence some of your quirkiness, but on the plus side, there will be no surprises once you start the job.

Listen carefully to the questions asked, then pitch your responses straight down the middle. If more info is needed, the manager will ask a further question. Speak in clear sentences, which allows the interviewer to take good notes, which they will need when discussing your candidacy with others, so your responses to questions should be clear and concise.

In addition:

1) Do not embellish your competencies because you want the position or believe that the role is the next logical step in the plans for your career. This overreach approach will not entice someone to tie their career future to yours.

2) Be honest when detailing your capabilities. The role described in the interview process does not always match the job description, so we need to listen and adjust our presentation. Do you have a record of measurable success? Show your expertise using numbers and timeframes to validate your facts. Does their response to your answer mirror or validate the info in the job description?

3) Among the needed skills, products, or processes the interviewer mentions, are there any with which you are unfamiliar? Are you the fast learner everyone says they are when they interview? Or are you the courageous interviewee who asks if someone at the firm is already an expert you can tap into if you have a question?

5) When stumped for something to ask the interviewer, try utilizing my favorite “back-on-the-good-foot questions,” “Can you tell me more about XXX?” or “How are you using XXX” or “What has been your experience with XXX product? But be mindful not to deviate from being your authentic, knowledgeable, competent self. 

The secret to any successful job interview is to be yourself,  to “Just do you!” But in addition, you also need to convince the manager that you are a qualified fit for the role. This is the indescribable karma that needs to be fostered between you and the hiring manager. It is the middle ground and the elusive goal you seek, which can simply be called “Interview Success.”

The secret to any successful job interview is to be yourself,  to “Just do you!”

Consider a Mid-Late Career Wind-down Job

Changing to a wind-down-career job may help mature workers reengage in their careers. As career disinterest sets in, some workers may begin to devalue their existing employment and skills as they adjust to near retirement or an end to the fight to scale to their perception of a fulfilled career.

For some, it may mean acknowledging that they are no longer viewed or valued as growth assets to be invested in or considered for important long-term projects, promotions, or career advancement at their current employer.

Mid-Late Career or Near Retirement/Mature candidates often mention burnout, boredom, and a lack of emotional involvement in their duties at their current employer. Some try and successfully distance themselves emotionally from their current occupations and colleagues as they consider the next phase of their careers.

Many Mid-Late and Pre-Retirement candidates are leaving their current jobs and choosing some form of “wind-down” employment.” The wind-down job may be a temporary position in their field of expertise and a proper bookend to a long-standing successful full-time career. Or it may be an entirely new type of role since they may consider transitioning into a different industry or acquiring a unique skill set.

The wind-down career can be a short-term assignment or a last corporate full-time position between the end of a current job and full retirement.

As I work with mid-late career resume-writing or career strategy clients, they tell me they relish and enjoy the project-focused aspect of their wind-down career jobs. And, what they value the most is the knowledge that they are performing at the highest level, valued for their contribution, and making a difference. Wind-down jobs can be fun if you can use your transferrable skills and learn new ones.

And it certainly helps if there is a sense that you are truly impacting the organization and guaranteeing an outcome. “I am not washed-up or done,” a feisty client told me yesterday, “I have been re-purposed!”

A wind-down-career job can be just the thing to revitalize the mid-late or pre-retirement stage of your career. The point where you are “done-ish” with your career but not quite ready to “stick a fork in it.”

Communications Set Backs at the Job Interview

We tend to obsess about our performance at interviews and believe we must impress the Interviewer. We have so many things to say that we decide to resize our conversation and speak only of our skills and accomplishments.

Candidates often fail to recognize that interviews must be goal-defined and specific. Under pressure, many candidates forget to pay attention to this interview strategy. They are often unaware as they ramble about their extensive experience that they have lost their audience.

We should stop and acknowledge when we are not connecting with the audience during the interview. At times, we try to communicate in a complex style, and we forget to ask thoughtful relevant questions that, demonstrate our potential as contributing team members.

Communication setbacks at the interview may not mean that you are necessarily failing to connect personally, but it can mean that you are failing to impress that you are the right fit for the position and that you will be an excellent addition to the team.

Many applicants who believe themselves to be good communicators are often blistered with confusion as to why they fail to connect with managers at interviews, be it one person or a panel interview.

This conundrum suggests that we should try to create advocates for our candidacy for the position, and this can be best remedied at the close of an interview.

Here are two stabilizing questions you can ask before the interview ends, and the Manager says, “we’ll be in touch!”

1.      “What have been the career paths of those who previously held this position?”

If the previous incumbents been promoted to more senior roles? That could be a sign that the company recognizes and rewards high achievers and promotes from within. If you are replacing someone who left to work elsewhere, that could indicate that internal career progression could be a concern.

2.      “What are some of the challenges can I expect to face in this role?”

Here is your opportunity to get beyond the surface stuff and understand what it may be like to work at this company, or for this Manager, and what kind of circumstances you may have to battle. How honest and straightforward the Manager is in responding to these types of questions will tell you whether you will thrive in this new position or at this company.

The Logic Bully

I heard from a former colleague recently who wanted to refer a friend. She said her friend was frustrated since he had attended twelve first interviews. But his interviews were not going well since quite a few ended early and abruptly. He felt no one allowed him to sell himself and sell his ideas. You don’t say!

On my exploratory call with the potential client, he explained his ongoing interviewing struggles and apparent failure to connect with interviewers and asked how I could help. After I explained our program. He volunteered that he had an excellent interview process and pronounced, “Here is how I would like you to approach my interview preparation training.”

He then told me how he would like his interview preparation sessions arranged and what topics should be covered. I listened to the entire schooling on how to coach job seekers of his level of experience. Then he ended with, “when are you available to help me practice?”

I reasoned that I should try to escape gracefully, as he was a referral. So I ventured that I did not think we would work well together since our approaches to coaching and communication styles differed quite a bit. Plus, since he was already using his process without success, I would hesitate to utilize his process and add more casualties.

Starting again, at some speed, he explained that he was a strong communicator with excellent people skills, areas of expertise, and achievements, etc. All the while sounding like the out-of-tune brass section of a marching band for whom noise is the thing.

We ended the call with the potential client offering me time to consider his proposal to coach him using HIS methods and a second meeting.

Sadly, in his effort to sell himself and his interviewing strategy, the client morphed into a “logic bully.” And in his self-centric drive to sell himself, he became a noisy communicator who deluges others with his processes, best practices, expertise, and riotous failure to stay on topic.

The colleague who referred him called a few days later, “Do you have any advice?” she asked. Then I remembered one of my mother’s pearls and offered: “Tell him to use the door handle. He doesn’t need to kick down every door.”  

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