When it comes to interviewing, and more importantly, nailing the interview, the number of tips, tricks, and techniques you can find are nearly unlimited. As granular as we can be on the many ways you can show up well and give yourself a great chance for success through your interview, our focus today is on Bigger Picture Thinking and Approach. We will assume you are not a career pastry chef or mechanical engineer looking to change careers and is now interviewing for the head of pediatrics at a major hospital.
You’ll have to sign up for our ‘Extreme Interviewing’ Course if you want to nail that interview!
We kid because we care.
But truly, this article assumes you have the goods. You are interviewing for a role that you are capable to do, with qualifications that line up with what the company is looking for. Even if you are not the perfect candidate, you have much of the needed qualifications listed and with a successful interview you should be among the top pool of candidates. Remember, there is no perfect candidate, and no company ever assumes they will get everything they want in one candidate. They are looking to get the ‘right’ person, whom they believe can do the job well, and will be a fit for their team and their culture. In that regard, these steps can help.
PRACTICE
- You have the experience, the knowledge, and the presence to command a room and engage your audience. You have developed strong people skills that convey both confidence and humility, which has worked exceedingly well throughout your career. You have either developed or have been gifted, if not the total package, a very strong one. Now with all of that, you still need to put in the work to impress the person interviewing. If that person doesn’t feel it, you’re out, and they’re onto the next candidate.
- Don’t leave anything to chance. Sure, you know the subject matter, the industry, and are confident you’re the best candidate for the job. You still need to practice. Whether using your partner, a friend or family member, or simply recording yourself on your iPhone, you need to practice answering likely questions, and potential curveballs that may come your way. Getting feedback, whether from others or watching yourself on video playback, you can sharpen your answers, making yourself more succinct, using better vocabulary or jargon, and see how well you manage your physical presence from making eye contact to smiling to how you sit and cross your arms or legs. It is all communication, and something that can be practiced and improved.
KNOW THE COMPANY
- You know your craft; you have the experience from doing a similar job in the same industry and are able to clearly articulate why you can ace this position and be a great asset to the person and company with whom you’re interviewing. Those are all important and when presented well can come across confidently and humbly.
- Remember though, and why practicing is so important, that you don’t want to make it all about you. Make it about the company as well, mixing in their successes, competitive and economic challenges, evolving technologies, through which you demonstrate your intimate knowledge of the company, the industry, and how you are there prepared to help take the company to the next level.
SHIFT THE PARADIGM
Interviews are wrought with trick questions, or to put it more kindly, questions that gauge how the interviewee thinks. There is no one right answer, but rather better ways of answering. ‘Why are you the best candidate?’, ‘Why do you think you can thrive here?’, ‘Anything else you would like to tell me about yourself?‘, and many more that are not specific to a task or an expected responsibility of the job itself. Each is designed to get a deeper understanding of who you are. Consider that as you field such questions, and as stated earlier, practice not just the specific answer, but the approach in how you will answer. There are two basic ways that people go:
- You can speak about you, your history joining new teams and new organizations, and how well you acclimated, even thrived. You may even add some detail about the culture at previous stops, good or bad, particularly if it puts you in a good light for having positively influenced that culture.
- Take the opportunity to join forces with your interviewer. Talk about the company as though you HAVE the job. You are now talking to your ‘Colleague’ not the Hiring Manager. Speak to what you know or have learned about this company. With the limitless amount of information online, you can, and should know everything about the company as possible. You can find out all they do, where they do it, their success in the market and industry for as long as they’ve been around, and enough about all of their top competitors to speak to them like they are your competitors. Doing so quickly shifts the paradigm from you versus the interviewer or company, to you and the interviewer against the competition.
Style seldom wins over Substance in an interview. Yes, some people are more easily impressed than others, and that may serve with one person in a single interview. But it is unlikely to carry you through three or four rounds of interviews, as eventually, teams calibrate and compare notes. Some will have picked up the clues that you look and sound the part, but not enough beyond that. Do your homework, strategize on how you will answer questions in certain areas, and get in front of that mirror so you can see what they are about to see. Rinse and Repeat until you love what you hear and what you see!
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