Bring Your Best Game! 

Maxine finally got her first job interview after an intense six months of searching. In the present economic environment, six months of searching to get a one-hour job interview is a realistic statistic in these times. It could be another few months, or more, before she has the next interview.

This places immense pressure on her and other job seekers to learn and apply effective interview skills. Maxine must convince the first interviewer, and possibly additional five or ten interviewers, that she is the candidate who should receive the coveted job offer.

How Maxine Got the Interview

One morning Maxine received a call from a friend she contacted a month earlier, “Hi Maxine, it’s Dave. An acquaintance of mine is the vice president of human resources at a local company, and they are looking for a marketing manager. If you are interested, I will give you the contact information.” She obtained the contact name, James Green, vice president-human resources and graciously asked Dave if she could assist him in any way. Maxine was excited when she hung up the phone. She immediately reviewed the company’s web site and called James to introduce herself as Dave’s friend. James’s administrative assistant, Julia, answered the phone and requested that Maxine e-mail a copy of her résumé. Within an hour, Maxine received a call from James’s internal recruiting manager. The purpose of that call was for the recruiting manager to ensure that Maxine had the experience necessary to warrant an interview with James. Maxine made a compelling case for an interview with James, and she had one week to prepare before the scheduled interview. This was the call Maxine worked so hard to receive.

Changing Your Game

Interviewing is like a board game—competing players all have the same starting point and the winner is the player who accumulates the most points along the way. The starting point for the interview game is when a job seeker has a scheduled interview with a company executive or search professional who is trying to fill a specific job. The game ends on the first day of a new job.

The rules are simple. An interviewer hosts the meeting in an office setting where a friendly conversation takes place between two people. The interviewer takes the lead role and asks candidates a series of questions mainly about qualifications to perform the job. Other topics include delving into personality and determining how likeable the job seeker will be to the staff. The interviewer evaluates each response and determines if the candidate will be invited back for another interview. From the candidates’ perspective, they must respond to each question with completely honest answers. Any lies appearing in a résumé or told to an interviewer will automatically disqualify the candidate at any time. If misinformation is uncovered after a new job begins, the new employee will most likely be fired.

Job seekers must focus on the end game of getting a job offer. Contrary to a commonly held belief, the best qualified candidate does not always win this game. Although an offer can be attributed to many factors, such as who a candidate might know, the winning candidate usually exhibits the following qualities:

• Possesses basic skills and experience required for the position.
• Satisfies the needs of the recruiter, human resources professional, hiring manager, and other interviewers.

• Establishes rapport with interviewers and creates the perceptionof being like them.

• Exhibits impressive displays of energy and passion.
• Demonstrates a personality compatible with the hiring manager and the responsibilities of the position.
• Possesses qualities that differentiate the individual from competing candidates.
• Presents a detailed understanding of company products, culture, industry, and politics better than most employees. If you have these qualities, you are among possibly three to ten competitors who are at the starting gate and waiting to be interviewed by company management. Arm yourself with inner confidence and knowledge of the interview journey that lies ahead.

Winning players begin the game with an intense interview preparation.

How the newly acquired knowledge gained as part of the interview preparation is used during the interview separates the great players from the rest of the group. Capable management consultants have a particular skill that is extremely relevant to interviewing. Yvonne just joined the consulting staff of a prestigious management consulting firm. She has an M.B.A. from a top school and four years of information technology experience at a manufacturing company. She completed her company’s consulting orientation program and was given her first assignment.

She had three days to prepare for an initial meeting with the vice president-information technology at her first client. The company manufactured battery products, and Yvonne knew nothing about the battery business. What was she to do? Yvonne had been told that her company’s clients expect consultants to know all about their business, and she had to convey that impression at a meeting in just three days. She spent most of her waking hours learning everything about the company, industry, product lines, management, and customers. Consultants do this all the time. In her first client meeting, Yvonne was able to create the perception that she had a good understanding of the industry, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Why did Yvonne go through this grueling preparation?

• To satisfy client expectations of understanding their business.
• To instill self-confidence.
• To perform her consulting assignment in a stellar manner.

Job seekers should have the same motivation to convince interviewers that they understand and value the company’s business. Hiring managers prefer candidates with a passion for and an understanding of their business over candidates who have no idea what the company does. Spend hours and days of research gathering information identified in this chapter with the objective of learning more than your competition. Use this knowledge to differentiate yourself and to create a perception of extensive knowledge. Your goal in this preparation is to know as much or more than most employees in the company you are about to interview with.

All job seekers should have a good understanding of the industry in which they work and the functions performed in the position for which they are interviewing. Sufficient knowledge and background information must be demonstrated to convince interviewers that you understand the business and will have a very short learning curve to become productive. Conveying information during an interview is like answering a question on a final exam—it makes no difference if you learned the answer the night before or the month before, as long as you have the correct answer. To ensure that a comprehensive approach is taken to conduct the required research, organize this project around the company and its industry, the profile of the people you might meet, and the pertinent aspects of the position for which you are interviewing.