Research Information That Will Help You Interview Your Best

My favorite quote about statistics is, “If you have one foot in scalding hot water and one foot in freezing cold water on the average you are comfortable” With this in mind, according to a Hudson Survey
75% of all employees surveyed labeled their interview experience as either good or excellent. Only 5% rated the interview as poor. However, and here is the other foot, 20% said the job they took did not match the job they were told about in the interview. And, a similar number, 19% said they did not meet their boss before joining the company. A Hudson representative concluded, “there is room for improvement”; you think!

Another survey done by the Novations Group found 33% of the surveyed companies lost 25% of their new employees in 12 months and 11% lost 50% in the first 12 months. The number one reason 48%, a drum roll please, was due to unrealistic expectations of the job. Interestingly, an additional 33% of the employees could not get along with the (unmet previous to employment?) supervisor and 23% of the candidates did not have the skills to do the job. I think the combination of these two surveys have clearly identified a communication chasm in the interview process.

I am an avid proponent of the employment interview presentation. The cornerstone of the presentation is the first section where the candidate details their understanding of the critical requirements of the job. These requirements include the tasks, functions, success metrics and immediate goals of the position. Using this visual list of requirements, the candidate and the hiring manager engage in a productive conversation during which a clear expectation of the position can emerge. Once a clear expectation emerges, the candidate continues the presentation by talking about how their background, skills, education, and experiences match the requirements of the job.

As the candidate goes through the section addressing how their background, skills, experience, and education matches the requirements it becomes clear if they fit the job. Because the presentation is structured, visual, and each requirement is addressed, the job fit decision becomes obvious.

It is incumbent upon the hiring company to first determine the requirements of the position and then provide a first class job description to job candidates. Unfortunately, this is the exception not the rule.

Fortunately, a job candidate does not have to take this glaring omission passively in the interview. By preparing an employment interview presentation with a list of job requirements as they understand them, the candidate guides the interview into a conversation that will address the requirements. During this conversation, either the requirements will be clear or it will become obvious the company is confused about what the candidate will be doing once they are at their desk. This is important information for both the hiring company and the candidate deciding about the job.

The employment interview presentation effectively and efficiently addresses the two most glaring interview miscommunication, mismatched job expectations and the candidate’s ability to do the job. Now if the hiring manager would just show up to the interview, the candidate and the hiring manager could find out if “we can all just get along.”

Tell Stories to Interview Your Best

Story will always be king, no matter how much we love the technology.
Ethan martin, film producer

Stories are the most natural way to communicate and to connect with others. Good stories capture peoples imagination and create an emotional reaction that helps retain information. Stories are an effective and efficient way of communicating facts, experiences, and captures the attention of our listeners.

Telling stories in response to job interview questions is a very powerful communication technique. In order to be effective in an interview, a story has to be organized, brief and have a consistent format. There is a format that is taught by many Career Coaches/Interview Coaches that is easy to use and works extremely well in an interview. There are a few acronyms for the format (PAR, STAR, SOAR), however the sequence is the same. Tell your stories using the following format:

Situation
What was the situation within which the story took place. What was going on? What called for you to do what you did?

Barriers
Talk about the barriers or obstacles you had to overcome to reach your results. The barriers are the problems you faced that you overcame. Often the barriers are lack of resources (people or money), lack of infrastructure, and long established practices (and thinking) that needed to be changed.

Actions
What did YOU do specifically to achieve your results? You may have been part of a team, so acknowledge the team but focus on your specific actions. Do not be general, talk specifically about what you did and how you did it. The interviewer is listening for the things you did that she wants you to do on this job.

Results
What were the results? Again, be specific and if you have numbers use them.

Skills used
Relate the skills you used. Skills include things like leadership, persuasion, analysis, negotiation, project management, budgeting, team building, etc. These are the skills you bring to the prospective job.

Here is an example:
Managing Marketing Communications and PR (and Saving $250K)

Situation: In the mid-1990s, Praxis America needed a strong, updated marketing communications and public relations program. Many collateral pieces were terribly out of date, and there was no real organized PR effort. The quarterly customer newsletter was consistently late and had no regular editorial slant or storyboard. The division truly needed an agency that would be attentive to its needs and would partner with it at a reasonable cost.

Actions: I was asked to manage the marketing communications/PR function, in addition to my other responsibilities (forecasting, strategic planning, market research). I agreed to do this with the understanding that I would have the authority to make decisions and recommendations.

I contacted several Philadelphia-area agencies, especially looking at those who had experience with industrial companies such as ours. I also contacted the company’s in-house “Creative Services” department and asked them to put together a proposal. I canvassed our regional sales managers and marketing managers to understand what their marketing communications needs and priorities were.

I found that in several instances, frustration with the poor service from the NY agency had led some regional offices and managers to use regional agencies or local free lancers another example of how the division as a whole was not spending its PR money efficiently. Finally, following my interviews with the agencies, I presented to the VP of Sales & Marketing my recommendation: go with our in-house agency.

Results: The quality of the newsletter improved tremendously, and we also began to get regular press coverage, due to the communications plan Creative Services put together for us. The most spectacular “outcome” of moving these communications activities “in-house” was the saving of a quarter of a million dollars ($250K) in the first year alone. I received a letter of commendation from the Divisional Vice President for my contributions.

Skills demonstrated: Innovation, Leadership. Persuasion, follow-through

The goal is to respond to an interview question with a story. For example, if the interviewer asks, “Were you ever in a situation where you were at risk of losing an important client?” You can respond, “Yes in fact I have been, this was the situation, these were the obstacles, here is what I did, and here is how it came out.” Any situation you speak about can be put in this format. Using this approach, your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It will prevent you from rambling and adding extraneous detail. In addition, after you tell a few stories using this approach the interviewer will be conditioned to listen for the results and the skills you used which is the “punchline” of your story.

Telling stories in an interview is a simple and effective way to communicate clearly, memorably, and to differentiate yourself. It is also a technique you can practice and then use in an interview to respond to many of the questions you will be asked.

Create a Conversation to Interview Your Best

Convert the Interview Interrogation to a “Best Fit” Hiring Conversation

The ultimate goal of the interview process is to create a conversation within which the candidate and hiring manager discusses the job and comes to a mutual agreement about the candidate’s “fit” with the position; difficult but not impossible

Unfortunately, the typical job interview is more of an interrogation (a recent survey discovered 51% of all candidates referred to the interview as a “cross examination”) where the interviewer asks questions and the candidate provides answers which he or she thinks will be acceptable. Consider the following questions (all are questions that are asked on a regular basis):

* Why should I hire you?
* Why do you want to work for us?
* How much do you think you will be earning in ten years?
* Describe yourself in 3 adjectives
* How do you feel you work without direct supervision? Are you prepared right now to work without supervision?
*What is one of your weaknesses? Now, I know you had one prepared, so give me another one?
* What makes you tick?
* What would your enemy say about you?
* Why should we hire “you” over everyone else we spoke to today?

These stock questions only put a candidate on the defensive in an already stressful situation. Asking cookie cutter questions is easy and creates a standardized interview, but does little for the selection accuracy of the interview process (currently pegged at 55% only slightly better than flipping a coin). Being able to answer these questions says more about the Candidate’s glibness than their ability to do good quality work in the job for which they are being interviewed.

In order to create a conversation there has to be equality, a power balance, between the individuals engaging in the conversation. In unequal communication, one person lectures, directs, or yells at the other. Typically, an interview appears unbalanced with the power residing in the hiring manager who ostensibly will make a decision about the candidate’s fate and alter the candidate’s life’s journey. In reality, a candidate has just as much power to make a decision about the position as the hiring manager. Should a candidate choose not to take the position, the candidate could alter the “life journey” of the organization in general, and the hiring manager in particular. Once you become aware of this equality in power, the opportunity for an interview conversation emerges.

In order for you to feel empowered, you must understand the value you bring to an organization and the demand for your skills and experiences in the marketplace. I have found when working with candidates that have had a long tenure at one organization, the candidate has lost touch with the marketplace and does not have an accurate assessment of their value. This is exacerbated when the candidate is older, 50+, and is concerned that they will be deemed “over qualified”. Through a process of evaluating the critical requirements of job and their match with those requirements, candidates often realize the value they will bring to the position. Once they are aware they are a good match with the job and they have a wealth of experience to offer, they feel empowered. Once empowered, a candidate can enter a conversation where they are giving and requesting information about how well the job suits them.

When a person is unemployed, they are particularly vulnerable to the perceived power imbalance. However unemployed people (and I have been there), regardless of their desperation (I have been there as well) need to keep in mind that taking a job that does not fit typically results in failure or misery (darn, been there too). In the case of unemployment, it is very helpful to have a trusted advisor to remind you that you are still a valuable asset to an organization and to go into interviews focusing on developing a conversation that will result in determining if this position is a good fit for you.