The Shocking Truth About Interviewers

Interviewers Are Poorly Trained and They’re Scared

Most hiring managers are poor interviewers. The vast majority of them receive no interview training, and they hire infrequently. Even hiring managers who have received training may not hire for months after interview training, and by then the training is forgotten.

One secret of job interviews is that hiring managers are often as nervous as the candidate- they’re stressed about having to make a critical hiring decision. A bad hiring decision is one of the biggest mistakes a manager can make. Studies have shown that a bad hire can cost a company anywhere from two times a person’s salary at lower employment levels to as much as 40 times a person’s salary at higher levels. The financial ramifications of a bad hire include costs for recruiting, training, lost productivity, bad morale, and the manager’s time spent trying to salvage the employee. At higher levels of employment, contract buyouts in the millions of dollars are not unusual. No wonder why the hiring manager is stressed when interviewing!

Many hiring managers compensate by spreading the decision-making around. They will have candidates go through multiple rounds of interviews with numerous interviewers. That way, if the employee does not work out, at least the hiring manager can say everyone was involved.

The problem with this approach is twofold. First, the other interviewers are typically no better at interviewing than the hiring manager is. Second, this burdens the candidate with numerous interviews conducted by poorly trained interviewers.

According to Development Dimensions International (DDI), candidates commonly complain about the following interviewer behavior:

*     Withholding information about the position

*     Turning the interview into a cross-examination

*     Showing up late

*     Appearing unprepared for the interview

*     Asking questions unrelated to job skills

And a recent survey of interviewers by Monster.co.uk found that:

*     Almost a third (30 percent) say they have forgotten a candidate’s name.

*     More than a quarter (28 percent) confess they have gone to interviews unprepared.

*     Almost one in five (19 percent) admit they have forgotten an interview entirely.

*     Fifty-four percent of employer respondents admit they have taken an instant dislike to a candidate.

Don’t let a bad interviewer torpedo your chances of getting the job! Win your interview by taking leadership and providing the information a bad interviewer should know about you to make a good hiring decision.

Go to www.activeinterviewing.com to learn how to beat bad interviewers and land the job

Does the Interviewer Know Why Hiring You is a Good Idea?

Why You Should Hire Me

Good salespeople lead a buyer through a sales process toward a purchase. They begin by understanding the buyer’s needs and linking the features of their service to those needs. They then talk about value-adds, tell success stories about purchasers who’ve used their service, provide an implementation plan, and finally summarize why they are the best choice based on the benefits their service provides. Good salespeople understand that prospects won’t understand why they should buy a service simply because they’ve been told about it. Buyers need to be informed very directly, in simple language, of why the salesperson’s service is the best purchasing decision.

The critical element in a purchasing decision is the benefits. No buyer purchases a service without clearly seeing the benefits she will get from the service. But most candidates focus on the skills and experience they bring to the job and don’t clearly state the benefits the company will derive from hiring them. They never clearly communicate, “This is why hiring me is a good idea.”

During your interview, typically toward the end, make a clear statement about why the company should hire you. This statement combines your features with the benefits the company will get from those features. The benefits are based 100 percent on the company’s needs as you have identified them during the interview process. Your “why hire me” statement should be a summary based on the content you have already shared during your interview and should be as objective as possible. A “why hire me” statement can include a combination of skills and experience as well as personal success factors.

Buyers should never have to guess why they should purchase a service; the salesperson should tell them why. In your interviews, stating directly and actively why you should be hired will make it obvious to the hiring manager that you are the best choice. At the end of the interview process, when the hiring manager is trying to figure out why a certain candidate is a good one, she won’t be doing the same with you, because you’ve already told her why. By laying out your reasons to be hired, you make her choice easier!

Go to www.activeinterviewing.com to learn more interview winning strategies

Are You A Commodity in the Employment Marketplace?

Competition is Fierce

In a competitive and crowded marketplace, every product and service must differentiate itself. It is not enough to be simply as good as all the rest, because there are too many “all the rests” in the market. In addition, with easy access to cheap (or even free) Internet advertising, there is a great deal of advertising that makes differentiating services and determining buying decisions difficult- just think of all the pop-up ads you see online. In the employment marketplace, this is exemplified by the tens of thousands of job sites and hundreds of resumes submitted over the Internet in response to advertised jobs. To rise above the flood of advertising, successful companies establish powerful branding and distinct value-adds. You can adopt the same strategy to rise above the flood of your competition in the employment marketplace.

A value-add refers to an extra feature of a service that goes beyond the standard expectations and provides a more compelling reason to purchase. A value-add makes the service more desirable and positively influences the buying decision. However, a value-add has no value if it is not in addition to good service. Always having on-time delivery does not make a difference if the pizza tastes terrible.
The worst position for a service is to be a commodity. A service is a commodity when it is equivalent no matter who provides it. A provider of a commodity service is easily exchanged for another provider of the same service who offers a lower price. For example, many dry cleaners provide a commodity service. Customers will change to another dry cleaner if they can find one that costs less. In the employment marketplace, many employees[md]even mid- and senior-level employees[md]are commodities in that they provide a service that can be replaced easily. In bad economies, companies replace more expensive “commodity” employees with cheaper employees. Are you a commodity in the employment marketplace?

If you are a commodity, it will be difficult to differentiate yourself in interviews. However, most of us are not commodities we just have not deteremined out value-adds. To determine your value-adds:

Know Yourself

Take a complete inventory of your skills. Do not limit the inventory to skills applicable to the job for which you are interviewing; do a full inventory. This inventory should include skills connected to your job, interests, hobbies, and leisure activities. When you have a full inventory, you can choose which skills serve as value-adds for the job for which you’re applying.

Know Your Profession

Every profession has a number of areas of concentration and a large skill base. For example, within human resources, you might be applying to be a compensation manager. However, the human resources field has a number of other specialty areas and required skills, such as diversity management, employee retention, job-task analysis, and international employment. You might have experience in international employment, and even though you’re applying to be a compensation manager, having international employment experience could be a differentiating value-add for a multinational company or a company that is expanding internationally.

Once you have determined you value-ads, use an interview presentation to clearly communicate them in your interview. To learn more about value-ads in interviews go to Active Interviewing.

Read Active Interviewing to Learn More About Value-Ads