As a job applicant, imagine going straight to the hiring manager instead of first seeing the personnel department. We take a different approach with our applicants as we prepare them for what we call a “working interview”.
The Working Interview was a term first coined by Nick Corcodilos to describe his methodology as a headhunter (much of his methodology is described below in his own words and in his presentation on resumes: see Articles.). We like much of what he has to say, for he cuts through the crud and gets to the point of what everyone is looking for - - who can actually do the job at hand and do it very well.
Our worth is what makes an employer want to hire us. Our worth is determined by the value we offer the employer. The bottom line in any business enterprise is profit. It's the thing that enables us to survive to work—and succeed—yet another day. Understand what managers need.?Managers want one kind of worker: the person who can solve problems and have a positive impact on the bottom line.
Managers have less to spend on the resources they need, and they are increasingly measured on how successfully they (a) reduce costs, and (b) increase profits. Is it any wonder managers expect a lot from job candidates? They need workers who can help them address these two problems. What a manager needs to know is how we are going to tackle the specific work he (or she) needs to have done.
Our job hunt is a business enterprise. If it doesn't promise profit for the prospective employer, it won't produce profit for us — in the form of a healthy job offer. That means we have to take the initiative in our job hunt. An employer cannot extract value from us - - we must offer it.
We can only offer value if we know what is valuable to the employer. That means a lot of research up front, before we approach any employer, and a lot of planning before we walk in the door to talk…. establishing the worth of us as a candidate and the value to be offered before any meetings with the employer can take place.
We need to be ready to discuss or do something in our meeting that will help the manager with a problem she's facing now. Ask the manager to put a live problem on the table, so we can show how we'd go about solving it. This single technique—which relies totally on our work skills—does more to impress an employer than anything else a candidate can do in an interview.
Let’s roll up our sleeves! Then we can show how we'd solve the problem. Our solution need not be perfect. If we can just show that we care enough to actually focus on the work itself and to demonstrate our abilities rather than just talk, we'll leave him with something he'll remember.
When we're done, it’s good to ask to be reviewed like an employee. It's a simple tenet of social psychology: the more we let someone into our inner circle, the more we regard him as one of our own. Our goal in an interview is to cast ourself as an insider. To achieve that, we must act like an employee. Doing the job, as discussed above, is one way to accomplish this. Another way is to become part of the backdrop in the manager's department.
Ask the manager to give us "the cook's tour" of the facility. Even if this means nothing more than walking the long-way-around the office on our way out, this is how we will meet other workers and get a chance to ask about and comment on the equipment, tools and workspace. Our mission is to drag this out, asking smart, relevant questions without seeming presumptuous. Under the right circumstances, we can even ask to try out some of the equipment, or to demonstrate how we'd use it.
We'll be the only candidate remembered as actually participating among the troops. That makes we sticky, especially if we use the opportunity to show what we can do to help the manager.
During the interview, ask the manager if we might meet one or two people on the team. We can pull this off easily during the tour of the office.
A busy manager will sometimes gladly drop us off in someone else's cubicle when our interview is done. Use the techniques we're discussing here with everyone we meet. Focus on the work. Demonstrate what we can do. Ask for a tour. The people we meet will remember us, and they're likely to talk about us. If they're impressed, the manager will learn about it. This makes us incredibly sticky.
Good references can make us sticky. References who call the employer on their own, before they are called, are like "job candidate glue". If we have one or two previous employers who really think a lot of us, ask them to make the call. As long as the reference is credible and can be called back later for more information, this can be an eye-opener for the employer. There is nothing like genuine accolades from our professional community. This tells the employer that if he doesn't hire us, his competition probably will.
Here's a simple but very effective presentation when our reference calls the prospective new employer:
"Hi, John. I'm Paul Smith. Hank Jones asked me if I'd serve as his reference. He used to work for me at Acme Widget. I'd wait for you to call me, but I didn't think such formality was necessary. I'm such a fan of Hank's that I wanted to pick up the phone and tell you what a great catch I think he'd be for a company like ours..."
Politely and courteously go all out in the job interview. Be tentative and we'll lose. Don't wait to be asked to participate in the manager's work. We'll never be asked. Be proactive—enlist! Be on the job when we walk into our meeting. Arrive to face the manager's challenges with him. Our goal is to perform like an employee who wants a promotion. Act like we're on the team. If we don't, we never will be.
Start by understanding how our skills can profit a particular business. If we can't explain this to a prospective employer, why should he or she hire us? "I'm here to do the work we need to have done"…. walk into the meeting with the employer and do the job, right there in the interview. Make doing the job in the interview our goal.
Don't go on an interview unless we are prepared to control it, and to demonstrate our ability to do the work. When we want a promotion, do we give our boss a resume? Of course not. We walk into his office and convince him we can do the work. Then, why would we do any less to win a new job with our future boss?
If we're good at our work, talking to the relevant people will be easy. Talk with other employees at the company, talk with the company's vendors and even its customers.
Introduce ourself to the interviewer before we meet, in a phone call or through a referral made by someone who knows us both. Such an intermediary can be another employee, another manager (from this or another company), a vendor of the company or a customer. This is leverage. If we have to, spend some serious time finding someone who will do this for us. Don't go on a blind date.
We must take responsibility for being able to solve the employer's problem in the interview. Do the job. Sound intimidating? Well, if we can't do it, why bother interviewing for this particular work? We have to be able to do it. We might as well get ready to do the work we'll have to do daily if we win the job.
We can prepare an interviewer (hiring manager) before our meeting. Let him know that we want to clearly demonstrate, in the interview, how we will do the work they need to have done. If all we do in an interview is talk about our history, we will leave the employer unconvinced that we can do the work he needs to have done.
The purpose of any interview is simple: to determine whether the candidate can do the job profitably. A smart interview is not an interrogation. It's not a series of canned questions or a set of scripted tests that have been ginned up by HR. An interview should be a roll-up-our-sleeves, hands-on meeting between ourself and the candidate, where all of the focus is on the job.
The hiring manager should think of the interview as the candidate's first day at work, with the only question that matters being this:
"What's our business plan for doing this job?"
To successfully answer that, the candidate must first demonstrate to the manager an understanding of the company's problems, challenges, and goals -- not an easy thing to do. But since he desperately wants to make a great hire and get back to work, why not help the best candidate succeed? Two weeks before the interview, the hiring manager can call up the candidate and say the following:
"We want you to show us how you are going to do this job. That's going to take a lot of homework. I suggest that you read through these 10 pages on our Web site, review these publications from our marketing and investor-relations departments, and speak with these three people on my team. When you are done, you should have something useful to tell us."
This will eliminate 9 out of 10 candidates. Only those who really want the job will put in the effort to research the job.
Here are some suggestions for prep materials. Prior to bringing the candidate in for an interview, the hiring manager can offer the candidate non-confidential information about:
- their products and technologies
- relevant but not-so-obvious web pages that might be useful
- the problems and challenges their team is facing
- industry issues that impact their business
- the tools their team uses
- methods employed in project management
- competitors and vendors they deal with
- articles about their company that illuminate how they run the business
- historical information about their products and the company's growth
- organizational information about how various departments work together
- financial and profitability data, if the company is public (or maybe even if it's not)
- the names and telephone numbers of members of our staff (why not?)
At the interview, the hiring manager should expect (or hope) to hear the most compelling question that any candidate can ask:
"Would you like me to show how your company will profit from hiring me?"
The candidate should be prepared to do the job in the interview. That means walking up to the whiteboard and outlining the steps that he or she would take to solve our company's problems. The numbers don't have to be right, but the candidate should be able to defend them intelligently. If the candidate demonstrates an understanding of the company’s culture and competitors -- and lays out a plan of attack for solving our problems and adding something to our bottom line -- the hiring manager has some awfully compelling reasons to make the hire.
But if the hiring manager trusts only a candidate's past accomplishments, references, credentials, or test results, he still won't know whether the candidate can do the job profitably.?
Every day, job candidates fail to win offers for one reason: The employer isn't convinced the candidate wants the job. If we would accept a position given the right offer, we don't leave the interview without telling the manager.
Do we wonder why it sometimes takes an employer forever to give us a decision? It's partly because we probably never gave the employer a decision at the end of the interview. Look the manager in the eye and say, "I can do this job for us profitably—I want the job." Afraid we might ultimately end up turning the job down if it is offered? That's another issue. We can want a job but legitimately reject an offer that can't be negotiated to our satisfaction.
Here's the point: Would we hire someone to work on our team if they didn't make it clear they wanted to work with us? Nobody would.
Most people leave an interview with an empty feeling because it's like the end of an exam. We can't add anything to our answers once we're out that door. There's no way to influence the employer further. Or, so we thought.
One powerful way to "be there" after the interview is make a spin on our thankyou note. Don't just send a throw-away thankyou; include something the manager will nail to his desk and refer to again and again. This might be a useful article about a topic we discussed in the interview (hardcopy "sticks" much better than a link in an email), information about a product or tool that would help his team members do their work more effectively, or the name of someone who might be a sales lead or a useful resource in some regard. (Making professional introductions is a lost art in North America, yet it's one of the most powerful tools we wield in our businesses.)
If we handle it deftly, we can deliver more than one of these "useful items" along with that thankyou note. Don't be pushy, but be there and be useful.
Our objective in being sticky is not to antagonize the manager, which is easy to do if we go overboard. Our objective is to help him see us as a natural part of the fabric of his work and as the solution to his problems.
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