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BEC : Interviews - George

Hi there, it’s George and I would like to talk to you a little bit more with a few other ideas about this interview process that you’re going to go through. As I think I said in the earlier conversation, this is quite a bit different than the program that you’ve already been dealing with and implementing in that you are face to face and you have the opportunity now to really sell yourself.

We’ve talked about your appearance and body language, your quirks and all those kind of things and those are important. A couple other important things, number one, be sure that you ask questions. I’m talking about asking the kind of questions that will help you understand things like, one, maybe this person’s, this manager’s, management style.

Two, just exactly what is it that this job entails, what am I going to have to do, because you want to get an understanding as to what level the job is skill wise.

Is this something that doesn’t require as many skills or the kind of skills that I have or, on the bad side, is it a job that requires skills and knowledge and abilities that maybe I don’t have right now. You want to be sure that you get as much of an understanding as you can about the job so you know what you’re getting into when they finally make the offer. Those are the basic ones.

Other things, if you can figure out a way to get the manager to tell you, are teams. You know how do the teams work? Is there a lead person on the team that kind of tells everybody else what to do or is it directly from the manager or is it a situation where there’s supervisors, which are not exactly managers, but they’re certainly not direct employees either. Are those kinds of people involved? What you want to do, even before you’ve gotten the interview, hopefully you’ve studied a lot and found out as much as you can about this company and how they operate.

You’re now trying to refine it down to this job that I’m interviewing for that they’re going to offer me. You want to walk into that job with a full understanding, as best you can, as to what is going to be required of me in terms of my skills, my abilities, my interpersonal relationships, all of that kind of stuff. So don’t forget through that interview process to be sure that you get your questions in.

And there’s a couple, actually there’s three, I’ll give you three basic kinds of people that are going to interview you. There are some people who basically will sit there and talk the whole time. The person doing the interview is going to do all the talking. They’re going to tell you about the job, maybe to some degree about the organization and how much we contribute to the business, how great we are, on and on and on, or they’re going to be on the other side of how important it is and how we don’t have enough people. We’re overworked and so on and so on and so on.

So you’re going to have that kind of person to deal with. Well, that kind of interviewer is going to force you to intervene, if you will, at some point. By intervene I mean maybe not interrupt them, but you’re going to have to look for opportunities to talk about you, to talk about your skills, your abilities, your accomplishments. Maybe these kind of managers every once in a while end up with do you have any other questions. Well, they’ve probably answered most of the questions you’ve got, maybe, maybe not, but at the very least there’s the opportunity for you to put in and talk about your accomplishments, your skills as they relate to what that person just talked about. That one is kind of difficult.

On the other end of the scale or the spectrum that we talked about- ‘Spectrum’, you understand we’re talking about the range here. It’s kind of like the spectrum of colors, all the way from white to black and all the ones that are in between. Well, on the other end of the spectrum is that manager that doesn’t do much talking at all and just kind of says yeah, we’re looking for a person to do this and that and then they sit back and they expect you to do all the talking and that’s fine.

That gives you the opportunity to point out your strengths, your accomplishments and all those kind of things. You just don’t want to overdo it too much until you get back to that point of asking questions. Again, you need to ask and be sure that you’re finding out what that person is looking for, what skills and what abilities, so then you can grab onto the ones that pertain to what they’re talking about and expand on them. This is how I can help you do … whatever it is. I did the same thing or something similar to that in a previous job where I implemented or I saved money or whatever it was, okay? And then, of course, the best of all worlds is that manager who’s interviewing you who’s right in the middle between those two who is, I would call, a skilled interviewer who knows to talk and give information about the company, about the organization, but also knows when to back off and ask you to participate in the conversation.

When I say back off, I’m saying they know when to stop talking and turn it back to you, give you the floor or the stage, if you will, let you give your presentation, give your pitch.

We’ve talked about that and it’s what I mean by ‘give you back the floor’. Put you in a position where you do the talking. So keep those things in mind.

Another key point is the follow-up process to the interview. Whenever you have an interview make sure as soon as you get home, immediately, get a letter, an email, back to that person thanking them for the time that they took, thanking them for the information that they gave you, thanking them for listening to you and understanding. I don’t know that you can go overboard in this situation.

By overboard I mean I’m not sure that it’s possible to give enough praise and thanks back to this person for taking time out of their busy day to talk with you and listen to you.

So be sure that you send that follow-up letter with anybody that you talk to and, of course, the end of the letter is something to the affect of I’m really looking forward to hearing from you further on our discussion and your job opening.

Something we haven’t touched on before that I thought about-‘Touched on’, I mean something we haven’t brought up, something we haven’t discussed. To touch on is I guess you could look at a schedule for a program. Then you go through the whole schedule and as you’re scanning the paper schedule with your fingers you’d say oh, here’s one. You’re touching a certain piece of the schedule. We forgot that, so you kind of touch on. In other words, it’s something we haven’t brought up. This is the distinct possibility and something that you should hope for and that’s a follow-up interview.

Now, a follow-up interview generally is not going to be with the same person you talked to who was the hiring manager. A follow-up interview means that manager is interested, but just to be sure he wants a second opinion. He wants somebody else’s advice and there are about five different combinations of follow-up interviews that you might have to go through and this is a good thing, remember, because now getting closer and closer to them making an offer and you’re off and on your way.

One type of follow-up interview could be what I’ll call a similar manager. By similar, I mean a manager in a similar department. Let me use accounting as an example. Let’s say there are two accounting departments in this company. You interviewed with the manager who takes care of accounting for the software that this company sells and he would like you to talk to the manager of accounting who takes care of the hardware that the company sells. So they’re both accounting functions, but they deal in different products.

Well, the good news about interviewing with a person like this is that the second interviewer, the follow-up interview, is probably going to have the same kind of questions, concerns and issues on their mind as the hiring manager has because they’re both managing the same function. The only extra item that’s in there might be because they have to interface and work with the other departments. ‘Interface’ meaning to work with; to coordinate between departments.

Another possibility is a manager from a totally different department. Well, this is just a way of the first manager getting a feeling from another manager. Not so much probably about your technical skills, but is this the kind of person that we can work with in the company.

A third type is for the follow-up interview to be with the next level manager. This is good.

This is good, because the manager now wants you to talk to his manager. Again, we’re still talking probably the same kind of conversation about skills and accomplishments, abilities, what’s required and what the job is. So that’s a possibility.

A fourth one, which is kind of crazy in my opinion, is I’ll call it a panel interview where maybe there’s three people you talk to. Well, just be yourself. Be prepared for the questions, which you already are and, I’ll use an idiom, go with the flow. In other words, as they ask the questions answer them honestly, candidly and you’ll be fine.

And the final possible one and I’ve seen this in a lot of small companies, is where they’ll have a follow-up interview --maybe even the same day you’re there --with another employee or two employees maybe. This type of interview is really more of let’s see how our employees feel about this person on an interpersonal basis. The technical skills, maybe you’ll have an employee who’s wondering if you know how to do something that they don’t know how to do, which is helpful.

That one is a little more low-key, meaning you’re not going to have to get into some of the highly technical stuff, but I would say that it’s more dangerous. If they want you to talk to an employee, you’re probably talking to the boss’s favorite, so you have to be aware of that.

I know we’ve crammed a lot into your heads here, but just relax. You’ve done a great sales job up until now. You’ve got the call to come in and talk to them, so just be yourself. Try to keep these things in mind, but don’t let them overwhelm you and bother you and get them to sign on the dotted line. Get them to sign the contract. In other words, get them to offer you the job. Sign on the dotted line. Complete the contract.

Well, the contract in this case is I want to hire you. Would you like to work here? Go for it.

The End.