Interviewing Archives - Palladian Career Resources

Job Search Webinar Schedule

Next week, I am presenting three webinars, Resume Writing Basics, Job Interview Basics, and Job Search Basics. I taught these three classes online for the first time a couple weeks ago and the response was great.

This will be the last time I offer the basics series of webinars for free. I have been testing the software and getting comfortable presenting online. Although I’ve presented these topics in person a number times in seminars, I wanted to practice the online presentation a few times and get some feedback on the presentations. The feedback was great and very helpful, and I’m doing one last set of free sessions. Next week will be the the last opportunity you will have to attend the sessions for free – so sign up today!

The schedule for next week is:

Resume Writing Basics – Monday July 27, 11AM EDT
Job Interview Basics – Wednesday July 29, 11AM EDT
Job Search Basics – Friday July 31, 11AM EDT

The three webinars form our Basics series. We are designing Advanced courses on each of these topics. Our goal is to complete the Resume Writing Advanced Series within the next couple weeks. This series will start with the Resume Writing Basics course and includes six other webinars on advanced resume writing topics. Check out the Resume Writing Advanced Series of Webinars.

If the days and times above don’t fit your schedule, check our Career Advice Webinars page for announcements of upcoming events. You can also register for a special mailing list to receive emails announcing each class. We plan on presenting webinars during the week with both daytime and evening sessions and are planning a Saturday series offering several webinars back-to-back.

Update: I know do webinars for APICS. Check out APICS to learn about the webinars, whitepapers and other career resources available to members.

Interview Question – Why You Left Each Job

In almost every interview, you will be asked why you left your previous employers. This is a question designed to uncover reasons for the hiring manager to reject you. It will not help you get the job and is a question you need to survive.

The reasons you left a company can provide a lot of insight into your performance, potential and motivation. With this question, a hiring manager is trying to see if there is something in the candidate’s background that will lead them to eventually fire the candidate. If another company fired someone for poor performance, a hiring manager will typically assume the candidate will perform similarly. You can change this perception if you prepare and speak honestly about the experience.

It would be nice if every candidate was always successful and never had a bad career experience. This would render a question about leaving a former employer unimportant. The truth is most people have failed at some point in their careers. The failure might be minor, involving an unsuccessful project, or it could be major, involving a significant performance problem resulting in termination.

To be successful answering this question, you need to do three things. First, you need to be honest. Never make up something that isn’t true. Second, take responsibility for your performance. I have interviewed candidates who blame everyone but themselves. This makes a terrible impression and will sink your chances. Third, show what you have learned from the experience and would do differently.

Confidence is important when talking about your failures. The more you avoid a question about a time when you failed, the more the hiring manager will ask about it. With a goal of trying to uncover reasons to not hire you, the hiring manager will look for signs of a problem. Once something is identified, the hiring manager will ask follow up questions until it is clear whether the situation warrants rejecting the candidate.

If you were fired, you need to be able to explain what you would do differently. This doesn’t necessary mean you would be able to change a failure into a success. A lot of people have tried one career and found they weren’t suited to it. That’s fine. You just need to be able to explain what it was about that career that was not a match for your skills and abilities. If you aren’t changing fields, then you need to show what you learned from the experience. Failure is a great teach – if you are open to learning. Showing how you learned from failures can be as impressive as a success.

How Do Hiring Managers Decide Who to Hire?

You applied for a job, landed an interview and got invited back for a final interview. At every step, you felt great about the job, company and people. The interviewers were extremely complimentary of you throughout the process. Everything looked great. Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

I’ve been a recruiter a long time and have watched this happen more times than I can count. It is extremely frustrating for the candidate. Without any specific feedback, the candidate doesn’t know why they weren’t hired.

There are a few reasons why a candidate might not get hired. Understanding how hiring managers make a decision can help you maximize your chances. No matter what you do, you will not get an offer every time. At the end of the hiring process, it is likely there will be two or three candidates being considered. This means half to two thirds of the candidates that complete a final interview will be turned down.

The candidate that gets hired will have several attributes. They will have experience and skills that will allow them to either do the job or learn the job quickly. They will have an attitude and work ethic that meets the hiring manager’s expectations. They will be able to communicate their skills, abilities and background in a positive way.

Of these attributes, you can improve all of them. Your skills and experience take time to improve, but over your career, you should continue to develop. Your attitude and work ethic are determined by your choices. If you continually choose to do more and maintain a positive attitude, these will become habits. You can also influence your communications skills and your interview skills in particular (check out our interview prep book).

You’ve done everything you can to improve your marketability and still get turned down for the job you want. Why does this happen?

When a hiring manager decides to fill a position, they will develop criteria for selecting the candidate. Some of the criteria will be objective but most will be subjective. There are few objective measures for most skills. How do you quantify a person’s leadership skills or their multi-tasking ability? You can’t.

Hiring managers will often use a successful employee as a model for the person they want to hire. For example, many manufacturing and distribution firms like to hire former military officers for supervisory positions. A military background teaches great leadership skills. It doesn’t guarantee a person is a great leader, but it does show a common set of training and experiences.

Using a common set of experiences to assess candidates is used frequently. If you don’t have the common background, it will not eliminate you from the process. It can be the cause of a rejection at the end of the process. Picture two candidates – we’ll use the supervisor position in a manufacturing plant. One candidate is a former military officer and has four years of experience in supervisory positions in manufacturing. The other candidate started out as an engineer in manufacturing and has four years of supervisory experience.

Both candidates have the same experience in the role – four years supervising manufacturing teams. In this case, both candidates have similar educational backgrounds and present a good track record of accomplishment. There is little to differentiate them except for the experience prior to their supervisory experience.

One hiring manager may favor the technical skills brought gained from an engineering background, while another may favor the leadership background of a former military officer. Both candidates could be successful in the role. Rejecting an unqualified candidate is easy. Rejecting a qualified candidate is more difficult. This is the source of the feedback “the other candidate was a better fit” comes in.

What do you do? If you’re up against a candidate that has the preferred background, you can still give yourself a chance.

Prepare for your interviews thoroughly by developing good examples of your accomplishments, and how they benefited your employers.
Ask questions to learn as much as you can about the goals of the hiring manager.
Show specific situations from your background where you met similar goals to the goals of the hiring manager.

The key is showing your ability to succeed. You need to demonstrate clearly how you will perform better than your competition. It isn’t enough to show you can succeed. Your competition can succeed too. If you’re competing against someone with a background exactly matching the profile the hiring manager wants, you have to show how you are better. The way you do this is by showing what you have done. If you do not do this, then you leave the question of who has the strongest potential up to the hiring manager.

Body Language in an Interview

How you present yourself in an interview can influence the overall impressive you make on an interviewer. Some studies have said the words we use only account for 10% of the information communicated.

How you present yourself in an interview can influence the overall impressive you make on the interviewer. Some studies have said the words we use only account for 10% of the information communicated. The other 90% is made up of you body language, eye contact, tone, pitch, pace and volume.

Can you improve the non-verbal aspects of your interview performance?

Absolutely. Your non-verbal behavior can be adapted to suit any situation. Individuals in the public eye, actors, politicians and salespeople, work on their non-verbal behavior. Some employ coaches to work on these skills routinely throughout their careers. Hiring a full time coach is not practical for most people, though.

There are a few basic tactics that you can employ. The first and most important is to be enthusiastic. In an interview, you should show your interest in the position. Speaking in a monotone with low energy will make a bad impression.

The second tactic you should employ is mirroring. Pay attention to the interviewer and their non-verbal queues. If they sit very straight and lean forward, adopt a similar posture. If they sit back and slouch, you can relax and lean back a little, although you should maintain a professional appearance regardless of what the interviewer does. Mirroring can be extended to speaking style. If the interviewer speaks very quickly, you should try to match their pace.

Mirroring is a talent and a skill. Some people do it very naturally, while others struggle. To be most effective, you should mirror the interviewer almost unconsciously. I’m sure you have had the experience where you met someone and immediately liked them and bonded with them. Usually, this happens when two people have significant similarities in their non-verbal communication.

Because our non-verbal communication is done naturally without thinking, it is extremely difficult to for most people to change. You can learn mirroring techniques, but they take work and practice. Many job seekers find interviews very intimidating and struggle to know what to say. Focusing on mirroring can make this a greater challenge.

Should you adapt your non-verbal communication?

Yes and No. There are significant advantages to a positive attitude, good eye contact and paying attention to the body language of the interviewer. At the same time, you should only pay attention to these elements if they do not distract you from listening effectively. Failing to listen will hurt your chances much more than having your body language a little out of sync with the interviewer. You should focus on listening closely, providing good answers and adapting subtly to the interviewer. If you do these three things, you will give yourself the best chance of getting hired.

Ordinary vs Exceptional

For almost every career, there are numerous candidates available for each position. Only one will get hired for each job, though. When five, ten or more people, with similar backgrounds apply for a job, there are a number of factors that affect who gets the offer. The factors most job seekers consider as important for a company to make a hiring decision include education, work experience and technical skills. These are all important. In fact, these are the criteria used to select candidates for interviews. In the interviews, though, it takes more than just these.

The factors most job seekers consider as important for a company to make a hiring decision include education, work experience and technical skills. These are all important. In fact, these are the criteria used to select candidates for interviews. In the interviews, though, it takes more than just these.

In every career, there are elements that differentiate ordinary from exceptional. We have all seen this in school, sports, work and almost every aspect of life. There are people we know that, for a given activity, are exceptional and others that aren’t. A hiring manager looks for the person that is likely to be an exceptional performer in a specific role.

It’s easy to find people that can do a poor job, and not difficult to find people that will be ordinary or mediocre performers. Identifying and attracting exceptional performers is challenge. There are two reasons for this. First, only a small percentage of candidates are truly exceptional in a specific role. That’s what it means to be exceptional. Second, many job seekers don’t understand how to demonstrate that they are exceptional. They focus on showing they are qualified, but nothing more.

You need to develop a way of communicating how you are exceptional. This starts by recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, and how you utilize these to succeed. Then, develop a variety to examples from your experience demonstrating how you have been successful. If you do this, you will improve your chances of getting an offer dramatically.

Some individuals do not feel they are exceptional, or worse, feel that they are failures. This is more common with people shortly after losing a job. They internalize the job loss as a personal failure more significant than anything else they have done. This will significantly hinder your job search.

If you do not consider yourself exceptional in a role, there are two possible reasons. First, you could be right and need additional training or experience to move into a new more demanding role or to change careers. Second, you may not be able see the aspects of your career that make you exceptional.

In both cases, there are things you can do to improve your marketability. If you require additional training and experience, get it. This can take time to complete, but is worth the effort to move you forward in your chosen career. If you are exceptional but have trouble communicating this, get some help.

No Sales Metrics to Discuss

What do you do if your employer does not have established sales metrics you can discuss in a job interview or put on your resume?

Goals, metrics, performance measures and results are extremely common in sales. Companies track sales performance closely and the data is easily quantifiable. When you interview for a sales position, you can expect to be asked about your performance, and the interviewer will expect specific answers.

In some cases, this can pose a challenge. Although rare, some companies do not provide specific goals and metrics for every sales position. Without specific metrics provided, job seekers struggle with discussing their past performance. They just don’t have the data.

If you are this situation, it is likely you will be passed over for most sales positions. It isn’t the lack of information that is the biggest problem. Companies that measure sales performance closely develop a culture that reflects this. One of the management axioms I’ve heard throughout my career is, “if you measure it, it will improve.” This philosophy focuses on the motivation that develops from publicizing performance measures… No one wants to be last and no one wants see their performance below expectations.

If you have not worked in a culture with detailed metrics, adjusting can be difficult. A hiring manager may select another candidate that has demonstrated success in this type of environment.

Your chances in this situation are not dead, though. There are ways you can demonstrate you ability to adapt to this type of culture.

Start by looking at your performance reviews. Your annual reviews will tell you your expectations and performance relative to these expectations. Hopefully, these are specific. If they are not, look at the activities that were required to be successful. For example, one of your expectations may have been “provide excellent customer service,” and had the rating “meets expectations.” This really doesn’t tell us much. We don’t know what “excellent customer service” looks like in the mind of the reviewer, how “meets expectations” falls into the continuum of performance, or how significant this was to the position.

If you develop specific examples of your performance in each review area, you will interview much better. These examples should show clearly what the goal of the activity was, what you did and what your results were. Quantifiable examples are good, but if you don’t have metrics, qualitative examples will have to do.

Without an annual review to use as a starting point, you have a greater challenge. If you did not have clear expectations set for you, what expectations did you set for yourself? If the answer was none, you have a problem. A hiring manager looking for a candidate that is self-motivated and very goal oriented is not going to favor someone that does not set goals. If you never set goals, a metric driven position might be a bad fit. If you do set goals and assess your performance, prepare to discuss examples. A job seeker that individually sets and measures goals for themselves in a culture that does not promote goal setting could make a very strong impression.

Another approach to consider is to discuss the organization’s performance. Your company or department may have goals collectively, but not measure these for individuals. If this is the case, discuss the collective goal. To make this effective be very specific about your activity contributing to the collective goal. For example, you could be part of a sales team that prepares large proposals for government contracts. Your efforts contribute to the winning of the contract, but winning is a collective effort. Discussing the success of your team lays the foundation. The question that goes unanswered when you focus on team performance is whether you were a strong contributor, the weak link on the team or somewhere in between. Giving specific examples of your activity and work you did can create a picture of your individual contributions.

As with all sales, you need to show the value you will provide if the hiring manager “buys.” The more specific you are about the activity and contribution you have provided, the easier it will be for the interviewer to picture how you will perform for them.

Interviewing for Sales Positions

A sales interview will typically focus on your sales experience and performance. Sales is a field where performance is measured closely at most companies. If you want to land the job, you will need to create a picture of how you will perform within the mind of the hiring manager

The first step is to review your bottom line performance. Be prepared to answer questions like:

What were your sales goals?
How was your performance relative to these goals?
What did you do to reach this performance level?

This is basic stuff, and answering these questions is just the starting point. You will need to prepare for more specific questions.

Activity

Prepare to discuss your goals for activity and the resulting activity level. Sales activity will vary wildly between fields. For example, a telemarketer might set a goal of 100 dials per day, while a sales person at a large construction company might focus on a specific number or dollar value of proposes submit per quarter. Prepare an outline of your typical activity in the key tasks for your past positions. With your activity, review how you organize your tasks and stay on schedule. Organization and follow up are essential in many sales roles. Presenting to an interviewer a clear picture of how you structure your activity, maintain your activity level and stay focused on revenue producing tasks will help you stand out.

Approach

Prepare to discuss your approach to sales. This approach usually develops from a combination of your personality, the expectations of your customers, the system at your employer and the training you have received. Discussing your approach, how it has evolved over you career and how it is successful will make a strong impression. One caution to consider is presenting your approach as set in stone. Your sales approach needs to be flexible and adaptable. What works effectively in one industry many not be as effective in another.

Performance

The three questions at the start of the article are important, but you need to be prepared to go into more detail. For your performance results to make the best impression, you need to provide some context. Did you grow sales by 15% at a time when your industry grew by 25%, losing market share in the process? Did your sales stay flat at a time when your industry declined substantially?

With the context you provide, you should include details of how you achieved this performance. What sales activities worked? What did you change in your approach? What would you have done differently?

Questions

Hopefully, the interviewer will ask questions that address your sales activity, approach and performance. This isn’t guaranteed, though. Every interviewer has a different style. If an interviewer does not ask specifically about a sales quality that you have identified as essential for the position, work this quality into one of your answers.

This is no different from any sales presentation. For example, you are selling a product that is competitive in the marketplace. Your company has an excellent quality control system and the resulting quality of the product is exceptional. Your prospect asks about the cost, delivery and specifications of the product, but avoids asking about quality. Are you going to mention this topic in case this is an important issue for the prospect? Definitely. The same goes for your strengths and accomplishments.

Conclusion

Your presentation of your sales background focus on three key areas:

Demonstrate how you will do the job.
Demonstrate your skill level in performing your job.
Demonstrate your ability to persevere over significant challenges and deliver results.

All three of these serve to show the hiring manager your potential – what you will achieve working for them. If you create a strong, positive image of these three elements, you will have much more success than your competition.

Interview Questions: Company Mission Statements

Many interviewers ask what a job seeker has learned about the company. This question is designed to uncover two primary pieces of information. First, determine if the job seeker took the time to do some research. Many job seekers skip this step and hurt their chances. Second, learn what is important to the job seeker based on the topics they research.

When you do your research, you should learn about the company’s history, their financial performance, their operations and products/services. Another element to research is the company’s mission statement. A mission statement provides the fundamental basis of the company’s strategy, goals and values. It can give you an idea of the culture of the company and the qualities that will be important in a hiring decision.

Let’s look the mission statements from three vastly different restaurant firms:

Morton’s The Steakhouse – Attract, Value, Retain and Develop the best talent in the industry, serve the best food (anytime, anywhere at any cost) and execute unparalleled hospitality – the best dining experience – 365 days a year.
Starbucks – To inspire and nurture the human spirit— one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.
YUM Brands – At Yum! we’re building a vibrant global business by focusing on four key business strategies:
- Build leading brands across China in every significant category
- Drive aggressive international expansion and build strong brands everywhere
- Dramatically improve U.S. brand positions, consistency and returns
- Drive industry-leading, long-term shareholder and franchisee value

What do these three mission statements say? Morton’s prioritizes exception quality in its employees, food and service.. Starbucks values the impression made on their customers… Yum Brands focuses on growth, brand position and shareholder value. In reality, all of these qualities are important to all three organizations, and to all restaurants. No one wants to have a restaurant with low quality, poor environment, bad service, terrible value, non-growing business or declining shareholder value. The difference is how each organization prioritizes these values.

The three mission statements are excellent goals, but vastly different. A job seeker interviewing at each company will need to emphasize different skills and abilities. Understanding the expectations and goals of the company will help you tailor your presentation. Be prepared to discuss situations from your experience that demonstrate success in meeting the objective of the company.

The mission statement of a company is a starting point. It is not an all inclusive statement of company’s priorities. Different jobs within a company may also have different priorities. The important thing to understand is the individual priorities of each position within the company need to support and promote the overall priorities of the company.

One final aspect of a mission statement to consider is the purpose of the statement and its intended audience. A mission statement should represent the entire company, but each firm will use and market their mission differently. Morton’s placed their mission statement on the Careers page on their website. If they wrote the mission statement with the intention of using it in the hiring process, this may have influenced the content emphasizing employees. The Starbucks mission statement appears in their About Us section of the website. It is much more general, giving a theme for the company and is used in an overall description of the company. Yum! Brands placed their mission statement in their investor section. It appears to be intended as a guide for the direction management is driving the company. Each mission statement has a different goal and the content reflects this.

Bottom line: Learn what you can about the values, goals and expectations of a company and be prepared to discuss these in an interview.

What Have You Created?

For many job seekers encounter, developing a good list of accomplishments to include on their resume and to discuss in an interview is a challenge. Listing accomplishments sounds like an easy task – just write about your successes. Despite this, it often proves to be very difficult.

The result, nearly half of all resume list no accomplishments.

There are several causes of this. Many people forget details from prior positions. Some job seekers find it difficult to focus on their successes after a job loss. Their reduced confidence affects their resume, interviews, and job search success. The most common cause I see is an a failure to recognize an experience as an accomplishment that will impress a hiring manager. This stems from a lack of understanding of what a hiring manager wants.

You can find accomplishments that will demonstrate your potential in a wide variety of work activities. One particular focus I find uncovers a lot of impressive accomplishments is to look for things the job seeker has created.

There are a few questions you can ask yourself to get the process started:

What systems have your created and implemented?
What processes have you created and implemented?
What tools, including forms, spreadsheets and databases, have your designed?
What products or services have you designed?

These questions will help identify potential accomplishments. From there, you need to look at your specific actions and the results that were achieved. Designing a great system that never gets implemented or a product that never makes it to market is difficult to sell as an accomplishment. Provide specific results. Did the project you completed increase sales, reduce costs, improve quality, increase customer service, or provide another benefit.

It is the benefit, the tangible value you provided an employer, that will impress a hiring manager.

Superhuman

Thursday night, I watch “The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic” on the Science Channel. The show profiled individuals with abilities that are incredible and verge on superpowers. It was very interesting. When the show started, several of the people profiled in the show were presented in 30 second teasers. The purpose of the teasers was to get the viewer excited about the show and motivate them to keep watching. It obviously worked with me.

The teasers were very similar to a cover letter, the executive summary on a resume, or the tell me about yourself answer in an interview. The first person the show presented was the Iceman. The teaser showed the Iceman running on a snow covered road wearing only shorts. He didn't have shoes, a shirt or a hat – just running shorts.

The teaser explained that the Iceman was running in Lapland, a location above the arctic circle. Let's look at the initial statement of the narrator:

It is January and the temperature is -26 degrees Celsius. This man has been running on ice and snow, barefoot, for over one hour. He does not have frostbite. He does not have hypothermia and he feels no pain. He has the power to live in the cold. To withstand temperatures so frigid others would die. He does this by willing himself to heat up.

Looking at this, the Iceman is positioned very clearly. The teaser leads off with an accomplishment. Running in freezing temperatures barefoot for an hour. This was presented to get attention fast. The teaser then explains the significance of the accomplishment – no frostbite, hypothermia or death. Finally, it gives an explanation of how he achieves these results – he wills himself to warm up.

When you write a cover letter or resume, you want to grab the hiring manager's attention quickly. Most people provide facts about their background, but little in the way of accomplishments. This is how most people would present the introduction to their resume.

Experienced at enduring cold conditions. 10 year track record of successfully running in cold weather. Able to warm up my body at will. Experienced swimming in near freezing water.

This teaser doesn't generate much interest. It's a set of facts that don't qualify the talent of this individual. A person in a polar bear club that runs around in a pair of shorts and then jumps in a local river for a few seconds every winter could have a similar start to their resume. The teaser in the show made it absolutely clear that the Iceman was far from ordinary – separating him from everyone else on the planet.

Another thing the teaser did was present the title of the individual – Iceman – before the teaser. This helped to create a single image of the individual that could be remembered. It is very helpful if you can generate a word or phrase in the mind of the hiring manager that they can use to remember you and your background. Something that symbolizes why you are exceptional.

If the teaser for the show was in fact a resume, cover letter or interview answer, it would go too far. I don't recommend giving yourself a nickname like the Iceman. Supply Chain Superstar, Manufacturing Man, or The Energetic Engineer would all come across very badly. What you need to do is create a picture of one or more accomplishments that is so clear and impactful that the hiring manager develops their own phrase to remember you.

Another noteworthy aspect of the teaser was the choice of people to profile. The Iceman was the first. There were other people in the program whose abilities are arguably much more impressive. So, why was the Iceman picked to be first?

The Iceman's ability and accomplishments were very easy to demonstrate quickly. Some of the abilities presented later in the show took several minutes to explain. They were too complicated to capture in a word or phrase. The Iceman, with just a nickname and a few sentences, could be presented very clearly.

This is a good lesson for your resume and cover letter. The most impressive accomplishment from your background may not be the best to present first. A less impressive accomplishment that can be read and understood very quickly could be more effective. The reason for this is the same as the reason the show had the teaser – motivate the hiring manager to read the rest of the resume. If the most impressive accomplishment is so complicated that the hiring manager doesn't understand it quickly, they may move on without ever getting it. This makes it completely ineffective.