The job interview is the moment of truth in job hunting-so crucial and organic an aspect of getting hired that entire books have been devoted to the subject. Yet interviews are probably the trickiest aspect of job hunting in which to dispense advice.
The problem is that the interview is very much a game-a game, moreover, in which the rules are constantly changing. Ostensibly, you and the interviewer (sometimes other people are involved, too) are having a civilized conversation. You greet one another. There's some small talk. The interviewer asks you some questions. You answer them. The interviewer asks you if you have any questions. The questions get answered. And so forth.
But while all of this is going on, the interviewer is playing out his or her role in the game: paying attention not only to what you're saying but to how you're responding. The interviewer is making an evaluation, computing nearly everything you say and do, the better to judge whether your ability, experience, education, and personality fit the job and the company. The interviewer knows you're doing your best to create a positive impression. The interviewer knows that as hard as the two of you may try to make the interview seem natural and unforced, the interview is, by nature, an unnatural and forced situation. Much of how the interviewer evaluates you will be determined not so much by the qualifications you enumerate and the personal qualities you exhibit during the interview, but by your interview performance in general. How you play the game!
So what we're going to be talking about is the job interview as a performance in itself. You already know-or should know-the qualities that make you special. You already know-or should know-the skills and the attributes it takes to do the job being offered. Your task in the interview is to make a sale: to sell the person (or persons) who interviews you on the idea you already know ahead of time: that you're the best person for the job.
Taking Control
There are two ways to approach a job interview. One is to be passive: to sit there and answer whatever questions you're given to the best of your ability. The other is to be active: to take control of the interview, to give the interviewer what you want to give, not necessarily what the interviewer is trying to find out. One of the most successful insurance salesmen I know had an interesting theory that applies as much to getting hired as it does to selling insurance. "Other insurance salesmen," he said, "present facts and answer questions. I inspire confidence."
The way you inspire confidence in an interview is to give the interviewer every reason to believe that you can handle the job for which you're being considered, and little reason to believe that you can't. You supply these reasons (one way or the other) with much more than the answers you give to questions.
You supply reasons with the way you look, with the enthusiasm you show or don't show, with the person ability you show or don't show, with the energy, the confidence, and the ambition you show or don't show.
You are in control. The interviewer is asking the questions, but if you know what to expect and how to sell yourself, you can take control of the interview in a way that will give the interviewer reasons to hire you.
So let's put ourselves for the moment in the chair of the person-or persons-sitting across the desk or table from you at a typical interview.
I can tell you from more than thirty years of experience that virtually everything an interviewer is concerned about in a typical interview situation boils down, in the end, to one of three questions:
- Can you do the job?
- Will you do the job?
- Do you fit in with the company's style?
But now you know what the interviewer is looking for. Regardless of the questions you are asked-and you may be asked any one of three hundred different questions-the answers you give must be plugged into one of these three areas: your ability to do the job, your willingness to do the job, your suitability for the job and the company. Every answer you give should, one way or another, say one of the following three things:
- I am able to do this job.
- I am willing to do this job.
- I can fit in.
Sizing up the Situation
The main reason why most job candidates fall short in the job interview is that they don't inspire confidence. They give the interviewer more reasons to say 'no' than to say yes.
In most cases, the reason is a simple matter of fear-the fear of failing. I've seen it happen hundreds of times in my career. Candidates with marvelous qualifications lose out not because they couldn't do the job or even lacked the confidence that they could do the job. They lose out because their confidence didn't come through in the interview situation. They didn't "sell" them-selves convincingly enough. They didn't inspire confidence.
Let's tackle the root of the problem: the nervousness most people feel any time there is pressure on them to perform. There is a job opening and you want the job, maybe need it very badly. The interview is an obstacle. Can you be blamed for being anxious?
Not at all. In fact, a little anxiety is good for you. Ask any championship athlete, and they'll tell you that what really worries them before an important match or tournament is not feeling any nerves.
The challenge, of course, is to control this anxiety: to make it work for you, not defeat you. One thing that might help is to keep in mind that you have nothing to lose in a job interview. Nothing. Even if you don't get the job, you won't be much worse off than you were a short while before you heard about it.
If you get turned down-and, remember, most people who get interviewed get turned down-there will be other interviews, other chances to do what you may not have done as well as you wanted to do in this last interview.
As hard as it may seem to do, it's possible to divorce the significance of the interview-what is at stake-from the interview itself. Athletes do it all the time. "I'm not competing for the Wimbledon championship," tennis great Fred Perry used to say. "I'm just going out to play a game of tennis."
Do the same thing in a job interview. Forget about whether or not you're going to get the job. Concentrate on the interview itself. Get good at the skill. Learn from past mistakes. See every interview you go on as a chance to put into practice what you learned at your last interview. If you handle the interview well, the job offer will take care of itself. Don't even think about the outcome: it will only interfere.
Develop confidence in yourself as a job interviewee. I'm serious! I've known dozens and dozens of people whose employment record had little to recommend them. Yet, get these people in a one-to-one interview situation, and they were world-beaters. They were offered jobs. They didn't always keep these jobs, unfortunately, but that's another story. "I know I don't have the qualifications," I remember one young woman telling me years ago, "but it's never been a problem in the past. Set up the interview."
Confident job candidates know that in spite of what a lot of the books and articles about job interviewing might lead you to believe, the person doing the interviewing, much of the time, is not a professional interviewer schooled in "secret" techniques. He or she is simply a person with a problem: hiring somebody to fill a job. Confident job candidates know that far from fighting your attempts to take control over the interview situation, most interviewers will welcome it: you're making their job easier. Confident job candidates know that they, the candidates, know more about interviewing, about the job, and about themselves than the interviewer know. They know that as long as the subject of discussion is one of the areas the candidate knows more about than the interviewer, the candidate (not the inter-viewer) holds the upper hand.
Make it your business to develop the same confidence: it's not nearly as hard as you might think.
Being Prepared
Confidence is rooted in knowledge, knowledge, in turn, is rooted in preparation. You should know the qualities and attributes that set you apart from other candidates. You should know the qualities and attributes needed in the kind of job you're looking for. The job interview introduces a new element: the company offering the job.
Never go into any interview unless you've thoroughly researched the company offering the job. You should know its products, its size, its top executives, its growth pattern, its recent financial performance, its strengths, and its weaknesses.
For large companies, this kind of information is easy to come by: a morning in the library, going through various business directories like Dun & Bradstreet's, Standard & Poor's and Moody's Manuals, should give you basic information. Check through the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature for a list of recent articles that may have appeared on the company in publications like Time, Newsweek, Business Week, Dun's Review, or Financial World. Get hold of the trade publications that deal with the industry in which the company is involved; you might discover some interesting data. At the very least, get your hands on the company's annual report and on any brochures or internal publications (newsletters, company papers, etc.) you can latch onto. The simplest way to get an annual report is to call a stockbroker you know, the secretary of the company, or the company's public relations department.
Another source of information is the company's 10-K form. A 10-K form is a form that every public company has to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In some cases, it's little more than a financial statement; in other cases, you'll find such information as the salary the company pays to its top officers-useful information to have. You could probably get one of these forms from the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it may take time. If you're in a hurry, there's a company in New York that will send you the 10-K on any company in one day for a modest fee. The company is called National Investment, Inc., and its address is 80 Wall St., New York, N.Y. 10005.
Read the material you gather with an inquiring eye. Look for trends. See if you can discern a company philosophy. Is the company adopting a new marketing philosophy, changing its product lines, experiencing certain kinds of problems you might be able to help solve? Find out about the president and other officers. Jot down whatever information you get on note cards, or, better still, in a notebook bought for this purpose only.
See if you can locate somebody who knows the company well. It might be an employee or an ex-employee, or a professional person who does work for them. See what you can dig out of these people. Many firms, although they won't admit it, have a preconceived idea of who "their" kinds of people are. The "style" usually filters down from the chief executive. You may not fit the mold, but it doesn't hurt to find out what the mold is.
Discovering somebody who knows the company pretty well is especially important if it's a smaller company that hasn't generated much publicity. You may find when you go to the library and consult the various indexes that there is virtually no material about this particular company. This being the case, you are pretty much forced to go directly to the source. Talk to the person who has either set up the interview for you or is, in fact, going to conduct the interview. Explain the problem. Tell him -or her-you'd like some information that isn't confidential about the company before the interview and would they be kind enough to send you whatever they can. Most executives will oblige you.
Don't overlook, or take for granted, this research aspect of the interview. Our surveys show that not being familiar with the company with whom you're interviewing will hurt your chances with as many as 75 percent of the interviewers you may encounter.
