On those rare occasions when you may be confronted by a genuinely hostile interviewer, your smartest approach is to empathize with the upset feeling behind the hostility and tactfully ask a question or two to get to the bottom of what seems to be bothering him or her.
Example: Your interviewer is obviously under great pressure at the time of your interview. He's trying to put out three fires while the phone rings off the hook. The secretary reminds him of a meeting in ten minutes and there are other people shouting outside. In the middle of this extremely tense atmosphere, your interviewer says with noticeable impatience, "Look, you'll have to pardon me, but we've got a ton of work to get out of here today. You're the fourth person this week Bill has sent to me for an interview and frankly, I've got more pressing concerns to think about right now. So we'll have to make this fairly brief."
You could offer to come back at another time. But he'll likely be just as gruff and harried then, or even worse. So you can try to salvage the interview by empathizing and then uncovering his greatest needs. For example, you might say, "It sure seems like things are hopping today and it's not the best time for an interview. But let me ask you a fast question. Assuming someone will be hired for this spot, what is the one way that person could best helping you be more productive, especially at busy times like this?"
The Disinterested Interviewer
Another difficult situation you may run into is when your interviewer seems distracted or uninterested. The best approach here is to ask a few questions to draw out his chief area of interest, and then talk about why you can help him in that area.
Since we've once again touched upon the subject of asking questions, let's really get into it now.
Questions to Ask During Your Interview
Asking questions in your interview is essential, for four reasons:
- To achieve your master strategy, that is, uncover your interviewer's greatest wants and needs before you start to sell your own qualifications. You must sell what the buyer is buying. And before you can do that, you must find out what the buyer is buying.
- To demonstrate your interest in, and enthusiasm for, the position and company.
- To get enough information so that you can judge whether you want this opportunity or not.
- To demonstrate to the employer that you place a high value on yourself -- that you're carefully evaluating the company as much as the company is evaluating you and that you're obviously not someone willing to jump at or settle for just anything. (This last item is a very important point that many job-hungry executives overlook.
Let's now examine the questions you might ask to achieve each of these objectives.
Questions to Achieve Your Master Strategy --
Uncovering Your Interviewer's
Greatest Wants and Needs for the Position
Once again, let's repeat The Greatest Secret of Executive Job Hunting. You can get anything you want in life if you first find out what people want, and then show them how to get it.
During the interview, your most important objective is to uncover your interviewer's most ardently felt want, problem, need, desire, goal or priority. You're not going to sell anything until you know what the buyer is buying.
The only way to accomplish this is by asking questions. Let's repeat the example mentioned earlier.
After a few introductory remarks, you can seize the initiative by saying, "Before we get started, would you fill me in a little bit more about this position? All I know about it is what I heard from the executive recruiter (read in your advertisement or whatever the case may be)."
If, however, your interviewer asks you the first question, answer it and, as soon as you feel the timing is appropriate, try to regain the initiative by asking him to reveal more about the position.
The key point is, no matter how your interview begins, you get back as soon as possible to your basic strategy of uncovering his greatest want. And you must do it nonchalantly, so that it doesn't seem as if you are aggressively and inappropriately trying to grab control of the interview.
Here, listed roughly in order of their effectiveness, are some excellent questions to help you uncover what the interviewer wants most. Several of these questions overlap, so choose the variations you feel most comfortable and always be ready to ask them in your interviews.
- What would you say are the three things you would most like someone to achieve in this position? Wait for an answer and then follow up with: And of these, which is the most important? Then, if it's not clear why this goal is so important, ask, "And just so I'll understand, why is this especially important to you at this time?"
- What major strengths should a person possess to perform well in this position?
- What would your highest expectations be for the person who fills this job?
- What would be the highest priorities for the person who fills this position?
- Why is the position open?
- If you had a magic wand, and with one wave, could take away a given concern or fulfill any given challenge in this department, what would that be?
- I am a strongly goal-oriented person. What would I have to achieve in the coming year for you to consider my work very successful? What would you most like me to achieve in this position?
- Which areas of this position could be better performed than they have been in the past?
- What kind of performance would you like to see in the person who takes this position?
- Are any major responsibilities in this position not currently being met?
- What major changes or improvements would you most like to see brought about by the person who takes this position?
- What obstacles might stand in the way of realizing this achievement?
With this information in hand, you will be in an infinitely stronger position to present your qualifications in the manner that will most impress your prospect that you are so well qualified for the job.
