What strategy is most likely to get you an offer? From my experience, only one will do it-and that's to convince the interviewer that of all the candidates he's considering, you're the most likely person to get done what he needs to get done. Now it may well be that you're not the most "qualified" candidate; that someone with better skills is applying for the job. But if you do a better job convincing your prospective boss that you'll secure the results he's looking for, he has no choice but to pick you.
How you go about convincing an interviewer that you can do the job better when you may be only equal to other candidates (or even not quite as good) is what we talk here all about. Over the years I've developed a plan that has helped thousands of job-seekers do just this. To make it work for you, however, you should consider future interviews in a way that you may not have thought of them in the past. Don't look at interviews as an hour spent with a prospective employer. Rather, think of them as an opportunity to achieve four specific objectives. And be aware, throughout your meeting, that your task is to achieve them one by one-knowing full well that you must concentrate on the first before you go on to the second, and so on. This objective-by-objective approach to interviews may seem strange to you at first. Once you've tried it, however, I think you'll see why it has been effective for so many successful candidates in the past.
Uncovering the real needs of your interviewer
The typical job-seeker tries to talk as much as possible about himself in the hour (or half-hour) allotted to him by an interviewer. A reasonable point of view, perhaps, since it could be his one and only opportunity to promote his cause in person. Unfortunately, this approach has left countless job-seekers frustrated and without offers, saying: "What did I do wrong? I thought I'd really done so well in that interview." What these interviewees did wrong was very simple-they talked about themselves in ways that were irrelevant to "the needs of the interviewers; they described experience and worth points that were meaningless in terms of the particular job they were applying for.
The secret of this objective in your interview is to discover the real things your prospective boss is looking for-the things he feels must be done by the person he gives the job to; and also to discover the type of person he feels is necessary to get these things done. And it is imperative for you to uncover the needs of your prospective employer at the very start of your interview-before he gets you talking at length about yourself. "Great theory," you exclaim, "but will it work in practice?" It can-only if you make it. This is not easy, but if you keep your objective clearly in mind as you approach the interview-and if you plan in advance to control the situation-you can do it.
Let's say, for example, that after the usual "good mornings," your interviewer comes right out and asks you to fill him in on the details of your background. What then? Aren't you forced to begin with: "Well, I graduated from college in 1955, and then I joined such and such company," and so on? Not really! You can just as easily summarize your experience in thirty seconds or so-even if you've been in business twenty years-and then redirect your interviewer back to your first objective. Suppose for a moment that you are in marketing; you could say, "Well, I've had twelve years of marketing management experience, ranging from assistant product manager to director of product marketing, which is what I've done the past two years." Then, without stopping, you could go on to say: "I can give you a whole lot of specifics in my background, but I'm sure that they'd be more relevant if I were more familiar with the job that needs to be done and the kind of person you'd like to have do it. Then I could zero in on the things you'd like to hear more about." After that, without a moment's pause, you could ask your interviewer to provide you with more details by saying something like: "Could you fill me in more about the job? The only things I know about it are what I saw in your ad" (or heard from the recruiter or employment agency, or whatever is the case).
