Don't freeze up when the challenges come
It's a totally natural thing for your prospective boss to probe your experience for potential problems. Let's face it, when you buy a new car or a new home, you'll want to ask questions to make sure that your investment is a good one. Like it or not, you are a "big ticket" item that your prospective boss will have to make a major investment in. So it's not at all unreasonable if your interviewer wants to reassure himself that the picture you've painted about yourself is accurate; that you haven't left off anything about yourself that would alter his assessment of you. Keep in mind that when your prospective boss agreed to an interview with you, he must have been impressed with your background. Either your resume or cover letter sold him on you, or the employment agent or executive recruiter recommended you highly. Whatever the reason, your prospective boss must have thought well of you before you met, or he wouldn't have wasted his time getting together with you in the first place. So don't feel that the tough questions are to discredit you. Not at all. They're simply to help your prospective boss reassure himself that he's making the right decision.
Stay calm, keep positive - even if it hurts
Some interviews could raise the hackles of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. They ask their challenging questions in such a way as to bring you to a boil. Don't fall prey to this tactic. Stay cool. Remember that the cross-examination is the one portion of your interview that is most similar to what a meeting would be like between you and your prospective boss should you join his company. If you become defensive-even if it would be reasonable to do so-it could keep you from getting the job. If you tense up because someone questions your credibility on some point, your prospective boss is likely to think that you'd tense up under similar conditions if you got the job. On the other hand, if you take tough questions in stride-see them simply as an opportunity for your prospective employer to confirm that you are as "buttoned up" as you have appeared to be earlier in your interview-and handle challenges matter-of-factly, your interviewer has to say to himself: "This person would be easy to work with even if the going gets rough."
Keep the cross - examination the shortest part of your interview
The longer you dwell on your interviewer's doubts, the more he'll remember them. If you spend ten minutes of a one-hour meeting validating your interviewer's concerns about you, that's one-sixth of the total time. But if you let the challenges drag on for thirty minutes, you've spent half your time with your prospective boss defending yourself. At this point, you're probably saying to yourself that keeping the time spent on cross-examination short is not easily done. You're right. But it can be done.
As in handling these objectives, the secret is in control. If you answer an interviewer's probing question and then sit back, you give him a chance to keep on digging. Why should he switch to other, potentially less dangerous topics when he's latched on to one that obviously concerns him? If, on the other hand, when you've finished answering your interviewer's tough questions, you immediately ask him a question or take up a topic concerned with his already expressed needs, you have a chance to redirect the conversation naturally to a more positive area. Let's say, for example, that your prospective boss challenges your background because the job he has to fill requires someone who can manage three hundred people, and in your present job you've only managed fifty. You could say that for you, the key to managing fifty people is delegation of responsibility and that if you managed three hundred people, you'd probably add one more layer of delegation. Then you could sit back thinking to yourself that you've answered his question well. On the other hand, you could offer the identical answer, and then, without a moment's hesitation, redirect the interviewer's thinking to a needs area alluded to earlier, by asking him to discuss it in depth, or by relating a worth point that is appropriate to it. Keep in mind that in conversation, one question naturally leads to another. You're entitled to ask yours once you've answered your interviewer's. One caution: be sure that the question or topic you raise leads to a discussion that is on safer ground. Don't ask questions that could keep the challenge going.
