On the surface this may seem extraordinarily presumptuous. And yet, if you ask the question with an enthusiasm that shows your genuine interest in the job, your prospective boss should not react negatively. If you say, for example: "Mr. X., I'm excited about this job opportunity! When can I start!" your interviewer should see by that question that you are caught up in the excitement, the opportunity, the challenge that the job has to offer, and he should be flattered by it. Even if your prospective employer isn't quite ready to ask you to join his firm, the question shouldn't create a difficult confrontation. It's easy for your possible new boss to answer your question without feeling put upon. He might say, for example: "Well, we haven't really thought about who our finalist will be. We're still interviewing several good people. So I can't tell you when you could start just at this time ... if you're the one whom we finally select." On the other hand, if your prospective boss is genuinely interested in you, and you ask a question like "When can I start!" there's a good likelihood he'll say to you, "When could you join us?" In a word, you can help him to bypass the question of whether it's you he wants, and go on the easier question of the date you'll be ready to begin work.
Often, in third and fourth interviews, the person meeting with you has been sold on you by those who interviewed you earlier on. This interviewer will make the final decision - but unless you do very badly initially of this interview, you're probably going to get the offer you seek. In situations like this, when it comes time for, it's not there. Instead, your interviewer asks you if you have any questions you'd like to ask him. If this happens, you're home free. If you say: "Just one, when can I start!", your prospective boss might be nonplussed for a moment. But he's likely to think that not only do others in his own organization have high regard for you, but you have a high regard for his organization. He's likely to answer: "As soon as you can!"
As with the case of directing your prospective employer to grant you a second interview, some of you will have great hesitation about directing your prospective employer to make you a job offer. If you are truly concerned about the "When-can-I-start?" question, keep in mind the telling parallel that I alluded to before. The smart salesman never asks for the order point-blank. He asks easy questions that assume the order has already been made. And asking when you can start is just such a question.
If the "when" question is just not your style, there is a "what" question that you might also want to consider in your third or fourth interview. If reaching this stage is a breeze - as it should be by this time - seize an opportunity to say something like this: "Mr. X, I'm convinced this is the company I want to go to work for. What more can I do to convince you and your associates that I'm the person for the job?" This question could lead your prospective boss to give you a special written assignment to "convince him" in one or more areas where he's not convinced you're the right person. But after three or four interviews he probably knows enough about you not to do this. It's more likely your prospective boss will say to himself, "I really need no further convincing. This person is the right one for the job." In which case you're likely to get a job offer.
Will the techniques I've described work for you? If the experience of other job seekers is any indication, there's no doubt that they will. Of all the tools offered, none yields more favorable comments than uncovering prospects' needs before revealing your experience, matching your experience to these needs, avoiding confrontations over interviewer doubts, and using the last part of your interview specifically to secure additional interviews. But in all fairness, I should point out that exercising control in an interview is not easy for most job seekers. At each of my classes on interviewing, I invite some of the participants to take practice interviews with me. Despite the fact that they have just finished listening to a discussion of the same ideas, invariably one (or even two) of the participants blows it. They allow me, the interviewer, to convince them to talk about themselves before they know what it is that I'm looking for, and so they go on at length about things I'm not interested in! On the other hand, the participants who are interviewed later in the class catch on to the earlier interviewee's errors and uncover and match needs brilliantly! The biggest failing of most practice interviewees is in not going after a follow-up interview. Why don't they do so? Some, because they get cold feet about asking who and when. But more often than not, it's because they forget to ask! How about you? You can learn to apply these techniques, of course. But to make them work, you have to practice them until they are second nature to you. When they are, you'll find you'll never go back to ordinary non directed interviewing again.
