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by was to position myself as a possible resource for your company. Obviously, I have enough guts and tenacity to knock on doors—but I’m decent enough not to be pushy. Kindly review my resume and let me know if you’d like to meet for a regular interview. That will give both of us some time to do our homework on each other. Otherwise, perhaps you can pass my resume along to a local friend who is hiring. Okay??

Now clearly, it takes nerves of steel to pull this off—but people did this type of thing during the depression. And business-to-business salespeople do this every day.

Remember that desperate times call for desperate measures, and if you just lost your job and you are not niched to a particular industry and you are almost out of cash and have kids to feed, then what I have written is a fairly good game plan for getting out an collecting noes—the most time honored way to get to yeses there is.

Harry Joiner is a well-known marketing recruiter based in Atlanta, Georgia. His blog, MarketingHeadhunter.com, is one of the world’s most widely read blogs on careers in marketing, and his forthcoming book The Over 50 Job Search is expected to be published in 2010. You can see the book’s weblog at www.Over50JobSearch.com

Chapter 12

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Winning the Face-to-Face Interview

The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell.

—ANDREW CARNEGIE

As competition for customers, market share, and profitability intensifies, understanding what makes an organization effective and which levers to pull to improve financial performance are critical. High-performing companies consistently hire doers—go-getters—at all levels in the company. Innovation, creativity, perseverance, and leadership are the key levers for success.

As a guerrilla job hunter, your strategy has been to appeal to an employer’s core need to make money, save money, and increase efficiencies. Combining those needs with elements from the New Value Table (see Figure 2.1) produced a winning resume that secured interviews. Now you must deliver on your marketing.

■ BUILD YOUR STRATEGY AROUND THE EMPLOYER’S EXPECTATIONS

You will meet 4 general groups of decision makers during interviews. Each group requires a different strategy. Each has a different agenda that you must focus on.

The groups are:

1. Senior executives

2. Hiring managers

3. Human resource managers

4. Corporate recruiters

➤ Senior Executives

• Even if you are not seeking a senior executive role, executives look for similar things from all candidates, so understanding their perspective will help you position your accomplishments accordingly. By the way, that is the first thing they look for—accomplishments.

• Executives want to see a lot of recent accomplishments and understand the specifics. They need to know how your accomplishments can translate into success for them if they hire you—even before they interview you.

Executives also look for:

• Outstanding leadership qualities: A demonstrated ability to create and communicate a vision and then build a team to carry it out

• Honesty and integrity: A well-principled person whom people trust and who can build shared values throughout the organization

• Intellectual capacity: The ability to make quick, solid decisions in tough competitive environments

• Intensity: The capacity to create a deep level of trust among their staff and create an energy-charged, enthusiastic environment

• Passion: An unrelenting drive to leave a positive mark on the organization that is not driven by money or power

• Work ethic: A warriorlike resiliency that allows you to persevere, no matter how difficult the task

➤ Hiring Managers

Hiring managers are the people you will work for directly. They are mostly interested in accomplishments specific to their area of the business. Moreover, they want to know how your accomplishments can translate into success for them personally.

Here’s what else hiring managers may look for:

Technical Competencies

• Proactive: Do you embody