Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [127]
There was only one problem. The job posted on the web site was already filled. The company had decided to split the original position into 2 positions. They had filled the position posted on the Web but never bothered to update the original job description.
I had interviewed for the wrong position!
It hit me like a 2 × 4 across the head. Most interviews are full of nonspecific questions that are designed to act like an atomic accelerator—shooting high-speed electrons at atoms to see what falls out. Would I have conducted any other business meeting that way? Would a salesman sit in front of a customer and explain to them the feature set of a product without first asking what they were trying to use the product for?
If the interview was approached like any other business meeting, the outcome would be quite different. First, the meeting would start by listing the requirements followed by solutions that fit the problem trying to be addressed. In my case, if I would have gone to the white board and ask these simple questions (and written the answers to them):
• What is the goal of this position?
• What are the responsibilities of this position?
• What do you hope this person will accomplish in this role?
• Is this a new position? If no, what did the previous person do really well and what did that person do really poorly?
• How do you know if a person is successful in this position?
• What is the reporting structure—what about the “dotted lines?”
• Are there any direct reports? Does one of them want this position?
As the questions and answers begin to fill the white board, you now have a structure in which you can hang your experiences. If done correctly, your “white board” resume will fit exactly their specific requirements. Doing this at the start of the interview would have told me what position I was applying for and would have made me look like a leader rather than a follower.
Kevin Watson, www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwatson/.
■ HOW TO ANSWER QUESTIONS
Answer questions with a 1-2 punch—a short answer followed by a long answer. For open-ended questions, I always suggest you say, “Let me give you the short version. If you need to explore some aspect more fully, I’d be happy to go into greater depth.”
Answers of less than 30 seconds are generally insufficient, but answers over 3 minutes are too long. This is an important detail. In the first instance, you’ll come across as light, lacking knowledge, depth, and insight—not the impression you want to be making. Long answers right off the bat, though, could brand you as being too technical or boring. You need to strike a fine balance and this 1-2 punch does it. In the end, a question like, “What was your most difficult assignment or biggest accomplishment?” might take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes depending on the detail—but let the interviewer draw the details out of you.
Always remember that the interviewer is the one who asked the question. Tailor your answer to what the person needs to know without a lot of extraneous rambling or superfluous explanation. Why give a sermon when a short prayer will do?
➤ Preparing for Typical Interview Questions
The interview isn’t just about your stories. Beyond the purely technical questions specific to each job, I have listed the typical questions interviewers ask. These are behavior-based interview (BBI) questions. If BBI is new to you, don’t panic. It was designed to reduce hiring errors by focusing on a job hunter’s past experience and behaviors instead of relying on an interviewer’s gut-level decision-making ability. BBI questions actually focus on the core components of your accomplishments. That’s good for you.
If you have experience with traditional interviewing techniques, you’ll find the BBI different in several ways:
• The interview will be structured to concentrate on areas that are important to the