Category: Charting Your Career for Success

“You Are Hired!”

Start the interview by showing an interest in the job.

Why? Because you are sending out buying signals which are attractive to the hiring manager. Why even go to an interview for an opportunity that you have not researched enough to know whether you are interested. If you are out kicking tires, stay home. You might burn a great opportunity.  Do not walk through the company doors of any company until you know where you will be working, approximately what you will be making, and what you will be doing if you are hired. There is so much information out there on the Internet alone that most high school sophomores can pin down job details from a web search on a smartphone.

Prepare to be believable and let likeability take care of itself.

Do not focus on whether people like you.  Focus on whether the interviewer believes and trusts you.  Know your facts about yourself and your qualifications for the job for which you are applying.

Ironically, even entertainers do not focus on being liked.  The successful ones focus on the act.

People will like you just fine.  Just give your most sincere presentation of the match between you and the job, and hiring managers will be happy if not excited to find what they are seeking.

Don’t rely on stock questions.

Develop your questions from you research. As you gather information about a company, you will find that your curiosity begins to rise.  There is always more to know.  Build your question list from the things that truly have raised your curiosity.  Many questions people ask are contained right in the job description: the title of the person to whom you will report, the scope of the position, even whether there are other people on the team.  Taking the research a small step further, you can find out information about the supervisor for this position and information about the people on the team. Mention their names during the interview and ask questions from your curiosity about these people.

Know your interviewer.

Before you walk in the door, you should try to know the name, career history, and title of the person you are meeting. By knowing these things, you can put yourself on a more even footing against other applicants who may be coming in with a personal referral from a friend.

Layout a map to show the interviewer as to how you will produce results, save the company money, and become a member of the team for the good of the company However, you are not in an interview to be popular. You are in an interview to get a job.  Be personable, assertive, confident, but do not act like you want to be someone’s pal.  Companies need doers not back-slapper who are there to  glad-hand.  Within the first thirty seconds of the interview, the hiring managers should know if they have invited the right person to the interview.

Always trial close.

Ask for the date when you should follow up with the company.

Send a thank you note.

You can send a letter if you like.  But send an email before the end of the day of the interview.

Post-Interview Letter: Follow Up the Interview With a Letter That Will Get You the Job.

Some people are great lists makers.  Whether shopping, going to a business meeting, planning an event, tracking their expenses, setting priorities for the day, these people are intuitively organized about the way they live their lives through lists making.

Other people, myself included, are less likely to structure their lives around lists, but go along through the day as things come up.  I want to be more of a list maker.

I believe that lists makers are more productive, experience less stress, have a more clear mind, and work shorter days than those of us who just take care of things as these things pop in front of us.  At least, I seem to have a more productive, less stressful day, and can focus better on my work when I have a plan laid out for the things I need to do.

I remember reading a book called The Book of Lists.  I really enjoyed the book and as it turns out, according to Wikipedia.org/The Books of Lists, authors Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace, collaborating and working separately, produced a series of books of lists on odd and curiously interesting topics: world’s greatest libel suits, worst places to hitchhike, people suspected of being Jack the Ripper, and so forth

So some of you may want to save your daily activity lists.  You may find they produce a book  someday.

I sometimes find that if I make a list, I am more likely to actually use it when it is a short list of things of genuine importance.  I might have a list of the three most important people for me to call today.  I might have a list that only has one thing on it, such as a long tedious task that will take several hours and may involve taking breaks and returning to for the entire day.

I also find that lists can become outlines with categories and subcategories.  For example, I may have on my list three people to call and under each person’s name, I may have a list of things to cover with that person.

Common sense seems to be to limit your lists to things that you really need to get done.  With this approach you are more likely to actually use your list and more likely to get to the things done that have genuine importance.

To me, the really important lists are those lists that involve things I want to discuss in meetings or on the phone.   Putting these lists together may take a little preparation and review and can become really  important in getting cooperation.  In these cases, I write down what I want to cover.  I may need to review or research my activities with the people who will be in this meeting so that I am be mentally fresh on the material to be covered.

I may try to anticipate questions that a person might have so that I can do some research in preparation for answering those questions.   This preparation can create a list of material in itself.

Conventional practice and advice is that discussing compensation on the first interview is in bad form and can cost an applicant future interviews.

If you are a hiring manager and make it your practice not to discuss income at all on the first interview or if you are an applicant and plan not to bring up the subject of compensation on the first interview, my experience has been that you are making a mistake.

If a hiring manager makes an offer to a candidate, the hiring manager is now only halfway to making a hire.  For the first time, the applicant has the 100% power over yes or no in the process.  Also, from my experience, if an interview process goes to the point of that an offer is extended and the offer is rejected, it is intuitively obvious why the offer is turned down:  compensation.
Think about it.  The applicant is very likely sold on the company, the people, and the responsibilities.  Why else would the applicant have invested so much time to prepare for the interviews and make the trips to interviews if everything is not positive, and then turn down the offer when it is extended?  The answer is compensation.

Do you need to discuss the details of an offer on a first interview?  I do not think so.

However, I think that both the hiring manager and the applicant need to get some framework around the subject of compensation (salary, bonus, benefits) from both what the hiring company pays and what the applicant is making to know that the two are at least in the same range of expectation.  So save yourself some time.

If you are a hiring manager, save yourself some time and let the applicant know that if he or she is chosen for the role, the person can expect the position to pay approximately a certain amount.