So you’ve finally obtained that hard-to-get interview – congratulations!  But now what do you do?  What can you expect in the interview?

First and foremost, you must realize that in the job interview you’re a sales representative and the product you’re selling is….you!  This means you have to be ready to sell your skills and experiences as they apply specifically to the position for which you’re being interviewed.

Let me say that again: “you have to be ready to sell your skills and experiences as they apply specifically to the position for which you’re being interviewed”.  This is critically important that and I’ll go into greater detail in a subsequent post.
Also, bear in mind that the interview is about more than just your experience and qualifications.  Yes, you were invited to interview because of what was in your resume.  And while you’ll almost certainly be asked questions in the interview about your skills and experience, you must also be able to give examples of accomplishments to prove you been able to successfully apply those skills.
Additionally, the Hiring Manager wants to get a feel for your personality, particularly to determine if you’re “likeable”, which is of course completely subjective.

In fact, Hiring Managers don’t necessarily always offer the job to the most qualified candidate.  What they frequently do is offer the job to the candidate that is both qualified and likable.  This means that a pleasant personality, the ability to project an air of enthusiasm, and good communication and interpersonal skills count heavily, assuming of course that you’re also highly qualified.

As if all this isn’t enough, you also have to dress appropriately, thoroughly research the company, anticipate and have well prepared answers to common interview questions, along with many other details, all before you even you step through the door for the interview.
Unfortunately, many job applicants believe the interview starts when you first sit down to face the interviewers.  This is dead wrong.  In actuality, the interview begins as soon as you’re told what day and time to come in.  That’s when you need to begin your preparation.
Please believe me when I tell you that preparation is the number one thing that distinguishes great candidates from merely good ones.  And in today’s tough job market, you must be a great candidate to get that job offer.

Consequently, my next several posts will be about how you can properly prepare for any interview situation, focusing on areas such as:
•    Company Research
•    Preparing your “Marketing Message”
•    Why you need anecdotes
•    How to answer both common and difficult questions (and why you need to prepare questions of your own to ask).

At the end of this series, you will know how to be one of the most, if not the most, well prepared candidate in the eyes of any Hiring Manager.

This is the first in a series of job interview advice posts that are designed to put you ahead of the vast majority of your competition.

Believe it or not, hiring managers can also be uneasy during interviews, particularly so when we interview someone who is obviously unqualified and/or unprepared.  This means that everything you can do to make the hiring manager’s job easier in the interview will put you that much ahead of applicants who are not as well prepared.

To set the stage for the interview advice I’ll be giving, read carefully the following example of a scenario that is all too common in many interviews I’ve conducted over the years.

Candidates come into the interview room, dressed in jeans or something equally inappropriate, carrying nothing to write with and no notebook to write in.  They mumble their name and overall give the impression that they’ve done little or no preparation.  When asked to give an overview of their experience, they do so in a few short sentences which have little or no relevance to my job opening.  Their answers to my questions are generic and could apply to any position, with no indication that any research was done of my company.  They talk about their experience but not their accomplishments.
Some of the information they tell me contradicts what is on their resume, leading me to wonder if they’ve even read their own resume before the interview.

Worse yet, they sometimes display arrogance or otherwise try to look superior because of their experience and presumed abilities. Or, alternately, their lack of preparation becomes obvious after the first question and they are then too nervous to effectively answer subsequent questions.

At the close of the interview, the only questions they ask are related to salary, working hours and benefits.  They then call back in three days and wonder why I haven’t yet offered them the job.

Does this sound overly critical?  Or – be honest now! – have you exhibited yourself some of the traits described during one of your interviews?  Don’t be alarmed if you have.  Many of the components in this scenario are present in at least half of the interviews I’ve conducted over the years.  Fortunately, the fix is very straightforward because the root cause of every one of the negative behaviors described can attributed to one thing: lack of preparation.

The subsequent series of posts will explain in detail exactly how you can be the most well prepared candidate in any interview.  Preparation is the golden word when it comes to job interviews.  It’s the key to impressing the hiring manager and that’s the key to a job offer.

It happens sometimes.  You had an interview, thought it went well, and you’ve heard nothing.   You want to follow up but don’t want to come across as desperate or offensive.   Here’s how to do it the right way.

From a timing standpoint, if you haven’t heard anything in two weeks after a first interview, it’s perfectly acceptable to call HR to check on your status.  If fact, they expect it. Typically, HR handles all the administrative work for the hiring manager and they will know the status of the hiring decision.

The reason your first follow up should always be with the HR department, NOT the hiring manager, is that at any given time a manager may be interviewing ten or more applicants and it would be time consuming to personally talk to them all.  That’s what HR is for and the hiring manager expects you to make HR your contact point.

Another reason is that, as a hiring manager, I have to tell you I really don’t like getting phone calls from applicants who were interviewed.  If I don’t intend to hire them, it’s an awkward call, and if I’m still interested I will already be scheduling them for another interview.

At this point in time, your only follow-up with the hiring manger (or anyone else with whom you interviewed) should be your thank-you letter or email following the interview.  Calling HR instead shows you know the proper etiquette and are respectful of the interviewer’s time.

The one exception to this is when the company is very small.  If there is no formal HR department then calling the hiring manager is your only option.

If you feel you just have to follow-up with me, I much prefer an email (although I still won’t appreciate the intrusion!).  An email lets me respond when I’m able to, and I can be much better prepared if it’s going to be a “dear John” type of response.

Here’s a special tip if you decide to send an inquiry email to the hiring manager after the interview.  Instead of just asking about your status, find a relevant article and send it.  In your email, simply say you’ve been thinking about what you heard in the interview and found this interesting article that you wanted to pass on.  Then, close by saying you hope to hear from them soon.  This reinforces that you do your homework and allows you to make a more subtle inquiry on your status.

If you decide you simply must call the hiring manager on the phone, here’s how to approach it.
First, send an email politely saying that you’re following up.  Then, suggest three different days and times to call them and ask if they can fit one into their schedule, and if not could they suggest a day and time that would work.

You have a much better chance of getting a response to this type of an inquiry, although the hiring manager will probably still be reluctant to accept a phone call.

If you make it to the second or subsequent interview rounds, shorten your follow-up time to one week.  I still recommend you follow-up with HR and use the same procedures.  If you’re considered the best candidate, you WILL hear back, whether or not you follow up.  Trust me on this!

Here’s the scenario: you’ve interviewed for a job and it seemed to go pretty well.  It’s been a week and you haven’t heard anything.  Now what should you do?  Keep waiting?  If so, how long?  Call HR and ask what your status is?  Call the Hiring Manager and ask why you’ve rudely been kept waiting? (okay, this is a bad idea by any measurement!)

Just exactly what is a reasonable time to wait before following up after a job interview?  This is a tough question for most job applicants and I’m now going to give you some guidelines.

First, let’s talk about initial interviews.  Two weeks is not an unreasonable amount of time for a company to respond to applicants after the first interview, especially if it’s a big company and a large number of applicants are being interviewed.

In today’s tough job market, a job opening can easily get 50 to 100 applicants or more.  After reviewing the resumes and screening for the most qualified candidates, I will typically bring in four to as many as ten for an initial interview, depending on how many resumes are received and how many of those are highly qualified.

With this many interviews to conduct, it can easily take two weeks to complete them and most companies will typically want to interview all candidates before making a decision as to who to bring back for a second interview.  This means that if you are the first or second candidate interviewed it may be up to two weeks before you hear anything.  Even if you absolutely aced the interview, they will still want to complete them all before deciding which ones to bring back.

If you’re fortunate enough to make it to the second or subsequent interview round, things will happen much faster.  The interview pool will be smaller and it will frequently take no longer than one week to interview the final candidates.

So here’s the bottom line: don’t get too nervous until two weeks after an initial interview and one week after a second or final interview.  If you haven’t heard anything after these time periods, it’s perfectly acceptable to follow-up with a call to the HR department or to the person who scheduled your interview.  DO NOT at this point call the person (s) with whom you interviewed or the Hiring Manager.

In my next post, I will explain in more detail exactly why your first follow up should be to HR and how to follow up in a way that is respectful and shows you are a professional.

A friend of mine recently went through a job interview and told me afterward that he felt it was going very well until he got asked the following question: “What do you see as your greatest weakness?”.  He admitted he wasn’t prepared for it (he should have been – this question get asked fairly often) and stumbled around, finally saying something about how he should improve his planning skills.  He really felt the interview went downhill from there and wondered how he could have handled this tough question better.

Frankly, even though I’m a Hiring Manger, this question is an absurd one in my mind because it tells me nothing useful about the applicant’s experience or accomplishments.  However, many Hiring Managers still like to ask it.  There really is no correct answer.  The whole purpose is to see how well you think on your feet when asked a difficult question.

And I’m now going to tell you the secret to answering this question: don’t answer it!
That’s right – don’t fall into the trap of using the old worn out strategy of taking something generally regarded as a positive and stating it is a negative.  For example, saying something such as “When the chips are down, I tend to drive myself too hard.”  Every experienced Hiring Manager knows this is a cliché answer that you obtained from some interview advice site.

Instead of trying to provide an answer when there really is no good answer, try something like this:
“I’m sure we all have things we’d like to improve about ourselves, but the job, as I understand it, plays to my strengths, not my soft spots.  I don’t think there is anything in my skills or experience that would prevent me from doing an excellent job for you.”
This is a great answer because it doesn’t deny that you have some soft spots (we all do) but it gets you out of the “confession” mode and turns the question into an opportunity to sell yourself.

As you can see, you didn’t really answer the question, but you made a powerful statement.  You demonstrated that you can think on your feet and give an answer that skillfully avoids the trap that this question sets.

I guarantee you’ll be the only person to give this answer and I would send taxi cabs for applicants who could frame an answer like this.
If you encounter a stubborn, short sighted Hiring Manager that still insists on hearing you admit to a weakness (red flag: do you really want to work for this person?), then here’s what I suggest.  Say that at times you feel that you try to multi-task too much, but that you work on keeping this under control by constantly looking for ways to improve your organizational skills.

This admits to a weakness, although sometimes a good one to have, but also conveys that you are working on improving it.