How to Pwn Your Job Interview
(Someone I follow asked for interview advice, so I sent them this. But I know I have other followers who are in the job market and might be interested, so I’m posting it publicly.)
You want to systematically remove any possible reason the interviewer could have for not hiring you. They will ask you questions. Your job is to correctly game out how to frame your honest responses in a way that anticipates and avoids providing the interviewer with a disqualifying impression of you.
This turns out to be easier than you might think. I learned a lot about it from reading a book about 30 years ago titled, “out-interview the interviewer”. Then I was able to gain a lot of experience from the interviewer’s side. (I was the hiring coordinator for a campus student program in college, for which I interviewed about 100 students each quarter for several years.)
Pretty much every question the interviewer asks you has a “right” answer (even the open-ended ones). There also are a large number of perfectly true things you could say in the interview that would be potentially disqualifying. You want to give the former while avoiding the latter.
For example: maybe the job is something you honestly aren’t sure you want to do. But you must think there’s a chance you want to do it (else you wouldn’t be bothering to interview). So you prepare a response that explains with as much honesty as you can muster why you actually DO want this job (because on some level you do). And when the interviewer asks, “so, why do you want this job?”, you make the most convincing case for that that you can, succinctly, and then you Stop Talking and do NOT go on to admit the second thoughts you have about whether or not you really do want the job. Because you are in competition with people who will not make that admission, and the interviewer will pick them over someone who seems ambivalent.
That’s just one question, but the same principle applies to all of them. (Tell me about yourself. How did you hear about this position? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why did you leave your last job? What in your previous experience has prepared you for dealing with X? Do you have any questions for me?) Every one of those questions has an optimal answer that assures the interviewer that you are the best candidate. Your job is to prepare yourself so well that you give that optimal answer.
The interviewer has a problem: They need to fill the position. They WANT you to be the solution. You just need to say the right things so they recognize you are that solution, while scrupulously avoiding saying things that could lead them to think you are anything less than ideal.
Just because you shamelessly convinced them that you were the ideal candidate, by the way, doesn’t mean you need to actually take the job. This is all about making it so you get the OFFER. Then it’s up to you whether or not you accept. But you need to create a compelling impression that you would LOVE this job and would ABSOLUTELY be perfect for it in order for you to ever have the opportunity to make that choice.
Some of this may sound a little unseemly. Why can’t you go in and just be honest? Well, you can. And you should. But there are infinitely many ways to frame an honest telling of your qualifications. The frame that will get you the offer is the one that follows the rules of the game as outlined above.
You should research everything you can about the potential employer. You should prepare your responses to every question you can imagine them asking. You should practice delivering those responses with a trusted partner beforehand, and listen to their critique. You should show up early for the interview. You should smile and make eye contact. You should try to seem relaxed and confident even if you don’t feel that way, because that’s how the ideal candidate would appear in the interview, and you are shooting for presenting yourself as that ideal candidate.
And you should relax about the possibility that you won’t get it. You probably won’t. The deck is totally stacked against you. But if you work on doing your best at the interview process itself and on learning from your mistakes, you will make progress until you are totally pwning interviews.
Good luck!
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1NIOZdv.
Tags: interviews, job hunting.
