Tag Archives: Interview techniques

The Secret Behind an Excellent Interview

The secret is: be brief

What is the secret behind an excellent interview? Be brief. Now that the secret is revealed, I will support my tenet with a few facts. Actually, you can do what I did: I watched some television with a stopwatch to see how long an answer people provide for a question. As samples, I used, among others, Presidents Obama and Clinton because I consider them excellent communicators with media people in a question-and-answer setup. Typically, one of their answers would be 30 to 90 seconds long, with very few deviations. In order to get to such a level of excellence, one needs two ingredients: innate talent and lots of practice. Not all of us are born with this type of talent, but all of us can achieve it through practice and in fact should if we want to excel at interviews.

As an interview coach, I help people become better at answering difficult interview questions. I’ve found it interesting that regardless of people’s professions, backgrounds, or titles most are not good when facing a job interviewer—despite the fact that some think they are, because after all, they’ve gotten jobs in the past, right? Universally, though, people are long-winded, and their answers tend to be paragraphs instead of several bulleted items supported by examples. Some provide protracted answers that go way beyond the listener’s attention span. The danger here is that the job candidate is not made aware of losing the listener’s attention, since regrettably, interviewers don’t have digital readouts on their foreheads showing their listening level at that moment.

The best way to overcome that obstacle is to prepare for interview answers by first writing out the answers longhand in SARB format. (SARB is the acronym for situation, action, result, and benefit.) Next, review each answer with an eye toward shortening them. If an answer can be delivered in about 60 seconds, you’ll achieve your objective. Now, it’s practice time. Best if you work with a career coach who can give you not only honest feedback but also the correct answers. Otherwise, ask a friend, family member, or someone else who also might benefit from such practice.

Interviewing is Emotional and Logical

Interviewing is a combination of art and science

Interviewing is a combination of art and science thus it has a part which is emotional yet another part which is logical. It very much reminds me a game of Chess. While the interview is typically amicable the “players” are adversaries. One is the seller yet the other person is the buyer who is merely doing his due diligence. And the buyer knows that making the mistake of hiring bad people is very costly.

The interview process is a challenge for both the interviewer and the candidate because interviewing is not well understood by either party. On one hand, the interviewer knows that several preselected qualified candidates have to be interviewed in order to anticipate and decide which one will perform best for the organization in the future. On the other hand, the candidate knows he is onstage and has to be at his best in every respect because he is in a tough competition for a single opening. A good interviewer should review the candidate based on four different aspects: communication skills, competency via specific skills, organizational fit, and motivation which is exhibited by ability to show passion and excitement. Those are the most crucial areas, even if there are of course several other relevant aspects to explore.

When exploring the candidate’s communications skills, I always start with the request, “Tell me about yourself.” The request serves as an opener for me, the interviewer, in an attempt to get a first impression of the candidate as a way of assessing communication skills. It is a baseline reading against which I will compare the rest of the interview questions. If answered well, all future answers will be viewed through a positive prism. But if the answer to that first question is not viewed favorably, the candidate will have a difficult time convincing me to reverse my opinion.

A good answer should:

Be intriguing and memorable
Include an example of an impressive accomplishment
Be responsive, informative, brief, and succinct
Engage the interviewer via a question in turn about the interviewer’s own priorities or challenges

A poor answer is:

Lengthy and recites chronologically the candidate’s career
Unfocused or rambling
Boring
Challenging to the interviewer because of regional or foreign accent or speech impediments

When trying to assess the candidate’s competency for certain specific skills crucial to the job, I request an answer to following: “Tell me about one of your major accomplishments and its outcome.” By that, I can test the candidate’s specific competency in an area where in my mind he has to show experience and strength. I’m looking for hard skills and wanting to hear how they were deployed in the past.

A good answer should:

Show the candidate’s ability to recite an example that gives a brief background overview
Include a specific example that highlights a required skill and that resulted in a successful outcome
Tell the actions the candidate took
Be cited as recognized by others—such as supervisors, peers, and customers—for credibility

A poor answer is:

General and nonimpressive
Not focused on specific skills
Lacking in a specific example of accomplishment achieved via the skill
Blatantly self-praising but without evidence

Then comes my follow-up: “Tell me about a specific, work-related problem and how you went about resolving it.” Here I am drilling down to details and anticipating hearing the step-by-step approach the candidate took to resolve the problem.

The next area I explore is the candidate’s cultural fit into our organization. Cultural fit could be subjective and influenced by prejudice. It is heavily influenced by the top leadership. It includes such elements as values, attitudes, office language, tone of communication, the team or individual decision-making process, and daily work practices, often made up of unspoken and unwritten rules of behavior.

Via this question I’m looking to ascertain whether the candidate will blend in naturally and become a welcome contributor to the team. I’m also paying attention to the applicant’s past behavior. Here are a few questions as examples. “What do you know about our company?” That one tests whether the candidate has done his homework and is well prepared or really interested. “What is your management style?” Here I’m listening to hear whether he says only the obvious and whether he’ll be able to adapt to the company’s needs. I am looking for maturity, competency, and how he handles relationships with others.

The last area I explore is motivation. Typical questions would be, “Why are you interested in this position?” Then I watch to see whether he talks about self or company needs, whether he understands challenges, how he envisions contribution to organization, whether he clearly demonstrates passion and excitement, and whether he’s just plain likable. Other questions whose answers reveal motivation might be: “Why do you want to leave [or did you leave] this position? What would be your perfect job? What would you do in the first 90 days after being hired? What are your interests outside work? People who do a lot outside work are also motivated at work.

Most people need to prepare extensively for upcoming interviews in order to feel good about themselves – otherwise is showing. Some people seem to have a knack for interviewing and here two people come to my mind: Presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. They make interviewing on camera seem so simple.

The Job Interview—Morphed into Something Else

Not too long ago, much-respected blogger Tim Tyrell-Smith of Tim’s Strategy conducted a survey, clearly finding that interviewers’ number one concern is “fit with the company’s culture.” From other articles on that subject, too, it seems as if the old-fashioned “Tell me about yourself” and “What are your key accomplishments?” questions—even when answered well—are apparently less important than newer questions such as, “What movie did you see lately?” or “What apps have you uploaded lately on your smartphone?” Another article compared job interviewing to a first date, when you’re trying to find out the other person’s more-general likes and dislikes and not assessing skills.

Years ago, I attended a one-day workshop held by the Disney organization; and the only sentence I remember about the company’s hiring policy was, “We hire for personality and train for skills.” It’s such a simple and yet profound philosophy, and in fact, it obviously works well, because Disney is among the most admired employers.

Glassdoor, a jobs and career community Web site, emphasizes that a pleasant and homogeneous work environment is almost as important to employees as compensation is. Sometimes I ask job seekers the question, Which would you prefer: an intolerable and toxic boss? or $20,000 less and a pleasant work environment? Invariably, the answer is less money and a great boss.

Work environment is a very important commodity. And that’s precisely the reason interviewers are paying more and more attention to whether new hires would fit into their organizations. Unfortunately, in most cases employees cannot change their bosses; but bosses can at least try to hire people who would work well together. And how very logical that is when today’s work environment is so stressful and every employee is expected to perform outstandingly. Additionally, nowadays many company and department goals are being accomplished via teams. And if a team member is not well liked—for whatever reason—the team’s output in its entirety will suffer.

In practical terms, the word fit—when it involves the hiring process—covers such concepts as, Do I like you, and would I enjoy working with you in the future? Would your future peers tell me how much they enjoy having you as part of the team, or is the opposite true? Is my boss going to compliment me for selecting you, or will I hear negative comments about my choice?

So, with the understanding of the importance of fit—in the hiring manager’s mind—how can a job candidate tilt the pendulum favorably? First, appear congenial. Next, stay away from controversy and ambiguity to the extent possible. Next, actively engage the interviewer from your own perspective. In other words, don’t let yourself be positioned as an “accused” in an interrogation wherein you are there to just answer questions; ask questions of your own. And above all, smile. Smile a lot!