The Landing Expert Principles

Photo credit to Stuart Miles

I am a practicing career coach and have noticed that in most cases, I guide my clients through 10 certain deeply held beliefs of mine that have evolved over my years of practice. I decided to call the concepts the Landing Expert Principles—naming them after my Web site, www.landingexpert.com

• Job seekers should have their résumés written by a recommended, professional résumé writer known to produce excellent résumés. In today’s economy, just plain “very good” résumés don’t make the cut.
• Based on the theories of Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, an interviewer judges a candidate 55% on visual appearance, 38% on voice, and 7% on words.
• The interview is a competition. The winner is the one who outshines other candidates, who knows the rules of the game, and who knows how to deploy all the tools.
• The hiring decision is formulated during the interview, based on the impression the candidate makes, which is influenced by the interviewer’s gut feelings. Unfortunately, such decision making is not science.
• The interviewer knows the candidate is there to sell himself, but the interviewer is not ready to buy everything the candidate wants to sell—except when two conditions occur:
  • The candidate recites facts and gives evidence about career background and ability to do the job.
  • The candidate uses adjectives or other kinds of self-descriptions in sentences that are in the third person—that is, the otherwise self-descriptions were said by others.
• Interviewing is like dancing: it cannot be learned from a book but only from practice. The more one practices, the better one becomes at it.
• Interviews are counterintuitive: they’re not about the candidate; they’re about the candidate’s skills and experience as they relate to ability to solve the interviewer’s problems.
• The interviewer is listening, but his hearing is selective: that is, when the candidate talks about himself, the interviewer barely hears it; when the candidate talks about how he can solve the company’s problems, the interviewer becomes more interested and attentive and is thinking, “Louder, louder!”
• Before you answer each question during an interview, ask yourself the question “So what?” which will force you to recount significant and meaningful examples pertinent to the questions.
• To convey the most credibility as a candidate, provide facts via success stories from your professional past. Often use the expression for example and then (1) briefly describe a job situation needing resolution, (2) list the specific actions you took to resolve the situation, and (3) end by pointing out the resulting benefits to your team or employer.