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PARADE Update: You Got The Interview! Now What?

Posted by on July 13, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

PARADE Update: You Got The Interview! Now What?

One hour after Meghan sent her hot-off-the-press professionally updated resume to a hiring manager, he called to see if she could come in for an interview the next day!

Interviewing is intimidating, nerve wracking, and can make you feel like you’re two beats away from a heart attack. But preparing for the interview is much simpler when you realize that there are just five key questions going through your interviewer’s mind.

Here are three of them:

Can you do the job? You need to be able to talk about the skills, knowledge, and training you have that will help you perform the job successfully. My recommendation is that you walk into your next interview with 3-4 “personal career stories” that showcase a career success. Your stories should include: what the goal was, what the challenge was, and what the result was.

What “extras” do you bring? For most job openings, about 90% of the work has been defined but not the remaining 10%. This means you have a terrific opportunity to flaunt any bonus talents that may be of value. For example, if you’re going for a job as a Pubic Relations manager, you may have some experience in marketing or desktop publishing that is not required for the job, but might be valuable to the company.

Where are you a risk? Every new employee is a risk to a company, whether it’s a job requirement that you don’t meet or a skill you don’t have, or the potential that you’re overqualified for the position. I recommend that you beat the interviewer to the punch by stating where you a risk and then reassuring him why it won’t be a problem. If you’re asked what weaknesses you have, respond by bringing up an area that could improvement but quickly add what you are already doing to strengthen that area.

For a complete discussion of all five question, see my best-selling eBook, “Interviewing Smart: Insider Secrets to Getting the Job“

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Interview Tips for Recent Grads

Posted by on May 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

If you’re a recent college graduate (or even if you’re not), check out my most recent interview on NBC Phoenix Channel 12 with tips to set yourself apart from the other applicants and help you land that first job – even if you don’t have “experience”.

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The Key to a Successful Job Interview

Posted by on May 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

Your message needs to be crystal clear during a job interview. A resume is a logical, factual and one-dimensional piece of paper. But when you meet with a potential employer face-to-face you can bring your message to life and make it more powerful and memorable. Whether you are networking with a potential employer or sitting in a formal job interview, you have a limited amount of time to get your message across. So, telling a great career success story is critical.

The key to a successful interview is pre-selecting stories that demonstrate you have the right experience and knowledge to perform that job successfully. Talk about past experiences, results, and accomplishments that relate to the new position. Summarize each story by giving an overview of a particular situation or challenge, the expectation or goal, your specific contributions and the result of your contributions. Practice your stories out loud, over and over again. You must be able to talk about your experiences and successes confidently.

Remember, you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression, so you need to be polished, professional and confident.

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Suggested Promise of Value – Ready to Transition

Posted by on April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

If you are in the market for a new job with a new company how do you identify the skills, knowledge, and training the marketplace values and the right messages for the potential employers? Let’s look at a few simple steps.

The first step is to research the current marketplace to identify the skills and job requirements. (I give more tips on searching the current marketplace in my February 15th post.) Don’t worry if you cannot find your ultimate dream job, the point is to identify the kinds of companies that are hiring and the types of positions that are available.

Getting a job offer can be a challenge. Look at yourself from the hiring company’s prospective. More than likely they have waited longer than they should have to fill the position, meaning that their employees are overworked, overwhelmed and over stressed. Now they have to take precious time and resources to advertise for the position, sort through stacks of resumes, conduct multiple rounds of interviews and train the newly hired person. It is a time intensive and resource draining process. Making a poor decision and hiring the wrong person not only results in extreme frustration and stress, but also can cause a company to lose a big project, an important clients, or worse, credibility among peers, clients or companies within the industry.

If you have the skills for the job, the message you should be sending is that you are the one and only candidate – and that you will succeed. Your resume and the answers you give during an interview must give a clear message that you are results driven and have the skills, strengths, and experiences required to succeed at the job.

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