Congrats, You Got the Interview! Now Don’t Blow It…
First of all, give yourself a pat on the back for making it this far—you have already outshone a number of qualified candidates to get to this point. Your resume and experience stand out, now we need to be sure your interviewing skills do, too. Here are six tips for making sure you nail (and don’t blow) that interview!
As a recruiter who has interviewed at least 900 candidates throughout my own career, I have seen some patterns emerge during interviews, and I want to illuminate one that I see with candidates who have more than two, but fewer than five, years of experience in their field. This cohort of candidates has some momentum in their careers, and they may rely on this too heavily to carry them through the interview, as they are apt to “wing it” during interviews. More seasoned candidates have lived through this folly and have learned, and entry-level candidates know they have to prove themselves and they often come to interviews overprepared.
Winging it can only get you so far when you have just barely learned how to fly. So, intrepid mid-level candidates, I implore you to remember that you are always and forever a student, and study for your interview!
I’m going to focus my advice on the meat of an interview—the question/answer session with a hiring manager or recruiter. Though many interviews come with technical hurdles/cases to surmount before moving on, that is not the focus of my advice today. All right, let’s dive into the deep end…
1. Hello! My name is…
Inevitably, you will be asked to introduce yourself. Ah, what a seemingly simple question on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you will realize that it is more effective than Roundup at weeding out the unworthy. The most naïve will fall into the trap of sharing a rambling version of their life story and will finally be interrupted by the interviewer. The slightly less naïve will give some relevant information but may also include random tidbits that the interviewer does not know or care about. You can imagine the first impression (face palm!).
Now that I have told you what you shouldn’t do, I will now tell you what you should do. Keep it short, keep it relevant, and keep it focused on what benefit you can bring to the company. Below I will give two illustrative examples of job description segments, followed by intro statements that won’t bore, but will instead wow, your interviewer.
Job Description Segment #1:
Account Executive
Intro statement #1:
"My name is X. I've been working with executives in the cloud domain for the past five years and built Y dollars on my accounts, most of which I grew from scratch on a cold desk via a unique way of cold-calling and prospecting that I've developed. I have cultivated close relationships with the executive team over the years as I often pitched them on new sales strategies and budgets. I'm excited to learn more about this opportunity, and to see how I can leverage my sales tactics, creativity, and process management skills to help the company achieve its goals."
Job Description Segment #2:
Data Engineer
Intro Statement #2:
"My name is X and I completed my BS in Computer Science at X University, where I was also a research assistant to my CS professor where we published on topics of new theoretical methods for big data integration. Currently, I am working with large datasets, mostly using SQL but some Python as well. I used Python at my previous company to build infrastructure for big data integration. Because of my extensive theoretical and practical experience in building ETL pipelines using multiple query/coding languages, I believe I could be a contributing member to your company from day one."
Can you see how each candidate conveyed their past experience succinctly, and only communicated details that were relevant to the job they were applying for? And to bring it home, they each emphasized how they wanted to use their unique skills to help grow the company, which is what the interviewer ultimately cares about. Because each candidate read the job description carefully, they were able to narrow down their entire life story to the details that actually mattered.
Candidates, you know this question is coming so do yourselves and your interviewer a favor and write your self-intro out at least a few days ahead of the interview and practice, practice, practice!
2. Read, Read, Read…and then Relate
Candidates, it is imperative that you read up on the company. The more, the better, but since time is often a limited resource, at the very least you should have a solid command of the job description, company website, recent financial and growth history of the company, product and press releases, and articles written about the company. You also need to hit LinkedIn to learn as much as you can about your interviewer and/or hiring manager—after all, the best blind dates are not completely blind. Plan to allocate at least four hours for this task, but once you are done reading, your task has only just begun...you now need to relate!
What do you mean by “relate”, you ask?...you need to think about how the information you just read relates to you and your career path so that you communicate clearly your relevance to the company.
As an example, after reading the mission, vision, and values statements of the company, you now need to link this to your own personal experience in the past, and to your future career development goals. This process will not only enable you to assess whether the company culture resonates with you so that you have a preliminary idea of how you might fit in (or not), or how you might want to influence it. The results of this process will also give your interviewer confidence that you understand the company and that you are a cultural fit.
For example, here are three values from Company A that a candidate was applying to: Go Bold, All for One, and Be professional. While I was prepping the candidate for the interview, I asked them to think about these values and what they meant in practical terms. My client felt that they could be interpreted as not being afraid of failure, and as working together toward a shared goal with a sense of responsibility, proactiveness, and respect. I then asked my client to give me a specific example or examples of when they portrayed these values, and they came up with the following scenario:
Our team’s leader had been out sick for two weeks already, and we didn’t know when she would be coming back. My team had been working to rebuild the back end for a software to SAAS conversion of our products, which included some pretty significant updates in functionality and features. We were six weeks out from launch when suddenly we got a huge new client who required all of our attention to shift to them in order to onboard them. The onboarding was contingent on the SAAS product, so my team was under serious pressure to tie up loose ends as soon as possible. Since our leader was barely able to stay connected with work while she was out on sick leave, and her boss was not fully aware of all the challenges and capabilities of our team, our team struggled to know what steps to take in order to pull through for the client. I wasn’t the most senior person on the team, but I guess I could feel the leadership vacuum the strongest, so I stepped up and outlined a strategy for our team to follow. I shared it with the team and then called a meeting to get feedback from them, and together we solidified the game plan. Everyone participated in developing the final strategy and we were able to get approval from our boss’s boss. In the end, we were able to finish our part and coordinate with other teams to launch the SAAS product 3 weeks early for the new client. In this scenario, I definitely felt bold, that I was collaborating well with my teammates to work toward a common goal, and that I demonstrated professionalism along the way.
3. Become a Champion User
Always make sure you are very familiar with the company’s products and services before the interview. Do the free demo online or go to a store to try the products out. This might be tough if you are applying to companies that only develop products targeting enterprises, but often they offer a chance to schedule a free demo…take it! Or maybe you can find a demo on YouTube. As you are demoing, make note of what you like about the products and where they might be ready for your magic touch. Look up reviews by other users as well, so you can get an idea of other people’s experiences and of how the company’s products compare to competition.
Here’s a solid structure for helping most candidates address this topic:
“I’m really impressed with the capabilities and functionality of Product A, and for reasons X, Y and Z I can see why it is becoming an industry leader. I would be excited to apply my skills of [intersection of resume and job description] to helping to further develop this product in order to facilitate market success and industry dominance.”
Of course, not every interviewer will ask about your experience with their products, but you should be prepared and if they do ask, I guarantee you will make a great impression if you are prepared.
4. Be Ready to Give a Reason, and Make It a Good One
Interviewers are often curious about why you have left, or why you want to leave your current company (please note that depending on which state or country you are in, employers may or may not be allowed to ask you questions regarding reasons for leaving, salary, etc.). This is tricky territory because on one hand, you don’t want to say anything negative about your company, lest the interviewer think you are ungrateful and toxic. You also don’t want to sound overly ambitious, as if you may leave this new company quickly for the next great one. You want to come off as growth-oriented, loyal, and/or as better aligned to the new company’s culture, mission & vision. When the interviewer asks you about your reason for leaving, they are usually thinking, "Why should I hire this candidate?", so be sure your mindset is "What can I bring to the table?".
Here’s a stellar structure to help you answer to this question,
“While I certainly have been enjoying [anything good about your current job], and I can see a good career path if I decided to stay, [the hiring company or industry] offers me the opportunity to make a greater impact with [skills/knowledge you have that the hiring company needs]. Additionally, [hiring company] is better aligned with my passions and I feel a stronger connection with its culture.”
5. Be a STAR candidate
Once you make it through the introduction and a few general interview questions, the interviewer will likely hit you with behavioral questions. You know, the ones that start out with “Tell me about a time when you…”. Interviewers like asking behavioral questions so that they can assess a candidate’s motivation, personality, and reaction to challenging situations through real-life past experiences. Believe it or not, the #1 mistake candidates make in this session is to give an answer that they cannot support by logic or data.
For example, the interviewer asks, "Tell me about a time that you had a conflict with a coworker or boss.”
Candidate A:
"In such a situation, I would choose a more private space to sit down with my colleague or boss to talk calmly and find the root cause of the problem."
Notice that the candidate did not give any context to the answer. It didn’t even seem like the candidate was relaying a past experience, it sounded like the candidate was speaking hypothetically. Surprisingly, this happens all the time!
Interviewers aren’t interested in hypotheticals, they want to know how a candidate functions in real life, not just in a petri dish. Take a look at Candidate B’s answer:
Candidate B:
"Thank you for your question, I’m happy to share a situation that happened at my previous workplace. My co-worker was upset that he didn’t get put on a project that I was on, and he started making jokes at me insinuating that I must have done something unethical to get the assignment, or that the company was going to go down the tubes with me on the project. It was painful to be ridiculed by him, but I could tell he was doing it because he felt insecure. I went to speak to him one day and I let him know that it didn’t feel good when he made those types of jokes. I also let him know how much I appreciate him as a co-worker, and I told him that I would like to support him in any way I can. He looked a little shocked but he thanked me, and I didn’t hear any more jokes from then on. And when a new project came up, I let our boss know in front of my co-worker that I thought my co-worker would do well on it. There hasn’t been any negative energy between me and my co-worker since. In general, I try not to take negative behavior personally, and I work toward finding cooperation and common ground.”
It is clear from reading the above which of these two ways of answering the question is better, but in a real-life interview under pressure, you would be surprised at how many candidates fall back on hypotheticals, and skip over details. Hypotheticals are comforting to candidates because they allow the candidate to be less vulnerable, and to give answers that they think the interviewer wants to hear. But interviewers can see right through that, and they want to hear candidates be vulnerable. So it is best practice to prepare answers ahead of time. The best answers follow a formula, called STAR.
STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. All you need is to introduce the Situation and set the context, then describe the Task you had to complete, including the expectations and challenges. Then explain Action you took to accomplish the task. Finally, end with the Result of your efforts, including accomplishments, rewards, and impact.
You can use the STAR technique to answer all behavioral questions. Memorize the steps, and you can even announce each element to your interviewer ahead of giving the details in order to help keep you organized, and to show that you know what they are expecting. If you take a closer look at job seeker B's answer, it is, in fact, the result of following the STAR equation. No wonder why the interviewer thought that she was such a STAR candidate!
6. Get an “A” in Q&A
If you make it to Q&A, you are in the home stretch! This is an opportunity to showcase how much research you have done on the company, and to underscore your relevance. I have few tips for this part, and I’m going to give you the shouldn’t first: Here's what NOT to do:
You should also see Q&A as an opportunity to assess your suitability for the job, so don't underestimate the last part of the interview, and don't take it lightly because you think you performed well in the first half. But, again, there is no equation or format for the way in which you ask a question. Use common sense. A good number of questions should be three to five, at least one for the job, one for the company, and one for the interviewer. This is where the level of research you have done on the company will shine through.
Here are a few of my favorite go-to questions to ask at the very end that give you a lot of information about the company and culture, and will leave a lasting good impression of you on your interviewer:
Candidates, if you get the above six things right, you can bet you will be getting an offer letter soon!
If you are a candidate going through the interview process and want to sharpen and shine your interviewing skills with me or another highly skilled professional on my team, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Contact: career@flyhightalent.com