Being Interviewed
In earlier posts I gave my technique for interviewing candidates and my thoughts on what makes a good resumé. Today’s post is on how to be successful at the interview itself.
The first point I want to make is fundamental and designed to reduce the anxiety and pressure of the recruitment process. The interview is not just for a company to decide if you are the right person to work there, it is also your chance to decide whether you would be happy working there. Sometimes the worst happens, you are out of work and are desperate for any job that will pay the bills. In this scenario, I agree getting a job is more important than enjoying a job and you will have time later (with the security of a salary) to find something that better meets your needs. But I want to focus on the scenario where your head has been turned by something that looks exciting on paper. Maybe it represents an accelerated promotion or is closer to the area you want to work. You are motivated enough to apply for the role and have a sufficiently good resumé to score an interview. In this scenario it’s worth trusting your gut. If the reality of the interview does not represent your initial impressions and you get bad feeling about the culture, just because you could do the job doesn’t mean you want to do the job.
Turning this on its head, sometimes you won’t be selected because the interviewer will have reservations about your fit within the organization. This sounds negative but it isn’t always the case. I can count a few times in my career where I have been rejected for a job, initially felt bitter, and afterwards was thankful because fate delivered me something that was a better fit. For clarity, if an employer is discriminating then this is not acceptable, but again would you want to work in an environment where this was the culture? Those that do and are committed to changing organizations for the better from within have my respect.
It may seem unnecessary to say but before an interview you need to prep. As I have mentioned before, I prefer to focus the interview on the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and not their industry knowledge. To me that ensures I get the best candidate regardless of whether they work in the industry or not. For a senior job in sales or business development this wouldn’t necessarily apply if you are hiring specifically for someone’s contacts and ability to open doors. Despite this I concede that lots of people still like to interview people based on their industry knowledge or at least to test that they have done some basic research of the company they are applying for. Therefore, it is important that you do the research in advance. I would also suggest doing the research for your own benefit too. I would want to know how financially secure a company was before joining them. If a company is a bit more precarious you would want to address this in the package to reflect the risk you are taking joining them. I recommend reading any published financial reports or analyst reports if the company is a public company. For all companies read their press releases and any articles they feature in. It’s also worth giving some thought about the industry they form part of and how they are positioned with their clients and against their competition. This is all basic advice and hopefully not new information to anyone.
My next part is on being careful on how you use this information. Many candidates want to appear so optimistic that they come out swinging with all sorts of wild assertions of market dominance or growth opportunities outside the core business. If these aren’t thought through and well considered, they won’t land very well in an interview. The examples of senior leaders turning around middling or failing companies and driving them to market dominance or entering completely new markets where they are successful are very small. Most cases depend on a mix of vision and luck. The luck is usually a market opportunity emerging at exactly the right moment. Some examples would be the rise of cloud computing that transformed Amazon from a loss-making online sales platform with the launch of Amazon Web Services. The advent of 3g mobile data that fueled Apples shift from being a computer company with a limited customer-base to a phone company with billions of active users. The popularity of DVD enabled Disney to leverage its back-catalogue to build a giant consumer products business, fund new intellectual property, reduce their corporate debt and generate phenomenal returns on expensive acquisitions. Most companies are somewhere in their economic lifecycle. They may be market dominant and watching out for potential disruptors. They may be middling in their market share and looking to grow organically or through acquisition. Alternatively, they may be a target for a competitor who is also looking to grow through acquisition. Some companies are new entrants or disruptors looking to grow quickly to avoid being squashed by the market leader. There are legacy businesses serving a specific niche and facing decline as technology evolves or tastes change. Most companies regardless of where they are in their lifecycle will be focusing on their relative competitive advantage in the market (i.e. what makes them special) and trying to spot potential disruption and how best to position themselves to mitigate the risk. As interview preparation, it is worth considering where the business is placed, where does it have a competitive advantage and how strong is that advantage, who are the competition and how is the market evolving and where is the potential disruption. If you are comfortable reading financial statements, it is worth checking if the business is profitable from normal trading, it’s level of debt to equity, and whether it is generating positive cashflows. If the business is publicly traded, do analysts rate it as a buy, hold or sell and why? At this point I would stop as it is likely that you will know more than the person interviewing you.
The core part of your interview prep should be about yourself. Read the job spec carefully and note down exactly what sort of candidate the organization is looking for. Many job specs will give a list of attributes of candidates from skills to approach to work. Once you have a comprehensive list of requirements you can flip these into questions that could be asked by the interviewer. Examples are usually of the form: “give me an example where you….”. For each question you can pick examples from your resumé to illustrate your achievements. At this point I would practice describing each situation and listen carefully to how it sounds. You will want to weed out any weaker answers and replace them with stronger examples. You will want to legitimately strengthen each answer so that it reflects the best version of you and to refresh your memory so you can include details that make it more interesting and give the interviewer confidence that it is legitimate. I am a believer that it is a waste to employ someone in a role they can do with their eyes closed and lacks any potential for growth because, unless a promotion opportunity arises quickly, retaining that employee will be difficult. What this means is that there should be parts of the job spec that you have no direct experience of or where your experience is in a more junior capacity, at a smaller scale or in a different role with transferable skills. As a candidate, I personally like to highlight this gap during the interview, sometimes right at the beginning when I am introducing myself. I think it builds trust between the interviewer and the interviewee. Both sides know what the most challenging part of the role would be if I was hired. If the skillset I am deficient in is the one they need above all others, then the role won’t be right, I won’t be hired and I won’t have the stress of trying to fake it and hoping that I make it. Culturally this may not apply to all job sectors, so I offer this advice cautiously. I also encourage you to think creatively and properly assess your skills so you don’t sell yourself short. This is not the time for false-modesty or excessive humility. But it is the time for a well-reasoned and honest appraisal of your skills, and you should pitch these in the most positive way you can.
If there are elements in your resume that could look problematic such as periods out-of-work, or a very short duration at a specific company or a sideways or backwards step, pro-actively consider how you will address them before you go to interview. Post-pandemic there is much more acceptance that the job market is volatile and a perfectly linear resumé is becoming the exception rather than the rule. It is acceptable to call these out and address them directly, it isn’t acceptable to be surprised by the question and to not have a prepared answer. It’s not about drawing attention to the challenges in your career path, but about reassuring the interviewer that there is nothing of interest in these moments and to focus attention back on the successful parts of your career.
The final bit of advice is to think carefully about how you present yourself. This includes everything from what you wear to the interview, to how you hold yourself and how you speak. I am not saying there is one right answer, but rather saying that how you present yourself should be a deliberate choice. If you need to take a sweaty subway in summer, maybe pack a change of shirt, give yourself 15 minutes before the interview and use a Starbucks washroom to get changed. This is exactly what I did 20 years ago in London. Practice giving answers out loud so that the words you want to use become automatic and less hesitant. Success isn’t necessarily being offered the job as that is not within your control and for all you know the employer may have already lined up an internal candidate and are simply going through the motions to show it was a rigorous process. Success for me is about giving the best performance you can on the day and walking away with as few self-critical thoughts as possible. Be particularly aware of quirks that the unique environment of an interview may bring out. One candidate for a role I was hiring would click both of their fingers every time they made a point. I’m sure they wouldn’t do this in any other work-based situation, but it was off-putting, and they didn’t get the job. Another candidate years ago came out with the sweeping statement “I know business” when trying to answer a question on their relevant experience for a role. Unfortunately for them, the rest of their answers weren’t much better. But even if they had performed well in the rest of the interview, there was so little critical thought in this statement that it would have been hard for me to offer them a job with any confidence. I know that not everyone has a positive disposition, but it is a far more attractive quality than the alternatives. One candidate when asked why they were looking for a new job criticized their colleagues and branded them all lazy. Who would want to work with someone who does that? I am not suggesting anyone should change their personality or pretend to be someone they aren’t, but it is good to be mindful and deliberate.
When you are wrapping up an interview there is always the inevitable moment where the interviewer asks the interviewee if they have any questions for them. It is always a mistake to say to no. Even if all your questions were answered during the interview, I would state that and then make a point of confirming and clarifying one of those questions again. Easy questions to ask include how the vacancy arose in the first place, what are the timelines and process for them reaching a decision, who would you be working with on a daily basis, would there be an opportunity to meet more of the team as part of the selection process. More advanced questions can focus in on comments the interviewer makes during the interview and from your interview prep. If there has been a swirl of speculation about acquisition, why wouldn’t you ask whether the role you are applying for would be impacted. If competitors in the field have started restructuring or doing something different in the market, how does the interviewer expect the company to respond. If you want to start an interesting discussion you could enquire about the positive and negative impact of technology in the industry or ask the interviewer where they feel the next cycle of growth will come from.
To conclude, the interview is your opportunity to present your candidacy in person and bring to life the critical parts of your resumé. Both the interviewer and interviewee are looking to draw parallels between previous work experience and the demands of the job. As the interviewee your role is to practice making these as accessible and powerful as possible without stretching credibility. Your delivery on the day should be mindful and deliberate. If you are asked questions related specifically to the company or industry you are applying for, use your research to offer the best answer you can. If you get thrown by a challenging question, do not feel nervous about asking clarifying questions or to ask for time to think through your answer. The most enjoyable interviews I have done both as a candidate and an employer are the ones that turn into a conversation. If you can’t get to that point don’t worry, but if you really find communications difficult with the interviewer then perhaps consider whether you want to work with this person.
Next week I want to make the case for why honest debriefing of projects is useful. I am disappointed that this doesn’t happen more frequently.