Avoiding Common Interview Misfires!

Job interviews are rare opportunities to get in front of decision makers and are gateways to potentially dream jobs. In most cases there is a certain amount of anxiety about attending an interview on the part of the job seeker and a certain amount of cavelierish attitude on the part of those on the employer side. Result: Frustrations on the part of the candidate, often wasting up to a day—more when there is cross-country travel involved—of their time going through the interview rounds and wasted efforts on the part of the employer. The opportunity cost, especially for working jobseekers can be dear.

Although no published figures exist on this front my own experience with clients (having now worked with over 6,000, including in many countries outside the U.S.) spanning across the past 12 years would indicate that nearly 25% of the interviews are wasted opportunities because there was a basic mismatch of job description/skills, job level, or something very basic that could have been screened out by a low-level functionary. Yet, the wasted time of high-level people and the candidate is painfully avoidable.

So, what is the best way to avoid these misfires?

After working with many misfired interviews it is easy to understand that the responsibility of taking a candidate to the next round rests on both parties, not just the employer. My experience is that many jobseekers willingly surrender this power to the recruiter or even the hiring manager doing the initial screening. This disempowerment on the part of the jobseeker is exacerbated by their need to find a job, especially when they are either unemployed or are desperately trying to get out of their current employment. Regardless of the need on the part of the jobseeker there are certain basic tools that must be used to avoid interview misfires.

Here is a prescription based on my own coaching to clients and what has worked better for most when they are able to take charge of the process up-front:

1. Make sure that you have accurately represented yourself in your résumé and your LinkedIn Profile when it comes to your skills, experience, and accomplishments.
2. When building your message move from Experience-based résumé to an Accomplishment-based version. This will provide a more accurate portrayal of your leadership to the reader, making it easy for them to more readily see your value to them. (See my many blogs on Inductive Résumé).
3. Be clear about the job opportunities you are seeking in making a change. This is why having an Objective at the top of your résumé helps your positioning much better than having Summary, instead, that signals to the reader: “I don’t really know what I want, but look at all the stuff I have done. Let’s talk!”
4.  Respond to the right job opportunities after doing some research on the targeted companies. If you are looking for high-growth companies in a certain vertical then be selective in how you design and execute your campaign. Learn to say “No,” even to yourself, when appropriate.
5. During the phone screen (typically by a recruiter) do not merely respond to their queries about all the things they are interested in (salary, why change, relocation, etc.), but ask specific and detailed questions and seek answers that will give you the clarity you need to proceed. If the recruiter does not know the answers to these questions request to talk to someone who does, including the hiring manger. Do this ONLY after the recruiter has qualified you for the next round of exploration, often when they are ready to bring you in.
6. If you get phone screened by the hiring manager (either directly or as a next step) ask specific questions that will allow you to qualify the opening AND the boss. Do not pull any punches when talking to the hiring manager. Be direct, but polite!
7. Feel free to ask the hiring manager if you could send then a short email asking them to respond to some specific questions you have about the job and its progression, especially when you see yourself out of time in that screen. In the case of one client interested in focusing on a particular technology area within his expertise, we crafted a five-point short questionnaire for the hiring manager. With this simple approach, properly positioned during the hiring-manager-phone screen, he eliminated about 50% of potentially misfired interviews when he got back their responses. Although counterintuitive, despite its potentially officious tone, such a questionnaire can create a positive impression with the hiring manger if done properly.
8. When interviews are lined up within the company look at interviewers’ names and research their LinkedIn Profiles. If you see strange backgrounds in that group call the recruiter and ask the reason. If you are not satisfied then escalate that concern before making the trip. Just recently a client—Civil Engineer—was brought in and one of the interviewers was an economist. The actual job focus was for Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and this client had no experience in that space. He could have avoided that whole visit if he had done this due diligence.
9. During the in-company interviews ask questions and seek answers to create a portrait of what you are signing up for. Recently, a client joined a company after many interviews and she did not adequately explore all the dynamics of this position. Simple questions about why there was no direct boss in place and why so many org changes had happened in the past year would have given her much more clarity about the chaos that pervaded that job.
10. Be suspicious of a job offer that comes through without adequate in-depth interviews. Sometimes candidates prefer to think that they so impressed the interviewers that they were offered the position without much interviewing. In most cases they end up coming up short in the process.

So, take charge of your interviews, jobless or not, and avoid interview misfires.

Good luck!

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