Interviewer (hiring manager) have unconscious questions to be answered by each candidate
- Unconscious questions: achievement, process, creativity, relationships, aggressiveness, likeability
- Managers aren’t even aware of asking the unconscious questions
Four types of managers:
- Power tripper: disorganized and uninformed
- Extra hard on candidates to prove their own intellectual prowess
- Defensive croucher: Motivated by fear
- Mediocre managers, fear people could do their jobs better
- Method man: Relying on the latest interviewing trend
- Rogue agent: following a secret agenda
- Who haven’t had specific interview training
- Base the interview on untested logic or idiosyncratic factors
- One bad experience with someone from a certain background → generalized that experience to all people with that background
Eight step plan: REAPRICH [ch1]
- Results
- Energy
- Attitude
- Process
- Relationships
- Interview the interviewer
- Close the interviewer
- Humanity
Critical Commonsense Interview Preparation: [ch2]
- Who will be interviewing you?
- Background of the company? Competitors?
- Who will you be working for and with?
- Polish up CV
- Dress nearly and professionally
- Be on time
- Ask for business cards
- Send thank-you notes
REA in REAPRICH: Results, Enthusiasm, and a Positive Attitude [ch3]
- Result: differentiate you from everyone else
- Get a collection of 6-10 achievements you’ve had that you can list in 90 second or less
- Projects ahead of time and under budget? Developed a system? Overachieve in athletics?
- Don’t wait for invitation to speak of results
- Energy and Enthusiasm: People sometimes get jobs based on energy and charisma alone
- Energy and excitement you bring to the start of the interview sets the tone for the rest of your meeting
- The outward presentation
- Attitude: Speaks your inner landscape
- The intrinsic motivation
- Managers want you to show grit, tenacity, focus and delivery
- “No jerk” policy (Jack Welch)
Process explains how you achieved your results. A good manager will think about how your process may work within the context of his own job [ch4]
Relationships: [ch5]
- You’re able to build them: Can you play nicely with other people?
- Sustain the relationship or whether you’re someone who burn bridges
- You’ll bring new and beneficial relationships to other company (customers, suppliers, vendors, or others)
Interviewing the interviewer: Prepare a minimum of 2 questions, preferably 4-5 to ask the hiring manager [ch6]
Time to demonstrate a depth of expertise or knowledge that may go dper in probing the manager’s mind
- Tell me about some of your most successful people. What’s made them great?
- How can I help your team? What is the best way my skill could add value?
- If you hired me today, what would you have me help you and your team within the first 3 months?
- What are great things about this company that I would only hear from you and may not find in my own research?
Avoid leaving negative emotional state, do not ask for negative news [ch6]
- If the manager brings up a negative topic, respond as briefly and neutrally as possible and move on
- Focus, listen, and maintain eye contact
Closing the interviewer: ask for the job [ch7]
- Closing is a familiar concept in sales, you’re selling yourself to a potential employer
- Closing process can happen on 5-6 levels, it’s a process, not a moment
- You want that person to move you forward to the next step
- “Can you tell me about what happens next in our process?”
- “Are you recommending me for hire?”
- “Are you going to offer me the job today?”
- If noncommittal: “Are there any areas in my background concern you?”
- You want that person to move you forward to the next step
Keeping it real: The importance of humanity [ch8]
- Interview finish in 30-35 mins
- Something interesting in the picture (boating, karate, etc.)?
Bibliographic data
@book{
title = "Cracking the Code to a Successful Interview",
subtitle = "15 Insider Secrets from a Top-Level Recruiter",
author = "Evan Pellett",
year = "2016",
publisher = "Blackstone Publishing",
isbn = "978-1-4417-0053-7",
}