Transcription of Video:
Have you ever interviewed for a job and you didn’t get it? Yeah, welcome to the club. A lot of people have; including me. Let’s face it; getting hired for a job is not easy. If that was, everybody have a job. But some people seem to be better at interviewing and getting hired for jobs than others.
So, in this video, I want to cover some of the key characteristics that some people are doing to get jobs that maybe you’re not doing. I used to be one of those people. I used to be able to walk into any job interview and get hired for it. It’s not because I was smarter or I was better than my competition. But I’ll tell you this; I was better at presenting myself. So, someone might have been more qualified, they might have had more skills, but I was able to show an interviewer that I was a better fit and I was able to connect the dots for them and show them why I was the right person for the job.
It’s not like my own skills were lacking. I mean, I was good. I mean, but it’s hard to say who’s the best for anything. And what I’m trying to say is you don’t have to be the best technically, you don’t have to know the most. You just have to be able to understand what an employer is looking for and connect to their needs and show them that you are a solution for their problems.
One of the things that smart job seekers do is to show relevance. And let me tell you what I mean by that. They clearly demonstrate to interviewers how their background and their career goals are consistent with the requirements for the job. So, when your background and experience matches the job description, that makes it a lot easier for employers to want to hire you. You want to make their job easy by connecting the dots and showing them why you qualified.
Talk about your past experiences as they relate to the requirements for this job; you want to connect the dots. Show them; don’t just tell them you’re a good fit, show them you’re a good fit. Talk about those past projects and experiences that are relevant to what they’re looking for, so they can visualize you in that position. Help them see you in that position. That’s what smart job seekers do.
Next one, Smart job seekers show consistency. And let me tell you what I mean by that. All of their recent work experience is consistent with the requirements for the job. That means they’re not showing you jobs and experiences they have that are unrelated to what an employer might be looking for in a job. Everything they do; their resume is consistent with the job description and when employers talk to them the conversation that they have with the employer is consistent.
So, sometimes you’ll meet with multiple people in a job interview and each person that you talk to, your story is the same. So, that when all those people get together to talk about you and decide if you’re the right person, they’re all going to have the same impression of you. Because everything that you said each one of those individuals was consistent; it all matches. There’s no contradiction between any of the interviewers. Your resume is consistent, your LinkedIn profile is consistent, all of your answers in the interview are consistent to different interviewers. So, this show that you overall are consistent.
And interviewers know that when people are inconsistent; meaning they say one thing to somebody and then they say something different to somebody else, that usually means that candidate is hiding something. That they’re lying about something or that there’s something a little shady about them.
So, when you’re consistent all the way around, this kind of gives you just a big check plus that you’re probably not holding anything back, you’re probably not lying about anything, because it’s hard to tell a story repeatedly; over and over and over again and have it to be the same story. I mean, that’s how police departments and detectives catch bad guys because they keep asking them to tell them the story. And all the while, the detectives are taking notes about what happened in their story and then they start noticing inconsistency. They’re like “Oh, wait a minute. You said something else earlier when I talked to you”.
So, it’s hard when you’re lying, to be consistent. And I’m not suggesting that you’re lying, I’m just telling you that when you’re consistent overall on everything you say and do, it creates a genuine picture of you to an employer.
Next one, Smart job seekers practice. They don’t just show up to a job interview and win it. You never want to walk into an interview cold. You have to practice how you’re going to answer some of the more common interview questions like, “Why do you want to work here?” or “Tell me about yourself” and “Why is your background a good fit for this company in this position?”
So, do this; get yourself a video camera and record your answers to some of the more common interview questions. And if you need a list of those, you can head on over to jobinterviewtools.com/top10 and you can download my Top 10 Questions Guide and that will give you some of the more common questions with some of the styles of answers that you might want to use. But practice before you go on any interview, practice; don’t show up cold.
Practice what you’re going to say, how you’re going to say it and do it over and over and over again. So, that when you’re in the interview, it just comes out naturally. Your answers just flow off your tongue and you’ll have a very casual conversation with the interviewer.
If you don’t practice and you just say, “I’m just going to go out there and I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to show up and if they ask me some questions about my experience, I’ll go ahead and tell them”, bad idea. If you are not refreshing your memory on the projects you worked on, you may think that you can just pull them out at a moment’s notice, but it’s harder than you think. You’re going to be under pressure in the interview. It’s going to be harder to think in the interview. It’s going to be harder to pull those experiences out because they’re stuck up there in your long term memory.
What you want to do is refresh those experiences, move them over into your short term memory. To do this, just write out your experiences, write out your answers to some questions. That’s going to keep them fresh in your short term memory and it’s going to be a lot easier for you in the interview to talk about your experiences like they just happen and you won’t fumble over your words. That’s what practice does. It keeps you from fumbling over your words in the interview.
Just a little bit of practice goes a long way and it’s going to allow you to string together your experiences and your skills in a very eloquent manner that it is going to sound impressive to an employer and you won’t be fumbling over your words or anything else like that like the competition is going to be because they’re not going to practice like you are.
Next one. Smart job seekers are always planning what their next move is. And let me tell you what I mean by that; successful candidates are always looking ahead. They’re planning out what they’re going to say and do based on how the interview goes. If an employer says, “We’ll get back to you” then they’ll say, “Well, when can I expect to hear from you?” and “Do you mind if I follow up?”
So, you always need to be thinking one or two steps ahead of where things are going to go. They may not always go the direction you plan that they’re going to go, but at least you’re thinking about what’s up there? What’s around the curve? What’s around the bend? What could happen next?
So, if they say they had some concerns about me or my abilities to do the job, then I’m going through be prepared to address those concerns right on the spot. And those could be anything; those could be lack of experience, those could be age based, maybe they say, “You’re 60 years old. Do you still think you can do this?”
Well, then you need to have something prepared for them to show them why your age is not a concern or whatever their concern is, you need to be prepared to address that concern.
So, you should have somewhat of an idea of some of the things they might be concerned with about you and be prepared to address those in the interview.
If you don’t, they’re just going to carry those concerns over into their decision making process and then they’re probably going to disqualify you because they have concerns and you never addressed those concerns.
And it doesn’t end there. Smart job seekers also ask employers intelligent questions to qualify that employer as a place that they want to be. So, they might ask them questions about the job, the culture, their expectations, to try to get a feel for what the employer is really looking for and if that’s something that they want to do; if that’s a job that they really want to have.
So, you owe that to yourself to ask an employer qualifying questions that will help you make an intelligent decision about whether you want to work there or not. That’s why you ask them questions.
So, those are the things that smart job seekers do. From the top; they show relevance, they show consistency, they practice and they’re always planning their next move and you should too.
