After 20 years of professional executive recruiting and hundreds of successful placements, I have seen some of the brightest, most talented professionals in business languish in their careers. I have seen frustrated, disillusioned, disheartened candidates relinquish control of their careers to “fate.” The primary culprit: failure to perform on interviews. Why do people fail on interviews? Because they typically don’t understand what they need to accomplish at this event. The objective is not to recite your resume, but to “sell” yourself. Pretty self-evident— interviewing 101, right? But, what does it mean? Selling is first and foremost about assessing your customer’s needs. What does this person want to buy from you, and do you have it? If not, then you will not get a callback. If you do have what the prospect needs, how are you able to articulate this is in a clear, concise and convincing manner? This last part is what trips up the vast majority of interviewers.
Let’s say you figured out what your interviewer needs and that you can satisfy those needs; why are you still not getting offers? When I gave a seminar to Project Ezrah in February, I said that many candidates convey their experience with a stream of consciousness approach reminiscent of a great James Joyce novel. The problem with this approach is that lack of focus compels someone who has known you for five minutes to try and understand your relevance. If the interviewer can’t sift through all the verbiage to get to your relevant experience, you will not see a second round. This challenge particularly impacts those who have been in the workforce for a long time.
How do such candidates distill 10-20 years of experience into 20-30 minute interview slots? They consciously or unconsciously apply the “kitchen sink” approach to interviewing. They believe that there must be something for everyone in their resumes, so why not cover all their bases? To this end, I have never seen anyone as impressed with a candidate as the candidate him/herself. They spend the precious few minutes they have harping on this or that accolade which may have scored points at cocktail parties, but has virtually no relevance to the employer. Invariably, the feedback is that the candidate was a bit “unfocused” and they will not be proceeding. Stay disciplined.
Another major hurdle to effective selling is utter lack of preparation; i.e., how candidates inadequately research the firms and/or interviewers of prospective employers. Think about it. If you own a company, are interviewing someone and they know virtually nothing about you or your firm when they could have easily Googled you, what does it tell you about them? If they didn’t care enough to do the research, why are you spending any of your valuable time discussing career prospects at your own firm? Indeed, one of my (and many other interviewers’) pet peeves is failure of a candidate to review a known interviewer’s LinkedIn profile prior to the interview. LinkedIn makes it about as easy as it gets to do one’s minimum due diligence on the interviewer. Personally, I have not hired recruiters who failed to check out my LinkedIn profile prior to the interview. Laziness is no virtue. Instead, if one is interviewing with a public company, go on their website and look at their annual report. You should ascertain both the headwinds and tailwinds that the firm is confronting, and determine how you can help further the former and minimize the latter. If it’s a private company with little available public information, find out the challenges their industry is confronting and determine how you can be a value add.
If you would have done your work in assessing needs and tailoring your experience to those needs, then closing the interview should be easy. How do most people end interviews? “If there is anything else you need from me, please don’t hesitate to contact me.” Sound familiar? If taken on its face, you are stating the obvious. If the interviewer needs additional documents, clarification etc., they know where to find you or your recruiter, without you having to mention it. However, people end interviews this way because they don’t know what else to say. Instead, you should restate your value proposition, how that value proposition relates to the position at hand and then close by stating that you want to move the process forward. Plant your flag! You will immediately differentiate yourself from over 90 percent of your competition.
Regardless of your industry, if you have been passed over for great jobs in the past, want to land an outstanding internship or are trying to secure a fantastic position that could provide you with greater financial security, more rewarding growth opportunities and the ability to look forward to Monday mornings again, I can help you attain all of these. Check me out on LinkedIn. I can also provide you with 65 testimonials of candidates happy with the competitive advantage I gave them when they sought employment.
Email me for more information at [email protected].
By Jordan Rockowitz
Jordan Rockowitz has been an executive recruiter since 1998 and has successfully prepared over 1,500 candidates to excel on interviews. He has a JD from Seton Hall University School of Law and a BA from Stony Brook University.
