Today!
The job interview.
We're gonna talk about job interviewing and
I am gonna give you my favorite tip.
Yes, my favorite tip.
This thing is simple and it's huge, and if
you do it, just do it, I guarantee you will
get hired even if you trip up a little bit
along the way in the interview.
So, if you are just jumping into this session,
we're in part number three.
Part number one was a handful of days ago.
We talked about resume writing and more specifically
how to put together a killer, killer career
profile.
We also talked over the weekend, a couple
of days ago, on job search networking where
I gave you some detailed tactics, the dos,
the don'ts, and all that good stuff.
If you have not caught those sessions, they
will be up for a limited time.
I've gone all out for you on this live event.
I've created a concierge page that I like
to call it.
It's basically the event page.
It shows you the topics, the dates, the times,
and all that good stuff.
It also has the replays that you can access.
You can also get them here on YouTube.
There's some other goodies and other assets
and things that you can grab as well so check
that out.
The link is in the description.
If you have not yet subscribed to my YouTube
channel, make sure not only because of this
event, and we still have another session on
salary negotiation coming up in a couple of
days, but make sure that you subscribe because
I give you new weekly videos, as well as my
live office hours on Thursday.
So, if you need assets to help you build a
career you love this is the place and I love
helping you do that.
Let's get into the agenda for today.
I'm gonna talk a bit about just some basics
and I want to talk, I want to mention interview
intervention for a moment.
I do want to give you the number one tip that
I want to share with you that will literally
transform your interviewing ability, your
ability to get hired.
I'm gonna teach you how to do that technique,
this technique, in all three phases of the
job interview.
If you don't know what the three phases of
the job interview I'm gonna go through those,
too.
Great to have you.
Now, for those of you who ... Most of you
know, but in case you do not, I've written
three books, and the first book that I wrote
Interview Intervention: Communication That
Gets You Hired, no job interviewing live session
would be complete without me holding this
book up and just letting you know at this
moment it's free.
This $29 book is free.
I bought it for you.
I also created an e-book and slaved over recording
the audio for you, which you also get for
free and you get an e-book titled How to Interview
the Employer: 75 Great Questions to Ask Before
You Take Any Job.
Now this book, which I know a lot of you have,
and you get free if you're in my boot camp
or in my interview intervention course, this
book I wrote it a number of years ago and
it's about a methodology that I've developed
about 15 years ago.
If you do everything in the book, the book
talks about the reasons why you get hired.
It's foundationally based on communication
principles and psychology and what's happening
when people are communicating.
It happens to be written in a job interview
setting.
It talks about the reasons you get hired,
about accurately exchanging information between
you and the job interviewer and doing that
effectively so that you both are making informed
decisions based on reality.
The entire book is strategic.
It breaks it down into processes.
It gets very prescriptive.
As far as questions, answers your questions,
how to get the information you need, thank-you
emails, all kinds of good stuff.
But it's all based on you making a great decision.
If you do everything in the book, statistically
we've been gathering stats for the last decade
and a half.
You have a 560% better chance of getting hired
than other job seekers, and that's pretty
awesome.
The good news is, you can get the book for
free, and I want you to do all that stuff.
The other piece of news is, we're not going
to talk about any of that stuff today.
I want to let you know, the book is out there
for you to go get.
I want you to get it.
I want you to learn the tactics because it
really will help you with your storytelling
and your responses to any of the interviewing
questions.
Any of the interviewing questions, so get
that.
Today, we're going to talk about something
even more powerful than reality.
Something that trumps reality on any given
day, twice on Sunday, always has, always will.
Always has, always will, and that's imagination.
Imagination.
It trumps reality.
It's greater than reality.
Always has been, always will be.
It taps emotions, and emotions are simply
more powerful than logic.
They're more powerful than reality.
Our emotions are so powerful that it makes
us reshape our logic so that we can talk ourselves
into just about anything that we want and
rationalize our way to our decisions.
Everybody does this.
It's human nature.
What I want to do today is I want to show
you how you can tap into the interviewer's
imagination, and position yourself so that
they are imagining you in the best light.
If you're able to do that, combined with the
interview intervention techniques in the book,
I don't know what that percentage is going
to be, as far as how much better you're going
to perform in the market, but I'm guessing
it's more than a thousand percent.
So that's what I want to talk about today
because, imagination trumps reality.
All right, let's get into this.
Let's get into this.
When you are in an interview ... Sorry, I'm
really parched today.
When you are in an interview, you want to
think about the role you're playing and at
that moment, you're the chief operating officer
of your job search.
Until you get that interview, you are the
chief marketing officer of your resume, and
you and bringing yourself to market.
When you get that job interview, the role
you're playing is sales person, and you are
selling yourself as is the company to you.
You are selling yourself so that the employer
will ultimately buy you.
Once they buy you and you become an employee,
then you turn into a service delivery person,
or a customer service person where you actually
fulfill whatever it is that they're paying
you for.
If you think about the best sales people,
they're not the ones that understand the script
of what it is that they're selling or all
the product features and all the niceties
of what the service is or the product is.
They're the ones you can actually help you
think about your future and your transformation.
They're the ones that get you think forward
about the art of what's possible.
When you see those pictures, I don't know,
an advertisements of whatever, you got the
guy pulling out his hair, and his desk is
all cluttered, and he's trying to work, and
he can't figure it out.
Then you see the person on the beach, sipping
a piña colada under the sun, on the sand,
and they say, "This can be you," that's what
I'm talking about is getting someone to imagine
what's possible.
When you were in the interview, that's your
job is to think about how can I show them
what's possible.
Now, in doing so, the easiest way for you
to think about how to do that and to remember,
and what your cue is, is to think about this
one word, just think about this one word for
me, and it's their future.
It's their future.
It's their future.
The interview, ultimately hinges on their
future not your past.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
What happens is a lot of us, we get into these
interviews and we spend a lot of time trying
to convey our credentials.
We talk about our past projects, all that
good stuff.
All that good stuff where we're spending a
tremendous amount of time talking about our
past.
When you're talking about your past, the interviewer
is in evaluation mode and it is a huge, huge
stretch for that interviewer to draw the conclusion
between your past and their future.
Because there are entirely too many variables
that they're dealing with at any moment in
time.
This is how you do it in your environment
and while your logic sounds sound, okay?
You sound like you know what you're talking
about.
It looks like you know what you're doing.
You're recalling it effectively, but our environment
is different.
Our environment is different.
I don't know if you can actually do it in
our environment.
The more time you spend in your past and the
more time they spend in evaluation mode generally
speaking, not always but generally speaking,
the interview is going less good.
It's going less good, the more time you spend
in your past.
What you need to do is you need to get it
into the future.
You need to get into the future, and you need
them to imagine more easily, and even though
it's an imagination, you need them to extrapolate
more accurately that you can do the job, and
this is how you would do the job, and this
is how their life is going to change, and
this is how they're going to grow their revenue,
and this how they're going to cut their cost,
or whatever is that you're doing for them.
How their customers are going to happy, whatever
it is.
You have got to figure out how to get the
discussion into the future.
Now I know you might be thinking out there
and saying, "Well, Andy, I don't really control
the interview, and they asked me questions
and they always asked me questions about my
past, how am I going to shift the discussion
from the past to the future?"
The one thing that I would say is you always
keep thinking about their future is you control
the interview.
Anybody who wants control can get control
of the interview regardless of who's sitting
on whatever side of the desk.
In a lot of times, you're given control right
upfront.
Let's talk about how do you shift the discussion
into the future at all three different phases
of the job interview.
You think about your job interviews and as
soon as I say ... If you are wondering what
these three phases are, as soon as I say and
you're going to say, "Oh yeah, of course that's
right.
Because this happens to every interview, nearly
every interview," it is basically three phases.
Most of the time, the entire portion that
the interviewer thinks that he or she's controlling
the interview, most of the time, they want
to talk about your past.
Usually, the first phase of the interview
is the tell me, walk me part, right?
Tell me about yourself.
Walk me through your resume, so on and so
forth.
In the tell me, walk me portions of the interview,
that's all you have to talk about is your
past, right?
You're going to walk through your background,
or you're going to tell them who you are,
or what you're about.
In those cases, if you have not seen my videos
on the best answer to the tell me about yourself
question, or the best way to respond to the
walk me through your resume, there's two separate
videos.
They're both very popular.
I would check them out to make sure that foundationally,
you understand what to do in advance of an
interview to score big on those two questions.
A big part of scoring big on those questions
is doing your homework and that actually is
germane to today's discussion is because you
can actually blueprint this tip I'm about
to give you.
A lot of times when the interviewer initially
is going to turn the control of the interview
over to you with the tell me about yourself
because now you own it, you can say whatever
you want or walk me through your resume.
You can choose to spent whichever amount of
time you want on whichever portion of your
resume you want, this is where as you are
preparing for the interview, the one thing
that you can do in order to make sure that
you can shift the interview into the future.
You don't always need to do it right at the
moment but I like to tell you to drop the
hint about the future.
Here's what I mean specifically.
As you're walking through your resume or you're
telling them about your background, there
are going to be some parts of your resume
that are more in alignment with the job description
and what it is they ultimately want you to
do as an employee.
In those particular areas, I want you to spend
more time explaining what it was that you
did.
If you did a project last year, that's very
much analogous to what you need to do in this
future job at their company, that's where
I want you to spend more time, and then we
can kind of scheme across things that aren't
as relevant, and then I want you to spend
more time on the things that aren't.
When you're planning, when you're doing your
homework, I want you to make sure that you
get some kind of phrase down where you're
going to drop the hint.
As you're walking them through your resume
and you're going to say, "Well this particular
project here, this is a great project.
As a matter of fact, I can't wait to tell
you about this because from what I saw from
the job description, this particular project
is very much in alignment with what it is
you need me to do at your company.
When we get to the point where you're going
to ask me, I'm sure you're going to ask me
some questions, I'll love to talk about a
scenario where this is applicable to your
environment and how I might be able to apply
the skills and experience that I learned in
your environment."
Because the moment you can shift the discussion
to how you will or what you would do that
it immediately sends the discussion into the
future.
Now they can start imagining how it is that
you would accomplish what it is they need
you to do in their environment.
"I'll be really eager to talk about how I
can apply this particular experience to what
it is that you'll need me to do."
You drop the hint.
This is their cue.
They probably weren't even going to ask you
about some type of situational environment
or a case study or project or whatever problem
it is that they're trying to handle.
You've now planted the seed that you want
to make sure that you cover that when they
start asking you specific questions.
All right.
That's the first phase of the interview.
Second phase of the interview is where they
start asking you questions.
A lot of times they'll turn it over to you.
They want a little bit of background because
they're lazy and because they didn't read
your resume and they don't really know you.
They want you to talk your way through it.
Then eventually they get into some questions
that they're going to ask you.
When they get into the questions that they're
going to ask and you are answering them, I
want you to make sure that you do a little
tack on or an add on to anything that you
answer that is historical.
Let me be really specific.
I know a lot of people they obsess over behavioral
interviewing questions, which are the dumbest
interviewing questions that anybody could
possibly ask you in an interview because they
provide no evidence of how you actually will
do something in the future.
Employers continue to do this.
I don't know why.
They're going to do it, and I don't care about
them.
I care about you because you're here with
me.
When they ask you about those questions in
the past, "Tell me about a time when.
Walk me through that project.
Tell me how you organize this.
Tell me how you plan that.
Tell me how you handled somebody this way
or that way."
Whatever it is that they ask you about that's
historical.
You know you're going to go in your past and
you know they're now going to be in evaluation
mode.
What you need to do is you need to tell your
story according to the principles outlined
in interview intervention.
Tell the story.
Go through all the story telling principles
and all the things that I give you.
As soon as you are about to wrap up that story
I don't want you to turn control over of the
interview back to them to let them run wild
and go somewhere else.
I want you to make sure that at that moment
anytime you answer a historical question that
requires any kind of story telling because
if it requires some lengthy answer it means
it's important to them, that they want to
investigate those skills.
Then I want you to immediately shift it into
the future, and the easiest way to do that
is, "So this is how I handled that situation
in my past.
Do you have a situation at your organization
or anticipate one where I might need to apply
those skills so that I could share how I would
handle that in your environment?
So you'll have a better understanding of whether
I'd be a good fit for your company.
Do you have a scenario or an example or a
situation, whatever you want to call it, in
your company that I could discuss how I would
handle it so that you will know whether I'd
be a better fit?"
There's not an interviewer out there who would
not want to get that insight from you because
that's the insight that they should have gotten
in the first place.
Whenever you're talking about stuff in the
future I can see your logic and how exactly
you would handle it.
That's like feeding two birds with the same
piece of bread.
I'm getting the understanding of what your
experience is like if this is your logic and
how you would handle it in the future.
People want to spend a lot of time in your
past as if they're not sure that you can.
I can draw those conclusions if you tell me
the route you will take in order to handle
it in my environment.
Shift it to the future.
Then the third part of the interview is when
you get to ask your questions.
When you get to ask your questions and you
are in gathering mode now you really control
the interview, just ask them my favorite question
which is, what is it?
I know you guys have seen this.
It's been in many videos, many live office
hours.
I always talk about if I only had one question
to ask in a job interview this would be it.
When you're talking with the interviewer just
ask him or her if I was to take this job,
or whoever was to take this job, a year from
now what specifically will the person have
accomplished for you to know that it was successful?
That the person was successful or the hire
was successful?
Whatever it maybe specifically what will have
been accomplished, what will have been completed,
what will have been built, what will have
been solved, whatever.
Get very, very specific.
Now the first thing about this question is
the interviewer should be able to tell you
that because if the interviewer can't describe
what success looks like to you, you're in
real trouble because you don't even know.
You won't even know what success looks like
as an employee.
Most employers will know this.
You want to get them to tell you what that
is.
Now, if you have the opportunity during your
question asking period to then tell them how
you would accomplish that, that's cool.
Just say, "Here's exactly how I would do that.
I'd like to pause my questions for a second
but I think it's worth me sharing.
here's I would go about doing it if you've
not done that already."
I realized that sometimes it's not always
appropriate and you don't always have as much
time.
Sometimes they only leave you a few minutes
at the end.
If you have the time, go into the story of
how exactly you would do that.
If you don't have the time make sure to take
some good notes, and in your next interview
with whoever that might be, or another round
with this particular person if you're going
to have a second interview, whoever it might
be, make sure you are describing how you would
accomplish that.
Bring that up in some way, shape, or form.
"It's my understanding that this is what success
looks like.
I'd love to discuss how I would approach that.
I think that that's valuable for us to discuss.
It will show you what I will do as an employee.
It'll also help me better understand how I
could go about this.
You could see whether I have the skills and
experience.
You can also clarify for me what the expectations
are and the rule."
That's my third fairway.
Think about this.
When you're walking somebody through your
resume or you're telling them about yourself
make sure you drop the hint.
Let's just review these really quick.
Make sure you drop in the hint that hey this
seems like it's going to be an important facet
of the job.
"I'll really be looking forward to when you're
asking me questions.
If we could discuss a specific scenario in
your environment where I would be able to
apply these skills or experience so you know
how I would handle it in your environment,"
that's dropping the hint.
When you get into answering your questions,
you want to make sure that anything that's
historical, anything that's historical that
requires time for you to explain step one,
step two, step three, and so on you want to
make sure that you say, "That's how I handled
it in the past.
Do you happen to have any specific scenario
you'd like me to address in your environment
so you know how I would handle it at your
company so that you can determine if I'm a
good fit for that role."
That's the tack on.
The third thing is when you're gathering insight
make sure you ask the question, "What does
success look like in here specifically?"
Then whether in that interview, or maybe in
the little in your thank you e-mail, or in
the next interview whether it's in five minutes
from now or whether it's in five days from
now you make sure that you include that in
your story.
Those are the three things.
You want to make sure that you are constantly
moving into the future.
I want you to pause for a second.
I know a lot of you out there.
We got job changers, the sales person who
was working at a company who wants to move
to another company.
It's powerful for you.
Think about if you are a young professional
or a college student coming out of school.
Think about this.
You're a career changer.
You don't have the requisite experience.
Not always.
I've coached you to make sure that you connect
the dots and the capabilities and draw those,
make those parallels and those analogies from
what you've done to what they need.
Imagine the faster you can get the discussion
into the future, the more effective your interviews
will be because what they're really looking
for is do you have the right approach?
Do you have the right logic?
What raw material am I getting in this person
who doesn't necessarily have the hard core
skills to do this job.
That's all I ask.
When I'm coaching somebody and they are wanting
to change careers that's all we do.
What career do you want to go into?
Or let's talk about how would you approach
that?
How will you tell your stories?
How would you solve those problems in the
future?
The more you're doing that the better the
interview will go.
The better the interview will go.
Very, very powerful stuff for those without
the right level of experience that somehow
we're able to market themselves effectively
to actually get the job interview.
I hope that helps.
What do we got?
24 minutes.
That's not too bad.
If you're liking this what do you say?
Give me the thumbs up on the video.
