…Trump’s Interviewing lessons…OMG
It was certainly painful to watch the presidential debate a week ago Monday. We can always learn from debates. If you’re old enough to remember the Kennedy/Nixon debates where candidate Kennedy looked so “presidential”, tanned and charismatic… and poor Mr. Nixon looked like he was hung over, or remembering Ronald Reagan’s comment about Walter Mondale’s youth and inexperience when asked if his age was going to be a problem, you realize that these debates have lots of lessons.
If Donald Trump had been in an interview for a job he wouldn’t get hired. (Please, please, don’t think I’m taking sides here. I’m of the opinion that it’s sad that we have such poor choices for this election.) It was clear that Mr. Trump did very little preparing for the debate. That’s his first big mistake.
I can’t tell you the number of times over the years that I have had candidates tell me that they really didn’t need to practice interviewing, that all I needed to do was get them the interview and they could wing it with no problem at all. In spite of my coaching and teaching these folks simply think they know better than that and they will have no problem and then they go into the interview and bumble it just like Mr. Trump did. When my candidates do this it’s easy for me to think, “Well, they don’t deserve the damn job” because they just didn’t go to the trouble to prepare”. They do what Mr. Trump did and rely on three or four “lip loads” and then keep repeating them over and over. They come up with a few facts that don’t appear to really know what they’re talking about. In short, they know exactly what questions are going to be asked but don’t practice the answers.
Now this guy is getting in another two chances, And for the country’s sake, we all hope he does better. But here are the major interviewing “mistakes” we can learn from:
- Don’t scowl or look grumpy when being asked a question. Look at the person asking the question with empathy and interest… even if you’re pissed off. This is especially true when a male is interviewing with (or debating) a female. If you are a man, you can look mean and downright ugly to another man. But not to a woman. (Trump really had a problem here because he was being “interviewed” by a guy but debating a woman. I will admit that’s really hard to do.)
- Don’t roll your eyes in contempt when another person is speaking. You look like a jerk.
- Don’t interrupt the person asking the question. It’s rude.
- Don’t interrupt the other person when they are speaking. It’s rude.
- Be prepared with a number of topics you can bring up if you don’t like a particular question.
- Learn how to “deflect” just a bit when you get a question that is meant to trap you.
- There are going to be essentially 10 or 12 real solid questions that are going to be asked. You know what they are and even though they will be asked in a number of different ways, for goodness sakes, practice the damn answers. Again, you know what the questions are going to be. Prepare!!
- Know when to be humble, for God’s sake. When someone tries to nail you about a mistake you made, admit it…don’t defend it. Everyone makes mistakes and they really don’t mind if you do, as long as you acknowledge it was a mistake and asked for forgiveness. “Looking back on it, that was a mistake that I wish I hadn’t made.” That’s it! End of discussion. Let’s move on. If pressed about the mistake, again, simply acknowledge the mistake and maybe mention what you would’ve done differently. “Again that was an error of judgment. It was a mistake. If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve…..”
- Have a slight bit of a sense of humor. Smile once in a while. Act comfortable in your own skin, even if you’re not. Take what you say seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Or at least don’t come across that way.
- When someone catches you off guard with a topic you are not even remotely ready for (when you should be), like Alicia Michado, shuuuuut up. Don’t say a word. Especially, don’t act surprised. Even if you didn’t expect the topic to come up or don’t even know what the other person’s talking about, don’t act like it. “I don’t remember the situation. I will have to look into it.” When you say something like, “whatch-you talkin’ about” when you know it must be some kind of big deal that you have forgotten, you really look dumb.
Unfortunately, if Mr. Trump had been interviewing for a job…which he really is, he wouldn’t have gotten hired. He just wasn’t prepared. Because he wasn’t prepared he was on his heels all night. Let’s hope he learns by his mistakes.
Whether you like the guy or not, all of us really want to see the difference in ideas and policies that he and his opponent have. All of the above issues are more mannerisms than they are content. We all want to know about the issues and not get stuck on the mannerisms. As with any interviewing situation we can all get distracted by the mannerisms and can’t “hear” what is being said. Mr. Trump has got one strike against him. Two more and he is out.
This should be a lesson to anyone who is interviewing… prepare!
P.S. Don’t TWEET nutin!
…no expectations
Dan Ariely, the behavior economist who teaches at Duke and has written a number of books, was asked in his write-in article in the Wall Street Journal White a few week ago about what the most important quality that would help a marriage survive. His answer was to have “no expectations.” Those of us who had been married for a long period of time really understand this sage advice.
The same could be said for a job search. However, based on my experience I would amend this concept just a bit…even maybe marriage. The The biggest problem most job seekers is that they have an expectations Just about everything regarding their job search. They expect that when they see a job posting they know they can do, they will get interviewed and likely get hired. When they apply to hundreds of job opportunities they expect to get interviews. They expect to get interviews when they call their friends. They expect to find a job easily, in a short period of time. They expect to do amazingly well on interviews. They expect to get hired when they interview and often get better money and title. They have way too many expectations.
Rarely do any of these expectations ever pan out. This is one of the greatest shocks of most job searches. And the whole problem is that people have expectations.
There is a place for expectations. And it has to do with what a candidate should expect of themselves in the job search process. A job seeker has to expect the search is going to be hard. They have to expect that they had better take massive, massive action to get interviews …with great intensity. They have to expect to make more contacts about their job search than they ever imagined. They had best expect to perform well on interviews…and get lost of them. They have to expect that they have absolutely nothing until they have a job offer….that they like.
Notice that all these expectations are about themselves and no one else. Where job seekers always run into problems is when they have expectations about other people. Interesting, isn’t it…that is probably true about marriage also.
…. A $35,000 simple application of the first law of economics
It’s so very simple! So very, very simple! The first law of economics: “All money value is created through and backed by the production of commodities, trades, goods and services.” I will never quite understand why people who are looking for a job, even if they have one, don’t understand this simple law. Applied to the practice of finding a job, it simply states, “Your value is created through and backed by the (perceived) services you will provide.” It is that simple. If you show a prospective employer that you can provide better service than any of the other candidates, the more money you will receive.
A week or so ago we were working with a client who was looking for a controller and told us they would pay between $100,000 and $150,000 base salary along with some bonus. They made it very clear that the very top, top, top of their scale was $150,000 and they weren’t likely to pay anywhere close to that. They must have repeated it as a mantra at least a dozen times.
They hired our candidate. They paid her $185,000 and were so glad to do it they couldn’t see straight. In fact they were almost apologetic. The reason? She gave them so many good value propositions that she could do for them they were compelled to hire her. Now, she knew before she went to the interview that these people wanted to pay $100,000. She went anyhow. She barely even talked about money, except to say that the money was important but not the most important thing about the job. She just simply gave them so many really good reasons as to why they should hire her and what she could do for them, they raised her salary $35,000 more than the top of their scale.
If people looking for a job simply paid attention to the track record that they might offer a prospective employer and then present that value proposition to as many people as possible could they would have no trouble finding a job. She went into absolute detail, addressing just about every aspect of the financial picture of the company That she had researched from just about every source, the company’s bank, the company’s manufacturing companies, their customers, their competitors. She knew more about the company than the hiring authority did. She communicated what she suspected to be the biggest financial problems of the company and the three or four things she would do to address them. She did absolutely thorough research.
After two interviews our client was absolutely sold on her. Because they didn’t want to mess around and lose her, they simply told her, “the highest base we thought we were going to pay was $150,000, but with your skills and experience we are willing to offer you $185,000.” And she was thrilled.
What’s even more interesting about this is that she’s making $200,000 in her present job. She took a cut from her present salary because the opportunity and the company were so good. He makes both sides of the desk look good,
9/11
EVIL exists…we never know how it will touch us and change our future
we should PRAY for our enemies
…but we should never FORGET
…”lying?!! But everybody’s doing it… look at Hillary”
This is what I heard from a candidate this week. And this wasn’t some entry-level kid. This was a 20 year veteran who been an EVP at a well-known company. He was complaining because one of our clients was considering him for a regional VP job and just plain stopped when they found out that he lied. He worked at a company for about six months a number of years ago and didn’t have it on his resume. It was 10 years ago and he figured that it didn’t have anything to do with his most recent career so he left off his resume. It so happens that one of the people working at our client company recognized his resume, said that he knew him because they had worked together a number of years ago at the company… that wasn’t on his resume. Our client interpreted this as lying, which in the strictest sense, it was. So, unfortunately, they passed on him.
It was devastating to all of us, including our client firm’s CEO. Most everyone had their heart set on hiring this guy and he had his heart set on taking the job. I have started my 43rd year in this profession and I have to admit that I’m still torn about this kind of thing. Being educated from childhood by Benedictine nuns, Augustinian and Jesuit priests, I’ve always been taught to never lie. (Of course, the Jesuits would probably also consider the philosophical relativity of lying.) Even Sister Mary Peter, In third grade told us that, “if somebody comes to the door and asks if your mother is home and she’s not, you can tell them that she is, but she just can’t come to the door right now.” Or, when we were in seventh or eighth grade and read The Diary of Anne Frank and discussed in religion class a hypothetical question, “What would you say to the Nazi trooper who came to the door and asked if there were any Jewish people in your house.” Of course we would lie.
Regarding getting a job, I have known thousands of candidates over the years who eliminated short stints on their resumes, took sole credit for accomplishments their team actually accomplished, fudged on their title, embellished on their performance, elongated the time they were at a particular company, lied about the amount of money they made, who they knew, their name change (I still will never understand the why of this), their marital status, whether or not they had a drivers license, an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, where they were born, how long they have been married, how long it took them to graduate from college, languages they were fluent in, their golf handicap, why they left their last job and the jobs before that, where they lived, the number of DWIs they’ve received, the ages of their children… Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Some people lie about important stuff as well as the most inconsequential, ridiculous stuff you ever heard of.
In spite of modern technology that can verify just about any fact, candidates still lie about things like having a degree when they don’t, length of time spent at a job, titles and some of their last positions etc. This is crazy! One phone call can reveal, for instance, if a person has a degree from any school. Why would someone lie about this? It can be “fact checked” so easily. The resume a candidate sent over the Internet three years ago is likely to be somewhere out there in cyberspace. If that same person’s resume is a lot different today than it was three years ago, the candidate will be eliminated if it is discovered. It’s that simple
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no right answer for this dilemma. The most moralist among us would justify lying under certain circumstances. Regarding a job search though, the job seeker needs to realize that they are going to be held to a higher standard than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and all of the rest of the politicians who lie/embellish/stretch the truth/deny what they said/forget/reframe.
I have to tell people “don’t lie.” It probably isn’t going to do much good, people will lie anyhow. Just remember that employers are looking for just as many reasons not to hire you as they are to hire you. If anyone lies about anything in their job search, a prospective employer has no choice but to eliminate that candidate. It has nothing to do with the candidate’s ability to do the job or not. It has to do with the fact that if the candidate is hired in spite of the known lies, a hiring authority will be held responsible for an inept, downright stupid decision to hire a liar.
I can understand people feeling like the risk is worth running. The job someone had for three months 10 years ago probably won’t make one bit of difference in person’s performance on the job they are seeking today. The same might go for a DWI a person got 15 years ago. Does it make a difference on how people perform if they have a degree? I know a number of very high level managers in the city who lied about having a degree, even the schools they attend. They do a hell of a job. But there’s still liars.
It’s pretty sad that we will accept outright lying from our politicians and be appalled by those who may “embellish” about their grade point in college. That’s reality! Cursing it doesn’t matter one iota.
Don’t lie.
…SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP !!!
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about saying stupid things in an interview even when they are sincere, honest, etc., but still stupid. Well, this week we had a situation that was really difficult and a lot more understandable, but still required as much personal discipline has saying stupid things in an interview.
The issue centers around sharing with people in your company your frustration about your job, and your desire to leave as well as your activity in looking for a new job. We had two candidates come to see us a few weeks ago from the same company. They were both reeling from a new management dictatorial style as well as a drastic “realignment” of their pay structure. They were both really pissed off and really ready to leave. Neither one of them could wait for that wonderful day that they can go in and tell their boss to stuff it where the sun don’t shine and walk out.
So, their job search began. We warned both of them that it would be better not to discuss their job search with anyone in the company, including each other. We emphasized that it would be better if they didn’t share where they were getting interviews, or how the interviews were going… Anything! Unfortunately, people don’t always listen to what we say and every day they would talk with each other about the interviews they were getting, how they were going, etc. One of them even told one of the companies they were interviewing with about the other one and suggested that the company interview the other candidate also. In spite of our warnings this went on for at least two weeks. One of them, after we got the other one an interview with one of our clients, called us and wanted to know why we hadn’t gotten her the same interview as we had gotten her friend. We had been constantly telling them to quit sharing their job search activities with each other.
Well, all of a sudden one day at the beginning of the week one of these candidates called and said that her friend in “crime” of looking for a job had all of a sudden clammed up and started avoiding her. She told us that they had not spoken all week and her friend all of a sudden seemed to be a little closer to and warmer to the Nazi they were working for. Now, the second candidate is worried that the first candidate is going to leak the fact that she is looking for a job to the Nazi manager. She is absolutely terrified and has called every day to ask if we had any better advice about what she should do. We advised to just keep her nose to the grindstone and, again, don’t discuss any of her job search with anybody. We will see how things go, but she’s as nervous as she can be.
A number of years ago we had two sales candidates come to see us together because both of them were upset with their company and what was going on. We told them the same thing we told these two ladies, to keep their mouth shut and not share with each other their job search activities. Like the ladies, they didn’t listen and were sharing everything about their job search. About a month into their job search, one of the guys got promoted to manager of the area, and the very first thing he did was fire his “buddy” because he knew he was looking for a job and, as he explained to his ex-friend as he was firing him, with his new job he couldn’t afford to have anyone on his team that was looking for a job.
I’m sure you get the message. If you’re looking for a job while you have one, keep your mouth shut. You can’t afford to have anyone at your work spill the beans.
