If you have done the homework on yourself and the company you have targeted, you are ready for a dialog with recruiters, hiring managers or peers. If you have felt some sort of discouragement at the length of the process to get you to this point, you are not alone and it is for good reason. From the recruiter perspective, think of this process as a funnel where large volumes of candidates enter at the top but only a few come out through the narrow end. The average varies from company to company and even by industry. Everyone has seen a funnel, so I won’t attempt to draw one for you. You only need to recognize the concept from a recruiting perspective and place yourself somewhere in the funnel. To a recruiter, there are literally thousands of possible candidates for every position. There may be only a few hundred who either by luck, skill or networking will make it to the first screening phase. As the funnel narrows to the neck, there are usually 5-10 selected to interview. Now you know why it is so important to be prepared: With odds as low as 0.1% on getting to the interview stage of the process, you must be continually studying, learning and improving yourself to achieve your goal. A successful recruiting campaign will make one candidate happy and thousands very unhappy.
The purpose of an interview is to compare selected candidates against the criteria for the job and select the most compatible match to become an employee. At this point it should not matter who you know, but what you know compared to others interviewing for the position. Usually no candidate is a perfect match, so this becomes an exercise in relativity. This is probably the most stressful part of the process and the knee-jerk reaction is naturally to focus on yourself, but if you are really prepared this is the time to put on your recruiter mindset and enter the discussion seeing the total picture. See what the recruiter sees, hear what the recruiter hears, act as the recruiter acts, and you will be amazed at how visible the process becomes and how confident you will feel. See the interview table from both sides. In any interview, always be thinking to yourself, “If I were on the other side of the conversation, what would I want to hear?â€
Preparation For the Interview – If you have not been told how to dress in advance, or if you forgot to ask, make sure you have appropriate business attire ready for the occasion. Women should wear a business suit (think Hillary Clinton) and men should wear jacket and tie (think David Letterman). There are some companies where a strong value will be placed on the informality of their environment, but don’t assume that there is a loose dress code for interviews without asking. If allowed, business casual still does not imply halter tops or t-shirts printed with beer logos. Regardless of the company, most questioning will lead-off with the standard TMSAY: “Tell me something about yourself.†Prepare this in advance, use only business related bullet points, and memorize it. You should have rehearsed this and your overall presentation, looking in a mirror to watch your facial expressions or making a video of yourself if possible. Body language can be important in conveying who you are. Know the exact location of the interview and verify the time. If you will need to pass through security or prepare any application documents, make sure you know how much additional time to allow. Always arrive early!
Tips – You may find yourself spending time with non-interviewer persons during your visit. Don’t assume that their input is unimportant. Be courteous to receptionists, escorts or admin assistants who assist you and if possible get their names. Remembering names and calling people by their name is a good way to make yourself memorable. If given an offer of a beverage, water is always a safe choice and may actually be useful if you find you are doing a lot of talking. Coffee, tea or soda can actually dehydrate you over time and make you more thirsty. If you find yourself in a breakfast or lunch interview, remember the ABCDE rule of interviewing: Always Beware Consuming Drippy Eats! Pasta sauce and salad dressing on the front of your interviewing uniform will not cost you a job, but will place you in an embarrassing light.
Types of interviews – Not to throw fear and panic into an already tense situation, but there are as many different types of interviews as there are people interviewing you. You can never know what to expect. Even if the company has a standard interviewing practice and format it is still likely that one person will go rogue and do it their own way. In most cases, you can count on most to follow a similar format, but in reality you have to be the most prepared person in the room. If you are looking for a job, your job is to be the most professional interviewee you can be. Your only match will be the recruiter who does this for a living, but most one-on-one interviews will be handled by amateur interviewers who in some instances may be more intimidated by you than you are of them. You can count on most larger companies to have provided some sort of interview training to line management and other leaders, but you won’t know that going in the door. Be prepared for anything. Most interviews will fall into one or more of the following areas.
- Informational – You can count on at least one of your interviewers to go into detail about your background. If the recruiter does this, he is looking for gaps in your work experience because it will be his job to explain that if you are the choice to hire. You may be asked questions about education, degrees, date of employment and reasons for leaving previous jobs. If you have anything that needs to be explained in detail be ready with your prepared comments, but don’t feel that you have to volunteer every boring and gory detail unless you are asked. Don’t be evasive, be truthful, answer questions, but look for the unasked questions, anticipate them and be ready with an answer. Silence is not a bad thing. Like music, the rests between the notes sometimes makes the composition flow more smoothly. This may sound rather simplistic, but remember to breathe! If you find yourself talking too fast, slow down.
- Behavioral – A behavioral interview is based on the assumption that past behavior will predict future performance. Based on the criteria for the job, you will be given situations where you will be asked to answer with how you have reacted to this or similar situations in the past. One of the most popular, and often plagiarized, is the format created by Development Dimensions International called Targeted Selection® which uses a STAR format: Situation, Task, Action, Results. Whether your interviewer is following the DDI format or not, any answer you give should take the situation given and explain what tasks you performed, what action was taken and describe the results. If you touch all the points you will be seen to have answered completely. Results are most important. If you answer in the hypothetical, describe the group’s performance and not your own, and don’t show any final results you are subject to more probing to get a correct answer. This is a gross oversimplification of how behavioral interviewing works and it requires practice to be able to do it seamlessly. There are a number of YouTube videos online which are good examples to follow. These change from time to time, so checking often may bring different results. You can never have too much practice in answering behavioral interview questions which trains you to instantly draw upon your accomplishments to give examples of results.
- Critical Thinking – While the value of this type of interviewing to determining suitability for employment is sometimes questionable, somebody is always bound to believe that knowing why manhole covers are round or some other silly 7th grade riddle is still significant. It is usually more important to show your thought processes rather than to give a right or wrong answer. My answer to the “how many jelly beans does it take to fill a 747†is four. Then I can explain that any more than that would be unnecessary because some kid is going to pick them up and eat them anyway. There is no real answer to most of these, but answering with a question, such as whether you should consider the 747 with or without seats, shows you are thinking about the variables of the problem. The true questions which are valid for challenging you to think would be those which take a look into how you would perform real-life problem solving. It is perfectly legitimate to ask programmers to write code to produce a certain result, a chemist to sketch out a particular reaction, or for advertising execs to brainstorm a creative approach for the launch of a new product. If you are interviewing for a technical position, someone is going to grill you on technical questions.
- Panel or Group – This type of interview is often used in an environment where there are more interviewers than can be scheduled in a single day. Actually, it is much less stressful to have one interview with several people than having the day extended by the time necessary to accommodate everyone in a one-on-one interview. Some people find this type of inquiry intimidating. It makes me think of the old Monty Python sketch where someone jumps out and says “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!†But if you have rehearsed your answers and know yourself, this should be no more intimidating than a one-on-one interview. In fact, if you make eye contact with only one questioner at a time there is absolutely no difference. Exercise your visual and verbal filters. If you have a question to follow-up on a reply, make sure it is addressed to the interviewer who asked the original question. The pace may a little more brisk, but you have some control over the process in the timing of your answers. For this and all interviews, there is usually a topic or set of questions assigned to each interviewer based on their expertise. It is rarely free-wheeling, but if it goes in that direction, you may keep everything on track by giving the best examples from your past work accomplishments to satisfy the entire group.
- Cultural – This is usually included in with other questioning techniques and its purpose is to probe your previous relationships with co-workers, subordinates and superiors as well as your likes and dislikes. You may be asked about problems with former co-worker or bosses, but remember that it is important to relate positive information without being phony. Never be negative. Even if your previous manager was an ogre, this is not the time to air that opinion to the world. Some people overemphasize the cultural aspect of an interview, but the truth is that a perfect cultural fit will not get you the job without other qualifications.  It most definitely can be an obstacle on a level playing field based on the skill and experience comparisons with other candidates. This is probably a good place for you to do a lot of listening as well as talking. Not only are they trying to assess if you are a good organizational fit for them, but they are also flashing clues as to what type of environment exists in the company and what problems may exist.
There are literally an infinite number of possible interview questions and an equally infinite number of possible acceptable answers. Now that I have hopefully convinced you to think like a recruiter, I will give you the secret to learning the other aspects of interviewing within that mindset. In my opinion, the definitive list of everything you need to know about interviewing is maintained in a list created by Margaret F. Dikel called the Riley Guide (http://www.rileyguide.com/interview.html). This is mandatory reading for job seekers and gives fantastic insight into thinking like a recruiter during an interview. It is not really a secret. Pass it on!