By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

In this interview with Job Search and Interview Coach, Thea Kelley we have fun talking about some of those stupid/goofy/ridiculous mistakes people make on interviews.

Stupid Interview Mistakes: Overthinking Your Resume

Yeah, yeah, a little bit more of a pad at the beginning of the video. Hi, this is Jeff Hopp, the Big-Game Hunter. And you’re either watching Job Search TV or listening to this No BS Job Search Advice. That’s a call that No BS Job Search Advice Radio. Every once in a while, I mess up the intro. I’d like to spend some time daily providing great information about job search because I frankly believe it doesn’t have to be that hard, difficult, painful, or take as long as it does. It’s just the skills they need to find a job are different than those needed to do a job. And for those of you who’ve been with me for a while, you’ve noticed that periodically what I’m doing this year is bringing in guests to interview them about job hunting and different elements. And today,

Thea Kelley tonight, he is a job search and interview coach based in San from the San Francisco Bay Area, working with job hunters nationwide. She has a book out, it’s an Amazon bestseller called, “Get That Job: The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Interview,” that was hailed as excellent on Forbes.com. Now she’s gonna have a couple of promos for you at the end of the show. If there’s a point where you go, “I’ve got to go do something else,” forward to the end, pick up the information from her about how to subscribe, how to get some of the gifts that she has. So this way, you know, moves out the Welcome. Yes, we had such a nice time chatting about the show a while back when we were planning it, so I’m really jazzed to be here talking with you again.

And we’re gonna have another good time today. How did she become a coach? How did you wind up going into this field? Well, back at the beginning of the big recession in 2008, I was working as a corporate trainer and I got laid off. And before that, I had had been working with job seekers before in various other jobs, but at some point, I wound up as a corporate trainer. I got laid off because it was a real estate related business and I feel like I’m going too long anyway. To keep me going while I was looking for a job, I started writing some resumes and then I thought, “Well, I like this a lot better than I liked my job. I’m just gonna keep doing this.” And so it’s been, gosh, ten years I’ve been in my own business now, and there were like another ten years before that that I was working with various agencies like Lee Hecht Harrison and Jewish Vocational Services and stuff like that. Cool. And today we’re going to be talking about ways that people shoot themselves in the foot on their interviews, because Lord knows I’ve seen a million times and I’ve gotten the debriefs after someone does an interview. I was still doing search, and I’m hearing all the stories from people for my, my clients that were telling me about what this imbecile did, and we’ve all been that imbecile at one time or another.

I was never 20 years old. What they do for a job? Perfect. So let’s talk about some of the ways that people shoot themselves in the foot. What’s the first one we’re going to talk about? Well, let’s start with money, Jeff. Oh, money. So don’t throw it away. And there is, there are a couple ways that people throw money away in an interview. And the first thing they do that really messes it up is destroying their negotiating position by not having a good answer to the question, “What are your salary expectations?” And that’s one of the first questions they hit us very often. That happens in the phone screening, right? And that’s when this beginning the negotiation, right? And job hunters don’t recognize that. No, they don’t. So when you’re asked about your expectations, the first thing you want to do is put it back on them and say, “Can you tell me what the range is that’s budgeted for the position?” And in certain states, they’re legally required to tell you, although don’t get hung up on that because if they forget what the law is, you don’t want to confront them about it. But usually, a lot of times, they will tell you the range. Then what you want to do is not commit to that range, but sound generally positive. So you say, “That sounds like a good ballpark and I’m sure that once we decide this is a fit, we’re gonna be able to agree on a compensation package that’s fair.”

Excellent. And and I know I’m an East Coast guy, I came out of New York area where the law is, you can’t ask the question about current compensation. And a lot of firms in the New York area have, whether they’re interviewing someone in New York or interviewing someone in Iowa, they’ve all stopped asking the question about current compensation. Yes. His phone numbers, which used to be one of the determinants of where someone lives, aren’t valid anymore because we all Nobel funds, right? And I hope that they won’t ask you that question, but if they do, again, you want to sort of switch it back to, “Well, I, we’re just getting started now. You’re learning about me, I’m learning about the position. Can I ask you what is the range for the position?” If you haven’t already asked that. And then give the best ballpark answer. Now, if they happen to come back with, “Well, we don’t really have a range,” or “You know what, I’m really looking for is what you want,” or they somehow dodged the question, then a good way to answer that is to say something like, “Well, I’ve been looking around online. I’ve been talking to people and I’m seeing salaries anywhere from blank to blank.” And give them a well researched and fairly broad range, but then go on to say, “And I’m sure that once we agree this is a fit, we’ll be able to agree on something that’s fair.”

So you notice even in giving them a range, you’re not saying, “I expect something in this range.” You’re just saying, “This is what I’m seeing out there and I’m sure we’ll be able to agree on something that’s fair.” We have to say something more specific, and I’m wondering if you might just hit in a phrase along the lines of, “What I’m looking at that low end of the range, I’m seeing people more junior than myself. So I don’t see myself as being a low end of a range kind of woman, a low end of the range kind of guy. I see myself more at mid to upper level of this, and we can, as you said, sort that out as we go further along.” Yeah, that’s a very good idea. Yeah, because that closes off them saying all, “One fifty, two, two and a quarter. We can get him for one fifty.” Okay. Absolutely. Good, good. Or, you know, don’t even tell them that low end that you saw that wouldn’t work for you is, so either or both of those approaches. And by the way, one of the free gifts that you mentioned, Jeff, is a salary, “How to answer the salary question” infographic. So it just walks you through what I just said about what to say if they say this, what to say if they say that. Excellent, excellent.

Got that commercial in, did you? Well, you know, it’s got tools. They can get, you know, it’s really handy to have these little tools like that. You betcha.

So we’ve covered the first one of our nine ways. Yes. So what’s number two? Okay, number two is, don’t give standard answers that you heard on on a podcast or saw online. So anything I tell today, don’t go, “Oh, that’s exactly what I’m gonna say.” Maybe with the exception of the, the what, what are you looking for salary wise? That one you can be a little formulaic, but the questions that are really about you, never just give an answer because you found it on in line and it sounds good. You want to really be authentic and at the same time strategic. And authentic and strategic are what I call the yin and yang of a good interview. You’ve got to be real, you got to be yourself, but you want to be your best self and you want to be proactively selling yourself for the job.

And I think one thing that really helps you be authentic is if you’ve tried to figure out how you would answer a certain question, start with what I call the best friend answer. Go ahead and start, you know, think of it not in the interview, but ahead of time, say out loud what you would say if you were just telling your best friend the answer. And then look at what you said and kind of edit it, polish it, strategize a little bit, but start from that actual core of what it really is for you and just saying in a way that conveys sincerity. Alright? Because one of the things that firms evaluate for, particularly the more, more senior you are, are the emotional intelligence qualities. And thus, the idea that you want to sound sincere, right? What are the best ways to sound sincere is to be sincere, right? If you go in and you’re very phony, they’re not gonna trust you. They’re gonna be like, “I can’t put my finger on it, but I just don’t know who that guy is.”

I just don’t feel comfortable. And they know how to smell BS because they’ve smelled that way too many times. No BS interviewing. Hey Teej ik, yeah, it’s funny. And you know, on the one hand, there’s the idea of being authentic. Yeah. And on the other side, what was the other part of that? And be never why you’re there. You’re not there to chitchat and smooch, you’re there to make it very clear why you’re gonna do a great job in that job. Super. So we’ve got the money questions so far. We’ve got the authentic versus strategic scenario, how to convey yourself well and answering questions. What’s number three? Okay, three is don’t shoot yourself in the foot when you’re asked a question about some kind of negative or sensitive subject, mainly negative subjects. These would like, “I hate my boss,” you’re not going to say that, right? And sometimes they’ll even ask, “Tell me about your past boss,” or “What, what was your past boss? Well, what were his or her greatest strengths and weaknesses?” And that’s when you have to remember that every question is an opportunity for you to sell yourself for the interview. And so you, I have an ABCI tool I just made up this morning preparing for this. Yeah.

With regard to negative questions, you want to do ABC. A is analyze. So why are they asking this? What are they trying to learn about you? So let’s say they’ve asked, you know, “What are the strengths and weaknesses of your previous boss?” What they’re looking for here is, are you discreet? Did you have a good relationship with your boss? Are you able to work well with a variety of different personalities? They’re looking for emotional intelligence here. And so your answer would be, say something positive about your boss. Even if they’re a terrible boss, chances are there is something positive you can say. Let’s say you had a boss who micromanaged you to pieces and had a tendency to yell now and then. You could say, “My boss was very passionate about his work and about excellence, and I really wouldn’t want to go to what is, what his weaknesses were. That’s not for me to say. But we were able to do some great work together, and I’m looking forward to talking about some of the things that we achieved.” Sweet. Nice way to dance off the weaknesses, right? So that was the A, you analyze, what are they trying to find out here and address it. B is brevity. Anytime you need to say anything about anything negative, now in this answer, you didn’t even say anything negative because it’s about somebody else. But let’s say the question is, “What are your weaknesses?”

Or let’s say the question is, “Why have you been unemployed for the last year?” Okay, you’re being on unemployed for the last year or having a gap in your resume or not having a certain skill or experience that they are hoping you have, that is a negative. So when you talk about the negative part of it, keep it super brief. So don’t be like, you know, how big story about why you haven’t worked in a year. Make it just something very brief, like, “50 positions were eliminated from my company and one of them was mine. And after taking care of some personal business and also taking some long awaited time off to go see the world, I started looking for not just any job, but the right job.” So yes, you know, you are admitting the negative, which is that you were laid off, but you’re keeping that part super brief and going into positives. So keep it brief and I was gonna get to see unless you manage, okay? ‘Cause I’m trying to keep it brief. C is circle the negatives with positives. And I was doing that in the examples I gave also. Yeah. I was gonna say surround them with positives, but I wanted to make it a C, right? I don’t know which of these is correct for you out there and play.

Okay. C for certain circle, circle those negatives with positives. So for instance, if they ask you, “What are your weaknesses?” you might say, “While I am very, very good at X, it’s like the main part of the job. I am currently working on building up my skills in Y, the part that you’re a little weak on. And here’s what I’m doing about that in Z.” And that’s again going back to positives. So ABC: Analyze what they’re looking for, B, keep it brief, and C, circle it with positives. And I’m a believer in most answers to questions should be kept to about a minute to a minute and 15. I agree.

Attention span. We live in an ADHD culture and, you know, one listens for very long. As such, the goal is if you can keep it to a minute, minute 15 in total, and especially on a negative topic, witnesses, an invitation to criticize, 40 seconds because that gets you off the hook faster or less. Yeah, yeah. We’ve got three covered. What’s number four? Oh yeah, so speaking of being brief, don’t be a rambling man or a rambling woman. That may be fine for an Allman Brothers song, but it’s a good interview. So this is one of the most common problems that people come to me with as an interview coach. Almost everybody tends to wander a little. And so first thing is have a little bit of a plan about how you’re gonna answer any common question that you can anticipate they’re gonna ask. If you know that you’re gonna need to mention this, that and the other thing, having mapped out what those three things are and kind of gotten that in your head, then when they ask the question, you know, just hit those three things and don’t wander off into other stuff. Another way is if you do find that you’re wandering in your answer and that it’s getting long, just stop yourself at some point and say, “But I’m getting too much in the weeds here. Long story short is,”

Or, “To get to the essence of it.” Feel free to interrupt yourself like that and then just get right to the point. And if I could give one more tip on being brief, know how you’re gonna end your answers. A lot of times people have trouble ending an answer because they’re like, “What do I say at the end? Do I just like stop?” No. It’s you want to have an ending like where you either refer back to the question, blahdy blahdy blahdy blah, and so that’s, I think, my greatest accomplishment at my current role. My version is I signal, I teach people to signal the end of the answer. I think of the way most people speak is having a musical tone. So it’s funny, I was listening for your version of this.

It’s the slight downward note. Yeah. So, so the classic criticism of the valley girl is that everything ended in an up. And there are people who just talk that way, and you don’t want to do that because it makes us sound like you do, you’re just not really very sure of yourself, right? And that’s how it gets interpreted whether true or not. Has you heard me, and true or not, I went in a downward note. And that’s often the signal to people, at the end, the answer is done with. There you go. And one more thing on that, we can, you can refer back to the question to kind of wrap it up, or another thing, you can refer forward to if you were to join their company. So you can say, “And that is my greatest accomplishment at my current role. And I wonder if you maybe have a project involving blah-dee-blah that I just spoke about.” Sweet. You can. Yeah, yeah, ’cause the idea where every Spanish to tie the bow with what they need. Yeah.

And to just check in with them to make sure that this was something that they were, that they could use, right? And so all the things we just talked about, by the way, are things that you need to not just hear once and then go to the interview. You need to practice doing these things, either with a friend or on your own or with a coach, you know, so that you’ve got the experience of wrapping up an answer or using the downward. It’s funny, one of the things I tell job hunters is great athletes all practice.

Right. Steph practices, he’s on the court seven days a week. LeBron is on the court seven days a week. And great entertainers on rehearse, and job hunters go on interviews and the first time the words ever come out of their mouth are at the interview, and they wonder why they don’t deliver. And another thing those people do that most people don’t realize is they do also mental practice. They, they don’t just go out and practice on the court with a real basketball. They will also practice in their mind shooting the ideal, very difficult shot that maybe they have trouble with and doing it perfectly. And that way, their programming themself to do that thing perfectly. She’ll think about that, imagine before your interview, imagine the interview and imagine it all going really well, just the way you want it to. Imagine being calm and confident and you’d be surprised what a different second mental tennis. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. Jim Galloway, “The Inner Game of Tennis.” Yeah.

With me too. Was that number four? Number five that we just did? That was four. That’s what I thought. Number five, number five is a biggie, and even though I’m burying it in the whole middle there, it’s a biggie. And that is, be proactive about your messaging. Don’t just go to the interview and hope they’ll ask you the right questions. You have to go there knowing what it is you especially want to get across and what you especially want to get across part of it is what’s unique and special about you. So you need to somehow identify what are your, what I call key selling points or your brand? What is it about you that’s gonna make you stand out from the other people? And that can be a hard thing to figure out.

And I actually, the first chapter of my interview book is about that. And one of the free gifts is a free report on how to figure out what makes you stand out and emphasize that in the interview. And one way that you emphasize it, by the way, in the interview is by making sure that your answer to that very first question, that “Tell me about yourself,” or “Walk me through your background,” or even, “Why are you interested in this job?” Your answer needs to bring out the top two or three, or maybe four things about you that make you stand out from the competition. Nice. I know the way I coach people is I work with the assumption most job descriptions are 80% accurate because what usually happens is someone gives notice in the hiring manager calls to HR and says, “You got that job description we use to hire Thea?”

Yes, she just gave notice. Could you get that out to, you know, there are sources right now and see what we can turn up? And no one ever updates. I’ve confirmed there’s so many times with different people I’ve coached. So the first thing they tell people to do is to say, “Hey, thanks so much for reaching out to me. You know, I recall the position description,” or, “I’m curious why you reached out to me. Could you give me a sense of the role and what I can do to help?” So you can hear the thinking about the job. And thus, when they say, “Tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing,” or, “Walk you through your background,” what they’re able to do is start off with what I’ve considered the 20-second synopsis of their experience. “I’ve been in the field now for X number of years. For the last five years, I’ve worked for so-and-so. This is that, for that work for so-and-so, doing this. But what’s probably most relevant in my background for this role, right, is my experience with…” Right? People tell me in person when they use that phrase, it’s like they noticed like a dog’s ears perk up. They have the Scooby ears. Those of you are too young to be relevant to Scooby-Doo cartoon character, Scooby would wind up… I think, I think that that’s, that’s just become part of the culture. You know, you don’t have to have actually watched Scooby-Doo cartoons.

Just making sure. So the idea is as quickly as possible to tie the bow to show how you’re special. That’s very true. And to sort of bring together what I said and what you said, you need to know what’s special about you and you need to know what they’re looking for and find the common elements between the two. And that question of, you know, “What are you really looking for? What’s your top priority for the job?” You want to answer, ask that before they and get the chance to say, “Tell me about yourself.” So try to slip that in right about when the small talk is drawing to a close and say, “Well, thank you very much for inviting me to interview and I wonder if I could ask you a quick question before we start.” And then you asked that question that you just mentioned, Jeff, about, you know, “Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s really most important in this role,” or, “I’ve read the job description, but I just want to give, in your own words, you could tell me what, what do you really need?” So yeah, those things very important. As I said, we have a lot of common approaches even though we’re on opposite coasts. Number six, I believe it is. Thanks.

Number six. Oh, yes, a related point is, don’t wait till the end to ask questions. The best interviews, and by which I mean the ones most likely to get you the job, are the ones that turn into a conversation rather than simply being a question, answer, question, answer, sort of interrogation, because a conversation is so much more comfortable for both parties and so everybody gets to shine a little more and show a little more of who they really are. So here’s some examples. First of all, that question before things even start. Then another thing is, when you’re asked a question that you could give a better answer if you knew a little bit more about the background of the question. So try asking them, saying, “I’d love to answer that, and before I do, I wonder if I could ask you, are you more interested in the X aspect or the Y or can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like here in this company?” And then their answer’s gonna probably help you be able to give a much better answer. Excellent. Yeah. And and so that helps them turn it into more of a conversation or or you could at the end of your answer, you could say, “I’ll go ahead and answer it,” and then say, “Is there anything more you’d like to know about that?” or, “How does that relate to how you do things here?” or, “I read online that that you do blah blah blah in this, this particular methodology, and I’m wondering how that relates to what I just said,” or something like that.

Yeah, the idea is to get them talking, get a dialogue, because if if they are sitting up high on on the Christian looking down is the Sultan or I’m not sure what a female Sultan would be called. I don’t know either. There weren’t any. I’m not aware of female Sultans. I just knew about Sultans. If they’re sitting up high on the pillow looking down upon and the supplicant was power differential, and the idea is to level the playing field as much as you can. Try going into conversation because suddenly there’s a point where the more they start talking, you’ll notice they’re liking you more. Yeah, yeah. And and and asking good questions is a skill and they will be, and it makes you, it shows that you’re interested, shows that you really, you want to know all about the company, you want to learn. You know, they may remember that you ask good questions more than they even remember what your answers were. Agreed. Yes. Number seven. We’re up to number seven. Yeah. Seven: be specific. So one of the most common problems that I hear in the people that I work with is being vague, giving answers that are generalities. So when they’re asked about their experience doing this or that, you know, they talk very high level or when they’re asked, “What’s your approach to doing something?” They’ll say, “My approach is,” but they don’t offer an example. So one of the best ways to be expense specific is to add examples. Quantities are also valuable if you can. When you’re talking about what you did, talk about the results and quantify the results, because if you say that I came up, implemented Salesforce at our company and that really improved efficiency or improved sales, well, do you mean just a teeny bit? What do you mean a lot? You know, so try to give an approximate number.

Honestly, this is another one of things where you want to be authentic. Don’t make something up if you really don’t have the number. Then describe it with an adjective instead. Dramatically, or significantly, or by pretty good amount. Or, you know, just at least give a sense of how much. And stories, money saved, money earned, percentage improvement. If you’re in a role that can’t be quantified in in those ways, Paulson was always my classic example of this, and I handled 14% more calls than comparable people in my office. Right. Yeah.

Numerical measure because business is the language of numbers. It is, it is. And and then if you, if you’re like an HR, for instance, sometimes numbers don’t always come into your work. Try and give instead feedback anecdotal, make maybe quote somebody, like do you remember something really powerful that the CEO said to you about your initiatives? Did he say, “This is the transformation I’ve been trying to make happen for the past 10 years. Thank you for doing this.” You know, you could literally quote that and it really makes your answer more specific and interesting and memorable. Excellent. Yeah. What are we up to now? Is it eight? Okay, eight. Yeah, be ready to prove your, your soft skills and your emotional intelligence. So, so many of the other things you’re gonna talk about in the interview are technical skills of one sort or another. It’s how to do the job, you know, how to manage the project, how to write the code, how to add up the figures. But they’re also looking for somebody who has good emotional intelligence, and this means things like self-awareness, social skills, communication skills, empathy. So there’s no use claiming these things. There’s no use to saying, “I have a little pathetic person.” Yeah, anybody can say that. Everybody thinks that about themselves. So when it comes to things like that, you need to kind of prove it. One way you can prove it is by demonstrating it on the spot by showing empathy toward everybody you run into in the interview. And that doesn’t mean getting all mushy gushy about it, you know, if the person says, “Oh, I’m having a hectic day,” you don’t need to say,

“Oh, is that hard for you?” You’re not being a therapist. But you do need to say, but if they say they’re having a crazy day, you could say, “Oh, I know, but you said it seems like you’re keeping on top of it, huh?” Or, “Whoa, that sounds challenging.” Just a simple little thing that shows you’re listening. Empathy can also be a matter of being patient when there’s an interruption, especially, you know, when you’re at the front desk and you’re first arriving there and the receptionist is too busy to immediately get to you.

You know, bye-bye looking relaxed about it and realizing, “Hey, she’s got a lot on her hands right now,” or, “He has a lot on his hands.” They’re gonna get a good vibe about you, and really, it counts what everybody in the place thinks about you, because you never know who the interview is gonna ask, you know, “What you think of that person?” I’ve had clients ask the driver who, who brings someone from the airport for the interview. Beth the receptionist, when I used to do a lot of work on Wall Street, it used to be the shoeshine guy. He’d come around and shine everyone’s shoes in the trading floor. “You know, what do you think of that guy?” Because they were looking for how they treated people. Like, there’s one video I did call “The Waiter Test,” and if you’re out for a meal with someone who’s going to hire, it’s, it’s observing how they deal with the waiter. Right. And yet, if you’re obsequious about it and you’re obviously you’re obviously doing it,

It’s obviously not usual for you to be nice to the waiter, then it’s gonna come across kind of phony. So instead of going from, “How is this looking?” go from, just go from your heart and go from a place of actually trying to appreciate and respect everybody around you for real. And it works out so much better. Authentic care works wonders. And as Groucho said, “If you can fake hearing, you can make anyone convinced.” Yeah. School of interviewing. One more way, by the way, a couple more ways to show these the some intangible soft skills.

It’s not just also you also to have social proof for them. So things like teamwork are getting along well with people or communication skills. Don’t wait until they check your references because they’re never gonna check your references if they don’t like what they saw in the interview and before of that. So I always tell people, you have LinkedIn recommendations. They’ll see that before the interview, they’ll already have that in their mind. And sometimes you could even slip in a reference to it. You know, you could say, “I have been told I’m very empathetic. You may have noticed that in my LinkedIn profile.” Go easy on that. But and one more, one more way you can demonstrate intangible things like emotional intelligence and communication skills is by having stories about it. So a good coaching story or a conflict resolution story can show your people skills and and you don’t necessarily have to wait till they ask for it. It could come up.

Oh, but they almost always will ask the people skills and the conflict resolution kind of questions, especially on leadership roles. Yeah. Often what I coach people for is PAR because they’ve heard of the STAR acronym, but I don’t believe in STAR for more senior people. I like SOAR. SOAR with the T being substituted for an O for objective, situation, objective, action, and result. And the idea becomes it contextualizes it a little bit more for a staff person. STAR’s perfect. More senior person, SOAR works better. Or if you can’t remember it, PAR, which is the simplest one, problem, action, results. Yeah, that’s really the heart of it. The other things are interesting refinements. You might want to sometimes look up these things. Yeah, I, I wrote a blog post about STAR versus SOAR. I use SOAR in my book. My version of it is situation, obstacles, actions, results, just to bring out the fact that if you’re saying here was the problem and here’s how I solved it, here’s the result,

We may not realize that there was this huge thing that got in the way that made it even harder than it sounds. Maybe you should mention, but yeah, objectives is good too, to identify, you know, “Here’s what I was trying to accomplish.” Yeah, if I got to write about what that was about, you’re absolutely right. And everything works as long as you haven’t mapped that in your mind into a framework. You don’t have to memorize these things, you just have to have a sense because it’s your life, you should be able to talk about it. But to me again, a minute 15 is as much as you can have an attention span for. And thus from the, if you want to go to more detail for you, exactly, that was gonna be one of my suggestions about how to keep things short is to make it too short and then say, “Well, and that was just really brief, would you like me to say more about anything?” But you would talk about this SOAR thing. That’s important. And I mentioned stories earlier and I didn’t say much about it.

And one of the biggest things to remember about stories, the thing a lot of people get wrong is they’ll say, “Well, this was the problem and here’s what I did,” but you’ve left out what difference did that make? What was the impact of that? How did that benefit the company? And that’s the juicy part. That’s the part you really want to say a lot about. Like, like you said, Jeff, you want to quantify what that meant in terms of four percentage of efficiency or in terms of dollars. You want to maybe quote what somebody said about it. Don’t shortchange the R in PAR or SOAR or STAR or whatever. It’s that R that’s really super important. Remember the power R. All right, maybe they’ll help you remember.

Okay, number nine. Number nine: prepare in advance. Yes. And people don’t do this. And I’m not sure like, and they wait until an in-person interview is scheduled, but by that point, they may have already goofed up the phone screening. Realize that as soon as you put yourself in the job market and maybe even before, but as soon as you apply to any job, you never know when you’re gonna get that phone call somebody saying, “Do you have a few minutes to chat?” Please realize that that chat is an interview. Any conversation with somebody of

Potential job is an interview. And you need to have to worked out in advance a lot of these things we’re talking about. So yeah, don’t wait. You ready for me? The first session I do with anyone I coach is my interview framework. And the idea becomes I want them to have time to practice. And you know, we do a mock interview. Second, that’s fine. They could do it with a husband, wife, or partner afterwards. They don’t need the mock. And they just go through some basic questions as long as the words come out of their mouth and they’re not just thinking the answer. You are so right.

Our approach is so similar because what I usually do with clients is have a first meeting where we talk about what you might call the framework, the key stuff, what are your key selling points, how are you gonna answer, “Tell me about yourself,” in the most strategic way, we’re getting your stories ready. And then I let them go away with that and to on then think about it because it takes like about a week to prepare all that. And then we get back together, look at that again a little bit and then go on to the mock interviewing. So don’t think that getting ready for an interview is an overnight thing. Give yourself at least a week to prepare for it.

I meant making mistakes offline. Practice with someone. Yeah, and get feedback. Get feedback. And, you know, I like doing my coaching by video because I can record this session and send it to them afterwards through Zoom. So they can see the same things I’m seeing. Yeah. I can critique them. “Oh, that’s why he said that.” Oh, because you had no idea what your habits are like and what your gestures were like, yours for life. That either can be too flamboyant, too dramatic, or, you know, code yourself with the mannerism. Right, right. Or maybe you’re never smiling and you’re just coming off kind of flat, you know, and the excitement isn’t coming across and the interpersonal thing isn’t coming across. So you need to see that and realize that. Exactly right. So we’ve covered nine major points here. Yes, we.

Any surprises? Any any bonus round after this? I’m just curious. Oh, I tried so hard to work at all into nine. We didn’t really say anything about clothes or whatnot. I think a lot of people already know that, but just a quickie about that is ask the recruiter when they first call you and set up the interview to ask, “What do people generally wear on the job there?” I know different offices have a different culture and different habits, and what would you suggest I wear to the interview? And then another good rule of thumb is for the interview, dress one level up from how you dress to do the job. So if you are looking at a Silicon Valley job, something like that way you’d be going in in in jeans and t-shirt and flip-flops, then you don’t want to wear a suit to the interview, but you don’t want to wear jeans and flip-flops either. You want to go in in nice slacks and, you know, a shirt that is not a band t-shirt and nice pair of shoes that are preferably not athletic shoes or sandals, you know, so just just a level up from where you would on the job. And for video and, you know, for video, I always tell people, take a look behind you where you’re going to be for the video. Notice what’s there. Someone I was coaching recently, he’s got the cross trainer in the room where he does the interview. Were you planning on that staying there? That’s an exercise machine, right? Yeah.

And the distracting. Yeah, it’s like, “What is that thing?” Yeah. And anything that takes someone away from their attention on you is it a liability. It can a, what to wear. It could be how you speak, it can be, you know, anything around you on video and of course in an in-person interview. Right. And it’s easy to get irritated about all this. I understand that. It’s really easy to feel like, “My God, why are they examining every last little thing about me?” And I understand that. And, you know, you just put yourself on the other side of it and realize that when you first meet somebody, don’t,

You decide within seconds kind of what your vibe about them is, how you feel about them. And that’s what’s going on there and then some because interviewers are always a little scared in a way. Even if they’re not emotionally scared, they’re kind of institutionally scared because they know that if they hire the wrong person, it could end up costing them something like, I think, a third of the first year’s salary to to get that person out and bring a new person in. So they’re a little paranoid and that’s why you need to be very careful with them. It’s so true. They are. You know, whether you’re an HR or a hiring manager, it’s like the candidate is a reflection of the parent. So with HR, you send it to a line manager. It’s like bringing your eight-year-old over to visit someone’s home. Right. Yes.

So for HR, they bring it to the heart. “Why did you really thought I’d be interested in this person, huh?” And to the hiring manager who statistics say within 18 months has buyer’s remorse on more than 50% of the people. Of a hundred in that brutal statistic. I didn’t know is that bad. Yes, it is that bad. But they like going into marriage, they all have that hope that it’s going to end up in a permanent relationship and they want to feel as though if they brought you to a meeting with their boss, you dress like well on them. So there are lots of little things that like doctors do to screen out hiring managers. HR people do to screen out so they can filter down to the core elements. See, this has been fun. Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

How could people find out more about you and the work that you do, the free gift, the website, all that kind of stuff? Okay. I have a blog, it’s for job seekers, a helpful tip article at least once a week. It’s called Great Job Sooner.com. Great Job Sooner. That’s what everybody wants, right? And if you go there and you subscribe, it promises you a free report on how to stand out in the interviews. And that was what I mentioned about identifying your key selling points and whatnot. What it doesn’t yet say is that there’s two other free gifts as well. Oh, you can also get, like we said, the how to answer the salary question infographic and a negotiation template that it’s like a worksheet that enables you to plan out your negotiation, meeting what you’re gonna bring up with them, you know, what you’re gonna say after they’ve made their counteroffer. It’s not something to bring in the meeting and look at this list, but it’s something to help you prepare so that you know what you’re doing. So you can get all those at Great Job Sooner.com. And there’s also a button there you can click to get a free consultation if you’d like to talk with me about my interview coaching services or my services to help you with your resume, your LinkedIn profile, your job search strategy, just about any aspect of your job search. I would like to help. Super. And folks, we’ll be back soon with someone else with more information, a lot more to help you.

I’m Jeff Altman The Big Game Hunter. And as it’s the case with Thea, if you’re interested in one-on-one coaching, visit my site, The Big Game Hunter.us. There’s a button on the homepage that says “Schedule.” You can schedule a free discovery call with me or dive right into coaching, whatever serves you best. And I’ve got thousands of posts there that you can watch, listen to, or read that’ll help you. Read those, watch them. Yep. There’s a ton, it’s like more than 7,000. And now learn is right now, if you have a an Amazon product, a Fire TV, Fire Stick attached to your TV, what have you, you can download the Job Search TV app and watch my videos there and learn in that milieu as well. So I hope you found this helpful.

I’ll be back soon with more. In the meantime, hope you have a great day. Be great. See ya. Welcome. And let me just stop by asking, how did you get into this coaching work? Well, Jeff, back in 2008 when the Great Recession started, I was a corporate trainer, and I was laid off as part of a big reduction in force at my company. And prior to that, I had had some physicians working with various agencies that helped people get jobs. So drawing on that previous experience and my interest in that, I started writing a few resumes. And very soon, I began to realize, “I really like this better than I was liking that corporate training job. I’m just gonna continue doing this.” And so I hung out my own shingle, and I’ve been doing this ever since, writing resumes, helping people with interviews, job search strategy.

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