By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
You’re scheduled for a final interview and you want to deliver. What can you do to get ready? I walk through some of minutiae you’ll need in order to get ready. BTW, don’t jump off early, the most important piece of advice is last and then a minute later I make an offer to connect with my network on LinkedIn IF YOU FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS
2 Huge Final Interview Blunders
I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and I coach people and organizations to be more effective. And this is a video that I’m going to be doing about final interviews. Because unlike first or second interviews, you’re almost across the finish line.
And you’re probably competing with someone for the role. And thus, I want to remind you of a couple of things that you need to do in order to be prepared and ready. Now, I’m going to skip this stuff about getting a good night’s sleep the night before, because the fact of the matter is you’re probably going from work and the stress of the day is going to affect you.
And I want you to use the adrenaline to your best advantage. If the weather is hot, get to the building a little bit early so you have a chance to cool off. If it’s cold, you want to warm up.
No one wants to shake hands with someone with sweaty palms or whose hands are extremely cold, right? It’s just one of those little things that drives people crazy. As a reminder, if you’re working through a recruiter, hopefully that recruiter has a relationship with the person that you’re going to be meeting with. So you can go beyond the LinkedIn profile and hear something about what their personality is like, what they like or dislike.
Because it’s not enough for you to hear the pep talk of, oh, you’re meeting with the VP. Ooh, as though it’s this big, dramatic person. No, you want to hear something about what they’re like as a human being from the recruiter that may be representing you.
If you don’t have one representing you, yeah, you go to LinkedIn, you look at their background, get a sense of their academic experience, where they live, where they’ve worked for before. That’ll give you a sense of what their expectations of you might be. The next couple of things are going to be fairly minor.
Bring a copy of your resume for each person who’s going to be on your calendar. The probability is they’re never going to ask for it. They’ll print it out on their side before you walk in the door, but on the off chance that they haven’t had a chance, you have an opportunity to present it to them if they ask for it.
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If they ask about references, just politely say and very casually say, I’ll forward them to you after the interview. No problem at all. Do you want me to send them to you or to HR? If they say to them, can I get your email address, please? I’ll give you my card afterwards.
Great. You want to be prepared with some questions. And the basic questions are like I teach in my other videos.
Hey, thanks so much for making time to speak with me today. I’ve spoken with everyone and they’ve been terrific and compliment everyone who’s been on the calendar so far. I’ve gotten a sense of what their expectations are for the role, but I want to get a sense of yours.
Could you tell me about the job as you see it and what I can do to help? What have they told you so far? And you have a prepared demonstration of your understanding of the role. That’s about accurate. That’s the way I would see it.
Terrific. I just want to make sure that if you hired me, I would be on the same page with you. Great.
So, you’ve reviewed their LinkedIn profile. Hopefully, you’ve gotten a briefing from the recruiter. And remember, one of the things that they’re looking for is congruence between what you’ve told the organization and its people in previous interviews and what you say today.
You want to be rehearsed with one or two additional stories from ones you’ve previously told. Like you might wheel out one old story by saying, as I spoke with Jerome about two weeks ago, as I spoke with Jerome about when I met with him, I was in a situation where I . . . and you go into a story with regard to behavioral interviewing. So, you want to be ready for that.
You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready for that.
You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready for that.
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You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready for that. You want to be ready . . . interviews to determine that you have the skills then to do the job.
But what makes one person advantaged over the other is the relationship that shows up with each person that you interview with but particularly with the overall director, SVP, managing director, whatever the title is of this person who’s the last interview that you’re involved with. Never forget to do that. I’ll just relay a story of someone who I worked with a few years ago who’s up for chief of staff to the president of an organization and he wanted to arrive to the final meeting with PowerPoints to demonstrate his background.
Nothing intrinsically bad about that but I reminded him, I don’t want you to be focused on the presentation. I want you to be focused on the relationship that you’ll have with with this person because you’re going to be the chief of staff. In your case, you may be a software developer on their team or an administrative assistant or whatever the role is but ultimately, the hiring manager has to like you and trust you and believe that you can help them achieve their objectives.
Focus on that. That will help you get hired probably more than a lot of the data that you want to present to them. Hope you found this helpful.
I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. If you’re interested in my coaching, you can connect with me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/inTheBigGameHunter. Mention that you saw the video because I like knowing I’m helping some folks.
Once we’re connected, message me if you’re interested in coaching. One thing I want to mention, I’ve got a bigger network than most other people. You know, I’m LinkedIn number 7653.
If your network isn’t large enough to connect with the person who or to see the profile of the person that you’re going to be interviewing with, you can either do a Google search or reach out to me and say, you know, I’d like to connect with you not for coaching but you know I have an interview coming up and want to look at someone’s profile. Would you connect with me? I do not always accept connection requests from people, particularly outside the US. So, always mention that this is your reason for wanting to connect with me.
I’d be happy to do it so you can see whether my network will help you see this profile. Hope you found this helpful. By the way, visit my . . . by the way, if you’d like to subscribe to my channel on YouTube, see the little icon down there? Click on that and you’ll get notifications whenever I release a new video for YouTube.
Lastly, my blog at TheBigGameHunter.us has thousands of entries that you can watch, listen to or read that will help you in your search. So, visit TheBigGameHunter.us. Have a great day. Take care!
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS Career Advice globally because he makes many things in peoples’ careers easier. Those things can involve job search,
hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, career transition, as well as advice about resolving workplace issues.
He is the producer and former host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 3000 episodes.
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You will find great info to help with your job search at my new site, JobSearch.Community Besides the video courses, books and guides, I answer questions from members daily about their job search. Leave job search questions and I will respond daily. Become an Insider+ member and you get everything you’d get as an Insider PLUS you can get me on Zoom calls to get questions answered. Become an Insider Premium member and we do individual and group coaching.
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