By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Many job interviewers think they interview better than they do or the sweat of fear comes pouring down like rain on a spring day.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter interviews Stuart C. Taylor, the author of “How to Ace a Job Interview” about the 7 fundamentals of job interviews every job applicant MUST be prepared for.
Episode 834 of no BS job search, advice Radio. I’m your host. Jeff Altman, the big game hunter, the head coach for JobSearch.Community
welcome. It’s Sunday, and I’m continuing a series that I’m doing of bringing in some of my episodes from Job Search radio, from where I’ve interviewed experts about job hunting. Now these are longer form shows, about a half hour in length, I would say, so it’s a good investment in time for you to learn things related to effective interviewing.
This show was released. I believe in 2014
or 2015
the material is still perfectly valid. My guest here, Stewart Taylor, did a very nice job on this show. Now, the audio quality was recorded over a phone line, so if it’s not as good as it normally is, that’s the reason why. But the material is still good, and I thought it was worthwhile. So I hope you find this helpful. I hope you give no BS, job search advice radio, five stars on whatever podcast service you listen to it on, and that you reach out to connect with me on LinkedIn, at LinkedIn, com, forward slash in. Forward slash the big game hunter, now let’s get going. Hi. This is Jeff Altman, the big game hunter, and welcome to Job Search radio on web, talk radio.net,
this is a show where I like to spend a half hour talking with an expert in recruiting about some element of job search, because frankly, in my 40 years of doing search, I found that people just don’t do as well in job hunting as they do in their work. So on this particular show, we’re going to be talking about interviewing. And my guest is Stuart C Taylor, the president of top performers, a recruitment and training firm based in the Washington, DC area. Stuart recruits sales and management professionals in health care and a variety of other fields. In addition, he conducts interview training seminars nationwide, and has appeared on numerous TV, radio and other broadcast venues. He’s the author of How to ace a job interview. Stuart, welcome to Job Search radio. Great to have you on, Jeff, thank you for having me on.
My pleasure. Stuart, one thing I know about
about Job Hunters is they think they interview better than they do,
and
your laugh gives me agreement. Thank you.
And your book talks about seven fundamentals of interviewing. So let’s go through some of these fundamentals. Okay, what’s the first one that you would point to? The job hunters need to focus in on? I’m going to address that. I just want to circle back to your comment about interviewers thinking that they interview better than they do. The test on that is, if you’ve been on more than one interview and you didn’t get the job, you can interview better, that’s the answer. So if someone thinks they’re interviewing really well and they’ve been on several interviews and have not landed a job, they should be paying close attention, because it’s very expensive and time consuming to go around the interview circle without actually getting the job. And most of those things are fixable things, so hopefully we’ll get to address some of those today. I guess we will. Yeah, in terms of the fundamentals, the first one is really a knowledge of what you want. I have an analogy in my book How to ace a job interview, which I call it the dating analogy. And it’s very simple, and it’s applicable to probably 99.999%
of the living, breathing population,
and that’s dating. Everyone has dated at some point. They’ve gone out on dates, and simply put, the dynamic between the interviewer and the interviewee is virtually identical to that of two people dating with the intention of marriage or a long term commitment. And if people understand that simple premise, these fundamentals will make sense, and you can apply it on an interview. For example, game plan is for everyone to fall in love. Yes.
Well, the only Okay, the only difference, the only the only exception to that dynamic being the same is take out the romance, but everything else is really the same, the desire for long term commitment, the trust, the ability to communicate, the common goals, the being better together than individually, all those things, just how you communicate the interest, the expression of interest, so and the knowledge of what you want, which is the first fundamental which you had asked about. And so if you’ve ever been on a date where the person really didn’t know what they wanted, but you know what you want, it’s a very frustrating position to be in. And so when you’re on an interviewer, the interviewer knows what they want, and when you show up, you have to demonstrate that you know what you want. You can’t be all over the board. If they’ve got position A, you can’t say, Well, I’m also interested in B, C, D, E and F, and I can do any of those things. You’ve got to be very focused to the specific needs of that employer.
And it’s interesting Stuart, because I find that job Hunter is walk in. Some of them have seen a job description. Some of them really haven’t, and they are kind of all over the place. It’s why, when I coach people myself about interviewing, I want them to get laser focused on being able to deliver the information that the firm is looking for as well. So I’ll talk with them about what I call the single best question they should ask on any interview that’s basically thanking them for making the time to chat that they had spoken with Stuart about the position and gotten the description, but wanted to get their take on the job. And so could they tell you about the position as they see it, the interviewer sees it, and what they could do to help so that, that way they could focus in and not be all over the place, as you pointed out, there very good, and you touched on something critical is, is, I can’t tell you how many people show up on a job interview that have not taken the time to find out what that job entails. So again, imagine, imagine a date, and your date says, I really want to marry you. I really want to be with you. You’re the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. And then you ask them, so what do you know about me? And the person comes up crickets. They don’t, they don’t. They don’t know anything about well, all of a sudden, their credibility is gone. You no longer can take that person as a serious candidate. And it’s the same thing on the interview. If you have not taken the time to research the job, find out as much as you can about what are the specific requirements of that job, what are the requirements of the needs for that company, and what are my interests? So that they’re lined up, you can’t convince an interviewer of anything, and one of the first questions they’ll often ask you is, so what do you know about our company? What do you know about this position? And if, if you can’t answer anything, it’s kind of hard to explain why you’re there.
What sort of research and how might they go about researching the company or or the position? Well, that’s the beauty of it. It’s really easy. I mean, everyone has the internet at their fingertips, literally, with iPhones. So one of the things I tell people, I do seminars, and one of the things I talk about in the seminars, is there is no excuse for walking into an interview that you’ve had more than five minutes notice of without any information about the company, because in five minutes I can turn on my iPhone, go on the internet, Google the company, and find out something about the company. Not even in two minutes. I can do that. So Granted, most people have well more than five minutes to prepare. So if you haven’t done that,
when you have an interview, you’re basically telling the interviewer you weren’t worth five minutes of my time. And so flip that on the other side. It is so easy to access the information. You can do a web search. You can do a go to their website, which is very helpful, although that’s company sponsored information, but it’s a great start. So it’ll give you what the company is promoting about themselves, which is important to know, companies don’t generally put out any dirt on themselves or anything that’s wrong with the company. So that’s where you’re doing some additional due diligence to find out, what is this environment? What’s the climate? And it’s not so much to say, I’m not going to interview with this company, but it’s to understand, hey, here’s some of the challenges this company is dealing with in the marketplace. And now that I understand that, I can plug myself in and say, Hey, here’s how I can help address some of the challenges and the
real life situations that I might deal with as an employee of your company, Google searches, talking to existing employees, talking to companies, clients, their customers are a great source of information, because they have nothing to hide. They’ll tell you what they like, what they don’t like, the challenges, the pitfalls, etc. So you have a good understanding of the scope of the position.
Beautiful. Great information. Stuart, now I know I took you off on a tangent a little bit there, but I think it’s good material that you provided. So we covered the first one, knowledge of what you want, and then I took you off into the tangent of researching the first.
Them the job and how to go about doing it. What would you say that the next fundamental is? Well, interestingly enough, the tangent was, the next one
is understanding the job and understanding that the company. And that goes back to taking the time to find out if you can get out job description. Read the job description. This does several things. One is it demonstrates to the employer or the interviewer that, hey, you are valuable enough for me to take the time to prepare. And the other thing it does, which is really important, is if I know what the five key things are are that are required to duties in this particular job, I can then, prior to the interview,
determine will work. How do my strengths line up
with those requirements? So when I show up on the interview, I can actually point, go point to point and say, I understand these are, this is what’s required. Here’s how I fit that. And it’s a very, very helpful exercise. It’s a critical exercise for a successful interview.
Very well put. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, unless people dot the i’s and cross the T’s for the interviewer, you can’t assume that you’re going to get the question asked of you. That’s going to allow you to reveal this better, to be proactive and reveal the information the course of answering the question than to have them try to pull teeth with you. Right, right?
So we’ve got tips one and two, or fundamentals, one and two. What would you say? The third one is, well, you’ve got to have the ability to do the job. So
Stuart Taylor is not going to go try out for the NBA, because I don’t have that ability. I can play a little corner hoops, but that’s it. So you’ve got to and again, if I don’t read the job description, I may think I have the ability, but I really, I really don’t. So to move that obstacle out of the way, and it does not mean you can’t have a stretch goal for a job. It just simply means, do I have what’s required, if it’s requiring a mechanical engineering degree? Do I have that? Yes, no. If it’s acquiring management at the acumen, you know, have I managed people? Have I managed situations? How have I handled that? So it’s looking and making sure do I have the necessary skill set. And what I talk about at length in my book is how to actually go about assessing your strengths and making sure they line up perfectly with whatever job you’re applying for. And the reason for that being important is
if I’m an employer and I’ve got a job that requires 10 key elements for the person to succeed in that position. And Candidate A comes up to me, and they present that they’ve got nine of those 10 elements very effectively. Candidate B shows me they’ve got 10 of those 10 elements.
From Paycheck to Purpose
I hire Candidate B
even if Candidate A were actually better, if they’re not able to communicate that they line up point by point with what the requirements are that they’ve got the skill set required to perform those duties. A 90% is not good enough. I want someone that is 100% aligned with the job that I have, which means they’ve got to have the necessary background and skill set to do it. And where a lot of people fail on
this is they don’t take the time. Even people that take the time to review the company say, Okay, I learned all about the job. I learned a job description. They don’t take time to do review themselves. Just do a self assessment on yourself so that you know exactly what you’re bringing to the table. The worst thing that can happen on an interview is you show up
and you cannot remember
one of the key things about yourself,
not remembering a key thing makes that thing invisible to the interviewer, which means you don’t have it in their eyes. So you have to remember 10 out of 10 things, or five out of five things, whatever the requirements are, and be able to articulate those if you haven’t done a simple spreadsheet on what are my strengths, what am I bringing to the table on how do these line up with this particular job? You’re doing yourself a disservice, because nerves and all sorts of other things get in the way. Time can get in the way where you just don’t remember to share those things, and if you’ve rehearsed it a few times in your head prior to the interview, it’s a lot easier to have it at the tip of your tongue when you need it to say, here’s my strength. Here’s how I line up with this particular job. And as I’m sure you know, many interviewers are not particularly skillful.
As veteran search people, we’re working hard to extract information from Job Hunters. Yeah, we’d like it provided and offered up to.
To us without a lot of effort, but because we have a financial interest, we go the extra mile. Many interviewers on the corporate side really don’t, and they’re not skillful enough to read between the lines in order to determine what’s missing and that it might be there.
No, I’m at that is that is such a great point, because I think most people go into an interview thinking that the interviewer knows everything, because they’re the interviewer. They’ve got to and the reality is, a lot of interviewers were, let’s just say, I do a lot with sales. So a lot of sales representatives that are great sales people get promoted into a management position. Then guess what? They have an opening on their team, and they’re told go interview for this, this position. They don’t know even what to ask for. They don’t know what to say. They have just their own knowledge, correct or incorrect of a certain bit of information that they may know to ask you or not. And so you’re sitting across the table from someone, and they might not know what to ask you to uncover your strengths. So the onus is on you, the candidate, the interviewer, the interviewee, the person that’s being interviewed, excuse me, has to know and be prepared to share who they are. Despite the fact that the interviewer may not have the skills to uncover it, you’ve still got to make it visible, because that interviewer that doesn’t have the skill
or the experience is still going to evaluate you based on what you say or don’t say. So you hit that on the head. That is such a great point.
My audience has heard me say many times that the skills needed to find a job are different than the skills needed to do a job, and the skills to be successful in a job are very different than the skills needed to interview, qualify, assess and promote, not promote, but
recruit and hire people for your team.
They go hand in hand, but they’re completely different skill set, with the result being, as we both agree, there are people in the role of hiring, not really all that capable of doing well in the hiring or the evaluation of the assessment. So the onus is on you the job Hunter, to make sure that everything is pre chewed and pre digested for the interviewer, so that when you walk out of the interview there’s not a doubt that you can do that job. Excellent. So we’re going to come back to Stuart in just a moment, but first I’m going to go into my job search insider tip for this show, and this one’s on resume writing. And for those of you who’ve heard some of my interviews with people about effective resumes, you’ve heard guests and myself talk about the importance of metrics, and I want to lay out a formula for metrics and how to express it on a resume that I think will be very helpful, and this comes from an article I read this week about what Google recommends for displaying metrics in a resume. So for example, what they ask people to do is state what they’ve done by comparison to others in the role, and then from there, explain exactly how they’ve gone about doing it. So in the example that they offer, they talk about wrote 50 op ed articles for such and such newspaper by comparison to six for the average writer, and then talking about how they went about doing it, it’s a very clear comparison between you and your competition that allows you to stand out, and it will be a subject for investigation once they invite you in for the interview. So that is my tip for this time. I want to come back to Stuart, and we have covered some great points so far. Let us go on to the fourth fundamental.
And by the way, I love your tip, and I love it so much I want to, I want to say something, just to complement what you said.
So often I get resumes, because I do recruiting, and I get resumes from people, and they put their percent to goal. For example, they put 105%
110% 120%
Stupid Interview Mistakes: Criticizing The Past
and what I tell them is, that’s nice, but those are just numbers that that tells me that you’re above your goal, but it doesn’t tell me where you ranked in accordance, in comparison to everyone else doing the same thing, which is what you just touched on. And so if you’re 105%
the goal and everyone else is 300% the goal, you’re at the bottom, you’re last. So the hunter, or if you’re 90% the goal and everyone else is 20% the goal, you’re at the top. So just to support what you said is, it’s so important to put that relative data a.
On your resume, and when you’re on an interview, to make sure someone gets the understanding of what does that number mean, where are you ranked? Are you the best or are you the worst? And you want to make sure that you’re obviously highlighting where you’re the best. And for someone who might be an executive, you can talk about percentage growth within your business unit and compare it with what your predecessor did. So if growth is at
85%
or 12% and your predecessor had 1% or negative growth, you’ve demonstrated a baseline for comparison. Exactly, excellent. Thank you. So we’ve got three of them so far, which is knowledge of what you want,
researching the firm and the job, and, of course, the ability to do the job. What would you say the fourth fundamental is fourth one. And I go back to the dating analogy to emphasize this point, if you are sitting across the table from someone that is has got the look you’ve been looking for. They’ve got the intellect, they like the things you do. He’s got all these things in common. And this is a person that you could imagine spending your life with,
because they’ve got everything that you’re looking for, and they tell you that, finally, they give you the words you always wanted to hear,
and they say that they love you and they can’t wait to spend the rest of their lives with you and et cetera, et cetera. But they say it like this,
I really, really love you. I really believe we could have a great, great, wonderful life together. That’s how I respond. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. And it’s got to be from the heart. It’s got to be passionate. It’s got to be, you know, heartfelt. And people get on interviews, it’s, I mean, don’t forget, you’re dealing with another human being, you can be serious, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be expressive. And then, in fact, people want and need to see some form of expression and interest and enthusiasm from you and and so nerves can make you less enthusiastic, or thinking
like this. Well then, then your words can get lost, and so you need to make sure you are expressing with passion and enthusiasm your desire and interest to move forward with this company, just as you would want someone to do so with you if you were dating with the intention of getting married, you need that to feel that, wow, that’s the glue. And I’ll tell you, enthusiasm can cover a whole lot of evils and ills, you know, if you’re super enthusiastic and passionate, I don’t mean jumping up on the table and dancing around or going crazy. I just mean expressing yourself, you know, with with with desire and interest, and that can light someone’s fire more than saying, Hey, I’m a five time presidents Club Award winner. And so, matter of fact, often it does, you know. And so it’s very important to show that be you be excited, and let people know that you’re interested. And often it’s the tiebreaker between one person and another, because again, we’re remembering how hiring managers are looked at. Imagine you’re a hiring manager, you’ve gone through 27 interviews. You’ve selected that one you know that one special person you want to spend the next three years with, working side by side, and lo and behold, you extend an offer that gets turned down. Suddenly it becomes a basis of conversation. Why they turn it down? And the meta message invariably is, what did you do wrong that you couldn’t get them on board so often when, when hiring managers are dealing with two people who are very close, one of the things that causes them to choose one versus another is, do I think I can get this person on
Absolutely?
Thank you. And it’s interesting. I’m just listening to what you’re saying, and the these principles for interviewing are also very effective on the reverse side for the employers. You know, if
you’re interviewing with an employer that’s completely dry and boring, you may not want that job either. You know, just like they may not want you if you’re dry and boring. And so it’s it’s very interesting how the the dynamics and the fundamentals are applicable to both the employer and the employee, potential employee.
One of the tricks I tell job Hunter, I’ve got a YouTube video about this. But one of the tricks I tell job Hunter is, the more they meaning the employer, the hiring manager, talks, the more they seem to like you.
How to Get More Interviews: Join Professional Groups
So
when they get to that point where they’re talking a lot, they’re trying to sell to you, because it matters to them, that.
For coming on board and they want to leave you with a good feeling. It does two things. It does exactly that, you know they’re they’re doing that, and people love to talk about themselves. And if you create an environment where someone can do that, they feel better about you, it’s like, wow, I was able to express myself here. And so it covers both, both, both aspects,
beautiful.
What would you say? The next fundamental is,
yeah, I have a positive attitude, and I we don’t have time today to get into all the specific details of what that means. It’s a layered it’s a very deep statement. By having a positive attitude, it doesn’t just mean saying, hey, I can do this, which is part of it, but it is very important to go into an interview, really, with no negativity at all. And good interviewers will try to get you to tell on yourself or say something negative about yourself, or say something negative about someone else, or say something negative about a situation, and see how you handle that
a good interviewee, which are all the people listening for jobs, will know that I don’t care how many times someone asks me to try to say something negative or trash somebody else or really speak disparagingly about a situation or individual. I will not do it. I will describe a situation that’s challenging, I will describe an individual, perhaps that was challenging, but you’ll never get me to personally attack that person, and I will always provide a solution on how I work through that negative situation or that challenge. And so the and again, I’m just covering the surface of this, but if there’s one takeaway, it is for to always provide solutions to the situation that you’re in, and never leave leave a statement or an interview or dangling with a problem and oh yeah, that person was really terrible to work with. You know, they didn’t show up on time, they didn’t know what they’re doing, period. Never end it with that. And matter of fact, you shouldn’t even speak that harshly about someone else, it would be more of along the lines of, well, yeah, that person was challenging. We had meetings, and they really weren’t present at many of the meetings. So here’s what I did. You know, I re allocated responsibilities to the other team members. We had a coaching session with that one missing, you know, absentee member. We were able to bring the group together. At the end, we got everything done. The job was completed. We got an exceptional
rating on the project. So you always ending it with here’s our work through the difficult situation.
Nicely put. You know, I had a situation with a candidate. He’s on a fourth interview. They’re all being done by phone because he’s in Canada. My client is in the heartland, in the US, and he said something stupid about a former manager of his, and then he used the profanity in the interview when the client told me about this afterwards, I was dumbfounded. We’re talking about 175
$200,000
person who’s hired people himself. He knows better, but employers have this way of drawing out the worst by buddying up sometimes and people hurt themselves. So absolutely positive attitude, nothing critical, being able to discuss the situation without personalizing it and being critical of anyone else, right? I’ll give you a funny one. I had a at my old company. I We always had
tag team interviews. So I would do the first interview, then another manager would do a follow up interview on candidates that I I liked, and vice versa. And so there’s this one candidate that I had liked, and she had done a very nice job, and I forwarded her on for a second interview. And due to this manager’s schedule, he could only meet her for like, the late lunch. And so he meets her for lunch, and
How to Get More Interviews: Ditch the Objective
the waitress comes by and says, Well, it’s like they didn’t drink it. She ordered a glass of wine.
And it was just
funny she ordered wine.
So, you know, now, if the interviewer were to order first and order wine, that might be okay, but you got to stay on the conservative side. No profanity, no alcoholic beverages, you know, no jokes. Just, you know, you do want to be yourself, but not
transparent,
exactly. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, it was very interesting. And you’re right. Good interviewers are very good at getting people to put their guards down, and that’s their job. It’s like, okay, I want to find out who you are, and the interviewer needs to remember I am in a professional situation. I can show them who I am. I can even tell them a personal example. But it’s still an interview. It’s still a professional environment, and if you decide to check that at the door, you’re basically telling the employer.
It. By the way, when I’m hired, I’ll do whatever I want to do, because I don’t even have any rules on the interview, and you’re going to get yourself disqualified or increase the likelihood of that happening. They are there to evaluate and assess. They are not there to be your friend. And as a result, it is critical to keep the guard up, because they’re going to draw out the worst. So we’ve covered five points so far. We’ve got two more yet to go and not a lot of time. What’s point number six? Well, I’ll touch on the last two fairly quickly, the ability to communicate effectively with the interviewer, and that covers a multitude of levels as well,
from body language to how you are, how you are speaking, your manner of speaking, I’ll touch on a few things that I think will be helpful. Is
going back to the terms of engagement and demonstrating interest and enthusiasm. Your body language, your eye contact, all communicates. It’s very significant things to an interviewer, just as on a date, your body language and eye contact communicate very powerful messages. So one of the things is, you know, eye contact has to be excellent. Your handshake defines you. And I talked to someone several months ago on a program. He’s like, I can’t believe we’re still talking about the handshake. I’m like but we are because people don’t necessarily realize when you shake someone’s hand, if you have a firm, professional business handshake, you have just defined yourself as competent, capable, professional. If you have a weak, wimpy handshake, or you catch them wrong, they catch your hand, catch the end of your fingers, or you’ve got no grip in your hand. You’ve communicated that I’m I’m weak, I’m probably not very energetic, I probably don’t have any impact or presence. And you’ve communicated that. So that’s, that’s where they start. That’s the first few seconds. And so your interview really can’t succeed if you’ve started it off on a bad note, like that eye contact as well. I’m confident, if you’re looking someone in the eye, if you’re looking away every few minutes, or you’re distracted by let’s just say you’re interviewing in a hotel lobby and they’re doing construction, well, that’s hard not to pay attention to, but if you’re looking over at it every few seconds, you’re conveying that you know what that is more important than whatever it is you’re talking about. So you’ve got to focus, and you’ve got practice doing this.
I’m going to pause you here for one second about the handshake, because our audience is an international audience, and the advice that you’ve given is very US centric. The firm handshake in some cultures, a softer handshake is more appropriate. The depth of the bow is how the measure the confidence is and respect is measured. So the advice Stuart is giving is appropriate for the US, but you have to do the positive thing for your culture in order to ensure that you’re not unintentionally being perceived as being rude. Very, very true. And I will let me circle back to that is, is I wholeheartedly agree. And you know, I’m being from the US. This information is US centric, but if someone from another culture has a softer handshake and they come to the US that is not acceptable, it still conveys the same whether someone is from another country or from
New York, and they are interviewing for the same position, and one person has a soft handshake, because that’s culturally acceptable in their culture, it will still communicate all the negative things in this culture. And so you have to know your audience, and probably vice versa. If a US citizen are going to another culture where that’s different, it would be very advisable to learn what the best way to, you know, for my salutations and greetings. But yes, here for particularly, and I’ve worked with some companies that are international, companies that work with students and people coming in from other countries for interviews, they have to know that. You know what, if you have this off handshake, you’re going to get yourself disqualified, and you’re not even going to know why you got this qualified, because they’re not going to say you had a weak handshake. No one’s going to tell you that, but they’re exactly the reason based on it, exactly right
in the back of their mind. It sticks like a thorn, and they come up with a different excuse or explanation for it, because there’s something in congruent with your behavior, with what their expectations are, somewhere in the role. So
great tip. What’s the seventh fundamental? The seventh one is, is compatibility with the interviewer and the simple, simply way to put. Simplest way to put that is, if you’re doing the other six, you’re very likely to be compatible with the interviewer. Now here’s the beauty of it. If the interviewer is the hiring manager, and you find yourself very uncomfortable, you just can’t You’re just not feeling right. You’re not compatible.
With this individual. Don’t take that badly. That’s just that’s actually good. You do not want to step into a job where you’re directly reporting to someone with whom you are you’re not compatible. It’s just like stepping into a relationship with someone with whom you’re not compatible. It’s set up for absolute failure, misery, and it does not really matter what you’re getting paid. It’s not going to last, then you’ve got another blemish on your resume for short turnaround job If, however, the person you’re interviewing with is a screener or not the direct person that you would be reporting to, and you don’t feel
the warm fuzzies with that person. Do bend over backwards, do somersaults to try to get to be as compatible as possible with this person, so that they forward you on to the next step. I’ve had people that had initial interviews with someone like, I really didn’t like them. I don’t like the way they asked the questions. I was like, but that’s not the person that’s going to be hiring you. And you just stopped giving 100%
midstream on an interview, so they disqualified you, and you never even got to the person that you’d be working with. That’s sad, you know. So sometimes you have to bite the bullet and say, Okay, how can I how can I adjust, or how can I just deal with this awkwardness to get to the next step? But there are lots of things you know, just from
again does go back to some of the physical eye contact, etc. One of the things, you know, if an interviewer speaking really fast, just from a relate relatability standpoint, try to speak out a little more quickly. And I don’t mean make yourself uncomfortable, but if an interviewer speaks very slowly, you might and you speak tend to speak quickly, slow it down just a notch, so that you are on the same kind of wavelength is that interviewer and increases their comfort level.
I’ll also mention that if you get lazy with the screener, you never know where you’re going to run into them again. I’ve had so many instances where I’ve attempted to present someone to a client and and the firm tells me they met this person two, three years before, what their impressions of that person were at that time. You just never know. Doesn’t matter what market area, what field you’re in, what geography that you’re in. It may seem like an enormous market, but it’s far smaller than you think it is, and you’ll discover very quickly. How many people know one another, and how mistakes like this come back to bite you in the butt? Yeah, people don’t forget. First impressions are almost impossible to erase.
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Very true. Stuart, this has been terrific. Thank you so much. How can people reach you?
Okay, well, I’ve got a website. My company website is topperformers.com
topperformers.com and it gives all sorts of means of reaching me or my company. We do recruiting, do interview coaching, interview training, both from standpoint of job seekers as well as companies that are looking to help improve their management’s ability to bring in and retain good talent. If
someone wants to follow me on Twitter, I my handle is get the job. 123,
get the job. 123, and I have postings, and I’ll be sure to post this program there as well, so everybody can follow and
you can reach me if you want to send a resume at resumes@topperformers.com
and where is your book available? The book is available on my website. It’s also available on amazon.com and the book is called How to ace a job interview by Stuart C Taylor, how to ace a job interview. And it’s a quick, easy read take about an hour and a half to get through, and I’ll tell you the difference between moving on to a second interview or getting a job and not can be the difference of a thank you note or the difference of something so small, but usually fixable. And so what the book does is it covers all the nuances, subtle nuances, and the greater things, including the seven fundamentals that will help an individual really improve their interviewing skills. And like I said in the beginning, if someone’s been on more than one interview or they haven’t interviewed in a long time, this book has been helping everybody. And I read the book, I got the job. I read the book, I got the job. And it’s fun to read, believe it or
not, beautiful. Stuart, thank you so much.
So that’s today’s show. I hope you found it helpful, and if you did, here are a few ways to connect with me. www.LinkedIn.com/in/TheBigGameHunter and at JobSearch.Community
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