Active Interviewing
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Hiring is broken. We know it’s broken because surveys of hiring managers done after a person comes on board reveal how few managers would actually rehire the person they hired.
Hiring is the only game in town. How do you present yourself effectively and demonstrate your knowledge and skill effectively and powerfully?
Eric Kramer, author of “Active Interviewing” and owner of www.interviewbest.com offers ideas about what you can do . . . and they are really good.
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You know, when I started speaking with Eric Kramer is my guest on this show about his book active interviewing, I realized pretty quickly there was a lot we were going to need to cover more than we could possibly do in one show. So I nearly booked them for a second. On this one, we’re going to talk about how the system is broken, and some of the things that you can do about the second one, we cover a lot more detail about what to do. But here we’re going to lay the case for why interviewing is broken, and take you through some of the basics of his ideas. So hang in there, sing along.
Are you looking for a new job or interested in leveling up? Job Search radio is your go to resource for insider tips on job hunting and grow your career. here’s your host, Jeff Altman.
My guest is Eric Kramer, and Eric and his company Innovative Career Services provides, surprisingly enough, Career Services information for Job Hunters and others. His book, active interviewing and the website interview best calm are going to be the focal point of our discussion of a more effective interview strategy. I’ll have links to both of those in the show notes. Eric, welcome to Job Search radio. Great to have you on.
Jeff. It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
You’re very welcome. So as I was reading your book, it’s very clear to me that you think that the interview process is broken. That it’s awful. What gives you the idea that it’s broken?
Well, you know, Jeff, I’ve asked . . .
Can I back up for one second before you answer.
Sure, sure.
What What do you mean by it being broken? What’s wrong with it all together?
Well, first of all, I mean, the most fundamental thing that’s broken about job interviews is it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. It doesn’t pick the absolute best person for the position. And in fact, just yesterday online, I read some research by IBM that said that only 39% of current employees would be rehired if given the chance. So the interview is not selecting the right people and even if they select the person that works out and does a good job, They may have missed the A player, the person would have done the best job. So it’s not a great selection tool. So that’s that’s why it’s broken.
It’s funny, you’re talking. I’m sorry, please continue to go ahead.
Yeah, no, it’s broken. So all the research shows that it’s just not doing this basic job. So I think people,
it begs the question on objective feels, I can understand it. You know, the people do assessments, and they try to evaluate whether people have the knowledge that’s necessary. But firms gain to this thing of trying to do a fit, and how this person is going to fit into our organization. To me, that’s the biggest place where it’s broken, because the people who are trying to evaluate for fit, number one aren’t equipped to do it like you are I am.
Folks, this man has been trained as a psychologist, a psychiatrist, psychologist, right?
Yes.
Thank you, and I’m trained as a clinical social worker, we have a capacity to do such evaluations the most hiring managers don’t really have. So it’s clear to me that it breaks down pretty clearly on that. So instead,
it break down a lot of areas, I mean, you know, even from from the get go, oftentimes, there’s a very poor job descriptions. So one of the primary reasons that a applicant doesn’t work out once they’re hired, is that they’re taking the job thinking it’s one job with one set of requirements and one set of duties, where when they get on the job, it turns out to be something completely different. So in the interview, it’s not communicated here are the critical job requirements, here’s what you’re going to be doing. Here’s what we’re expecting from you. Can you do these these things. So you know, it’s broken from there. Basic skills sometimes can be evaluated through objective testing. You know, sitting a person in front of a computer and having them do coding or having them do different work with Microsoft programs or whatever, they can look at a skill set. But it’s very difficult in an interview to measure cultural fit, is this person going to fit into the culture of organization? Are they going to get along with the people here? Do they have personal characteristics that are going to fit into the organization and actually work along with the other people here. And that’s very difficult to evaluate in interviews.
And I’ll go the extra one extra dimension on that on top of that, I also believe that the people who should be hired who don’t fit, because you want to encourage the rebel, you want to encourage diversity of thought and attitude in order to springboard firms forward. Afterall, you know, when we stop and think about how many firms would ever hire Steve Jobs, or Larry Ellison, or some of the Great’s of American business,. They have personalities that never fit in anywhere. And that was a good thing.
That’s a great thing. In fact, a lot of the research shows that be because of the lack of training, hiring managers basically hire people like themselves. So if you’re an applicant, you walk in, and you have gone to a similar school, or you come out of a similar ethnic background, or if you come from a similar geographic location, or if you like the same sports teams, you’re more likely to get hired. And then it just perpetuates that kind of stereotypical person within the organization, the organization gets very insular, and they don’t have the rock stars, like the Ellisons or the Jobs and the, you know, so on in the organization. And again, it comes down, you know, interviews are broken in one of the reasons they’re broken is that hiring managers are not trained to be good interviewers. So, you know, that’s on one side of the desk on the other side of the desk. applicants are not trained to be good interviewees. They don’t know how to actively sell themselves in a interview and be able to communicate how their background, skills, education, experience is a good match for the job requirements and why they’re an excellent candidate for the position. So you know, both sides of the equation, it’s just not working. And then further if you look at the fact that there’s just two people sitting and talking to each other in an interview, and there’s only 20% of us are auditory learners, which means that a lot of what’s being talked about in the interview because it’s only talk is being missed, forgotten, the interviewer is only focusing on what they want to hear and what matches their preconceived ideas of the way the applicant should be. So it’s really a mess. It’s just, it’s really a need of fixing.
And when I hear preconceived notions of what someone should be like, bias tends to rear its ugly head. You mentioned it indirectly before, it’s the, you know, do I know this university. Do I have a sense of what their background is, what the training is, like? Do I know this company that they work for? Do I have that predisposition that when I say Google, or Apple, or Goldman Sachs, or whatever the company is, do I have a halo around that firm or not? And responds to that organ. . . and respond to that person, based upon all these secondary factors of corporate branding, in university branding, and what have you, rather than just looking at this man or woman sitting in front of me, and determining whether or not they can do what I need them to do?
So I agree with you wholeheartedly. The system, the system is far more complicated than it needs to be. We’re going to cover a lot more on this show. And on the next one, but I want to pause for a second and talk about my job search insider tip, which is about job offers. And someone asked me recently, how long can I consider a job offer for. And he was thinking he could take a week, 10 days to evaluate. And he was kind of surprised when I said to him, you know, you can consider an offer for as long as the firm will allow you to consider a job offer. And he went, “Huh? What do you mean, I thought I thought I could give at least a week. I said, Well, you could try for a week. But the reality is they may turn around and say, You know we’ve got a good number two who’s really turned on to this job. Why haven’t you been thinking about this throughout the interview process to determine whether or not you would be interested in taking this offer? The only piece of information that’s different, that’s been added on at the last minute is salary. Everything else you knew about?” So the reality is, folks, if you’re considering a job offer, and you ask the firm, how long do I have, whatever they’re willing to say to you, is, the way it is. There’s no rule that says the firm has to give you a certain amount of time. And, again, understand from their perspective, they have a need, they’re trying to fill it. They’ve got a backup person who they don’t want to lose either. So that other person is is considering other things too, and they’re prepared to move on to them, if you don’t take it. So that’s the way it is. And that’s my tip for this show. And if you’re interested in more, come over to my website, which is TheBigGameHunter.us, There’s a lot more there that you can watch, listen to or read, to help you with through job search. So let’s come back to Eric and continue our conversation.
So when all is said and done, when a firm is trying to hire, or a person maybe was looking from the standpoint of a job hunter, what sort of questions do they have going into this process? What sort of things does a firm of its purchasing a service kind of want to know about when they’re evaluating that service, which in effect is folks what you are served with?
So, you know, Jeff, as you know, my overall approach to job search, is that the job search is a sales process. And then when we specifically come down to a job interview, a job interview is a sales call, it’s an opportunity for the job hunter to get face to face and present themselves actively as a salesperson would in in the interview. So it behooves The, the job seeker to really think about this process as if they were a salesperson and how a salesperson would approach it. So you know, first of all, the hiring company is interested as a would if you’re hiring any product or services, what are you going to do for us? How, if I purchase your your services, how is that going to benefit my company? And how is that going to benefit my company more than hiring somebody else’s or some some other services. So you know, and then it’s like, just like anything, what what are your top customers? And what did you do for them? It’s a sales question. So again, for the job hunter, it’s what have I done for other companies? What did I do for this specifically? What value add did I do in my previous positions that I can now bring to the This new customer, this new company, how am I different? You? How are my services? How do I differentiate my services from other people’s services? How do I differentiate what I do from other candidates that you might be interviewing? And how, how can you be sure? How can I assure you that you will get the best services should you decide to hire me. So I want to talk about the benefits I bring. The mistake that many people make in interviews, they talk about their features– I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I have this education, I’ve gotten to do this training. Those are all features, you need to take those features and translate them into the benefits, your I’ve gone through this training. And the benefit to your company will be this. I’ve worked for a competing company, doing these types of services, this project management or sales or coding whatever, and the benefits, you will be this. So it’s really to fix this interview, it really becomes the responsibility of the candidate to come in and really present themselves very powerfully, as a salesperson would differentiate themselves, that value adds, the benefits are going to break.
So just to be clear about this, most people walk into an interview, and they’re prepared to talk about what they’ve done. Period. For such and such firm, I was responsible for such and such. And what I hear you saying is talk about what you’ve done in the context of what might matter to them. Did I get that right.
That’s, that’s exactly correct. That’s exactly correct. Because if you think about it, you know, if I’m hiring you, I’m not really interested in what you have done in the past, I’m interested in what you’re going to do for me, now, I will talk about your past. And I’ll try to understand what you’ve done in the past. So I can get a better understanding of the things that you might be able to bring to me. You know, so if you tell me that you’ve done these tasks, at a prior job that I’m looking for you to do for me, yes, of course, that helps me to be more confident that you’ll be able to do those things for me. But I’m really thinking it’s going forward. See, that’s one of the problems of bringing resumes, to interviews, people do it. It’s a kind of a standard practice. But a resume is a backward looking document, it talks about all the things you have done. You know, one of the things that I am a big proponent of is using a interview presentation and in that presentation talking about going forward. Here’s the things I will be doing for your company. So for example, you walk into an interview, and you have a 30 and a 90 day Strategic Action Plan, which says when you hire me, here’s my goals for your company. So it’s this constant communication of, we’re moving forward, and I’m going to be adding value to your company moving forward. I’ve done these things that proves I can do it. But here’s how it’s going to apply to your company.
So in preparing this document, if you haven’t really spoken to them, or have anything more than a job description to go by, how do you put this document together for them in interview number one?
Well, one of the things that typically happens is you have a screening interview. So even in the screening interview, you can start to ask questions like what are the critical job requirements? How is this position evaluated? What what are the top priorities for a person this position? What would success look like in this position in six months or a year, so you can start to do some analysis. Again, we are all sales people. And we all have good sales skills. We need to take those sales skills and start to apply them. So think about a sales person going into a sales call, they may have been called by a company and said, You know, we’re looking for someone to do sales training or looking for someone to install a computer system for us. We’d like you to come and talk to us about your company and your services, your product. In that first phone contact is they’ll ask some questions. What’s your company like? What are you looking for? Then they start to develop a sales presentation. And then when they get into the the sales call itself, they do more of a needs analysis right at the beginning. And then as they learn more about the company, and what their needs are, they’ll focus in during the sales call on those elements. Same thing in an interview. You get initial information from the job description, initial information from the phone screening, you get information from researching the company, on the web, at their, at their website, maybe through LinkedIn or other places to find information. And then you put together this presentation and the presentation is not stamped in stone, it is a place where or documented creates a conversation. And then within that conversation, the first thing you do is kind of a needs analysis, understand more about the job. And then as you go through the rest of the presentation, you target those things that the company is looking for.
I want to pick up on one term he used and then add another. You spoke about needs analysis. I’m going to add in the one– requirements gathering. I think both of them complement one another pretty well. And I thought I would ask you, in your mind, what goes into requirements gathering in the context of an interview, or in the context of preparing to interview with a firm?
Well, you know, I think when I talk about needs analysis, we might be talking about equal terms in terms of requirements gathering. You know, for example, in a present interview presentation, the first pages, talks about a, you know, here’s what I believe to be the critical requirements of the job. I’d like to talk with you about them. So your critical require might be that a person that has experience working with a distributor network, well, tell me about working with a distributor network. What your network distributor network is like, what is that distributor network looking for? What kind of interaction what kind of what kind of activities go on? What kind of projects are you involved with. So as you start to talk about that,you’re doing requirements gathering. So it might be that, well, we need this person to be able to respond to RFPs. And we need this person to be able to put together proposals, we need this person to be able to do some business development, we need this person to be able to do account management. So you started to gather this information, but in a very active in a complete way, because you really can’t address the needs, or the requirements of the company unless you really understand what the job entails and what kind of skills, abilities knowledge education that they’re looking for.
Given that interviewers seem like they’re on the clock these days, because they are they have one interview after another, backed up on their schedule? How much time do you think doing a needs analysis in that first phone call might take?
Well, you know, the first first phone call is typically scheduled for about 30 minutes. And I think that you can do it within a 10 or 15 minute timeframe, if you’ve prepared the questions you want to ask. And you’re succinct about them, and you can’t ramble. So, you know, if I have, if I know that I have a phone screening interview coming up, and I write down three or four questions I want to ask, I think that works very well. And it might take up maybe 10, or 15 minutes of that. And of course, the other time in that in that phone screen is for the recruiter, the HR person or the hiring manager, you get to know the candidate. So they feel comfortable that the person is deserving of a face to face interview.
Folks, and, you can differ with me, it’s quite alright. I think in most a firm will give you seven, maybe 10 minutes tops for questions at the back end. I just think given the how interviewers, interviews are structured, even for the phone interview, they’re plowing through the agenda of questions that they’re holding the baton with, they’re controlling the process with so, maybe you’ll get 7/10 minutes tops, for most interviews. And yeah, there are exceptions. But I just think there’s a limitation there. And you folks can wind up working within that framework to get answers to these questions very easily. Because folks, when you think about what a typical interview is like, let me equate it back to a sales process. When you think about a good salesman, that person walks in the door and say, “Wow, just tell you everything we can do for you.” No. They ask questions. They want to understand what what the firm needs. what the problem is that the organization has this product, prompting them to reach out for services or a product or what have you. And not just walking in the door and announcing everything that can be done. You don’t do that at a car dealer. Any car . . . Any car can get you from point A to point B but there are other things that you’re interested in. You may have a need for minivan because you have a large family. You may want a sports car because you’re newly single and you want to drive convertible you’re on and on. But in job hunting, like in sales, you want to understand what it is, is a real problem that needs to be addressed at that organization. And I think this is a great approach for doing it.
You know,
Jeff, he point you make, I think, and you obviously have worked with hundreds and hundreds of candidates as a as I have I, it seems to me that they there’s no two interviews at the same place. I just had a candidate this week, got laid off last week, had a connection and submitted his resume to a company on Friday. He was interviewed on Monday, he got the job offer on Tuesday. How often does that happen?
It just it’s rare, right? But it happens. How often does it happen that a phone screening interview may last for 45 minutes or an hour, you know, typically, it’s a half hour, and maybe even shorter. But there’s times when they go for a half hour or 45 minutes, I’ve talked to people that have been interviewed and the interview lasts for 20 minutes, I’ve talked to people that have been interviewed, the interview lasts for an hour and a half, when they were told to it only lasts for 30 minutes. It’s all over the board. And I know that as you mentioned, there are certain companies in the country that are very, have a very rigid structured format. Ask these six questions, every single candidate gets asked those questions, and it’s a panel interview, and then they move to the next. But I find it most companies in this country are small companies. And they have their interview process is not very formal or very structured. And, you know, part that causes some problems, because, you know, again, the interviewers are not well trained. But you know, the interview schedules and formats and times, they’re just all over the place. So it’s hard to judge, you know, one of the things I often suggest to my candidates is beforehand, do the best you can to try to understand what the interview format is, when the person calls you to schedule that interview, ask questions. Who will I be meeting with? Who are these people? What’s their job titles? How long are the interviews scheduled for? You know, so you understand a little bit more about what what you can expect and how you can prepare.
I like that and frankly, if for some reason, the person you’re speaking with is the screener for some organizations will use relatively Junior people who are just given an assignment to make screening calls. If that person really doesn’t know about the function that this person serves go to LinkedIn. Everyone’s on Linkedin, almost everyone’s on LinkedIn, you can get a sense of the person’s background. If they’re not there, do a Google search. Now you might find information about them by using Google.
One of the things I write, one of the things I’ve actually suggested to my candidates, you know, people that I work with, is asked to talk to the hiring manager, you know, saying to the person, you know, I’m really interested in this job. I want I’m preparing for the interview. Can I have an opportunity of speaking to the hiring manager from what maybe 10/15 minutes I can really be well prepared, going into the interview next week. Now, lots of talking. No, no, the hiring managers are busy. The screening person’s job is to keep you from connecting to the hiring manager. Other times people have gotten through and said, Yeah, you know, I mean, if you think about it, this is my perspective, the most, one of the most perhaps the most important thing that hiring managers’ doing, it’s finding a person that’s going to do a great job in that position. Why shouldn’t they spend time helping everybody that’s coming for an interview be the best prepared for that interview? Again, if you compare it to a salesperson, if you say, if I call you, Jeff and say, Look, I’m in the market for a computer system, I’d like to talk to you about the computer systems that you sell. But I’m not giving you any more information just show up next Tuesday. Me it wouldn’t work that way. I would want to take time to say, Jeff, here’s what I’m looking for, here’s what I’m needing, please prepare to be able to talk to these issues in terms of my computer needs. Well, why aren’t hiring managers doing that with candidates? Time issues? It’s just not the way it’s done. But it never hurts to ask. People are concerned, oh, I’m going to be looking like I’m pushy. And I’m going to be too aggressive. No, if you ask in a nice way, Hey, would you know is there an opportunity for me just to spend a couple of minutes talking to the hiring manager so I’m really my, you know, well prepared for the interview next week. you’d ever lose on those and sometimes you win.
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And often there’s a disconnect between how HR is screening for the job, and how the hiring manager wants to screen for the job or one over or under emphasizes particular issues that really need to be addressed. So we think about it, often these job descriptions that you’re reading, wherever you found them, were created years before. And they’ve been sitting online and are pulled out as some template for a job description that you get approved every time it’s sent up. In fact, that job description may have morphed three years before and doesn’t have any basis in reality anymore. So better to have a little bit of prep, where you have a clearer idea about what’s really being sought, what the key elements are, what the success factors are going to be for someone who’s coming on board, than to just work off that job description, using the job description to me, I’m sorry, I’m selfish. This one is the lazy approach to it. Yeah, and your point is great stuff.
So I’ve had a lot of candidates have come, you know, they go through these and they meet with the first Interviewer And they talk about here’s whatI believe the critical job requirements are. I’d like to discuss them with you to make sure that I understand them, they go through a whole conversation, they come out of that interview with an understanding of what the job description and what the requirements are. They go into interview number two, and they say, you know, based on my conversations with, you know, Joe, in the first interview, here’s what I believe to be the critical job requirements and what this person has finished, we’ll be doing an interview tonight says, that’s how I think it is. So then he within the organization, people have all these different ideas about what the requirements are and what the job is all about.
So I’ve seen this happen so many times I agree with you wholeheartedly. You know, we’re coming up on the end of our time with one another. And I know we’re going to do a part two of this. But in the meantime, is there one more point that you want to make for today? That should my audience should hear that relates for a previous conversation?
Yeah, the point I’d like to leave the audience with is is this. that it’d be job interviews are broken, it is the responsibility of the job hunter, ofthe candidate to fix their interviews. And they can do that. And they could do that by approaching the interview as a sales process. Again, they should not be fearful of this word sales. We are all salesmen we sell constantly. If we if we replace the word sales with persuasion, where persuading people to do things all the time persuading our kids to clean up their rooms, persuading our spouse to go to this restaurant or that persuading friends, we were persuading bosses to take on our ideas. So we’re constantly selling got good sales skills. So they need to actively approach they can’t be passive any longer. In an interview, they can’t sit there and just passively, you know, go answer one question after the other. They have to become salespeople, you sales, skill sales approaches, and guide their interviews, not control the interviews, but like any good salesperson, have a sales process in mind, and go through that sales process in the interview. So the first thing you do is it needs analysis, and then the presentation, and then the wrap up and all that. So it’s the bottom line is get active in interviews, take on an active role. And that’s where the name of my strategy comes from. It’s active interviewing.
Beautiful, Eric, thank you for making time today. How can people find out about your work? Find out about the book find out more about you.
Thanks for asking Jeff. The best two best places for people to find out more about this really active interview is a comprehensive strategy for preparing for and managing interviews and following up on interviews. And they can find out more about that active interviewing.com. Now we also have a online tools that go along with the active interviewing strategy, helping people prepare a briefing book to prepare for the interview, helping people put together an interview presentation they take with them to the interview, and then also letter.
So that’s, you know, they can go to interviewbest.com
Super, Eric. Thank you.
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