EP 768 Both job descriptions and initial interviews have signals as to what the real need is. Here, I encourage you to listen to and look for the cues in both.
I was coaching someone yesterday who is up for a senior position. In the course of the conversation, he reminded me of something in his circumstances that I thought would be helpful to you as well. The thing that he reminded me of is paying attention to the language used in the job description or in questions that are offered by HR that signal certain things that may not be obvious. For example, in his case, he was told by HR that the next interview was going to be with someone who was trying to 4X growth in a particular business unit. We were working on language to use that illustrate his experience with that. The language that we came up with was his background with "aggressive growth." Instead of using the usual metrics that deal with percentages, their language was "times." He was involved with almost 3X growth in the previous situation. Recognize that there are signals that are used in job descriptions and in the questions that HR asks that can be a signal to you of how to communicate with them and the kind of information they are looking for. Another thing that came up in a different conversation was a concern that one firm had about someone whose background they perceived was more internally oriented, rather than externally oriented. He was savvy enough to pick up on that and told them, "I just want to be clear about my background. I have had 5 years of internal experience and of those 5, 3 of them were taking internal programs and bringing them to customers and converting them from internal systems to external systems. Thus, only 20 or 22 years of background, 17 of them really related to external customers." Notice world going with this. You always want to be listening for cues that are coming in job descriptions or interviews that signal the real interest that the firm has because job descriptions are a list of qualifications that they are looking for. You're looking for what you can do for them. You're looking for ways that you can demonstrate the use of professional, what are your staff level individual or the C suite, have the capacity to deliver what it is that they want. As you know, sometimes these job descriptions and sometimes the question is a little obtuse.
