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.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
NoBSJobSearchAdvice.com
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1300 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.” He is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council. “No BS JobSearch Advice Radio” was recently named a Top 10 podcast for job search. JobSearchTV.com was also recently named a Top 10 YouTube channel for job search.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
The thing you're forgetting about in your interviews. I've talked to john hunters. I've talked to people I coach about this for years. It's not just simply about career coaching or job search coaching. It's in a lot of other venues in life that this really shows up. What is it that you're forgetting about? What you're forgetting about . . . It's not school where you're being graded on having the right answers, at least not all of it. The thing that you're forgetting about is that it's not who has the most answers or the most right answers who wins. It's the one who has the most right answers, who gives them a feeling that they can be believed and trusted. So, it's your ability to inspire confidence that you can help them that becomes so important and, unless you do that, you're competing with everyone else who's trying to get 100% on the test. And how did that work for you in school? Some of you got great grades. That's terrific. And now that you're in the world of work, you understand that there's another dimension that's there. The person who gets chosen for the plum assignment because they're friendly with your boss, the person who gets pushed out the door because everyone thinks they're incompetent even when they aren't. So, I want to remind you, it's not about your grade on the interview. It's about your ability to inspire confidence that are the solution to what they need, . . . which is a feeling. It's a feeling that comes about, not because you got all the right answers, but how you carry yourself as a professional, how you carry yourself in the interviews, how you handle yourself throughout all your interactions with them that makes all the difference in the world. So, don't forget that and let it show up in quote unquote the theater . . . the theater of interviewing. You are a performance artist on the stage, trying to give them that feeling. And if you don't like it, tough. That's the way of the world, folks. And if you don't like it, adapt, try my way. I know it works because, after all, I filled so many positions in my career as a headhunter. I know this extra dimension makes all the difference in the world. So, don't neglect it. Don't forget about it. Don't ignore.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1300 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.” He is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
A 6 second video about preparation for interviews.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1300 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice.” He is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
A 6 Second Job Search Tip from Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter about interviewing
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a recruiter for more than 40 years.
Follow him at the Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn http://linkd.in/1momsP9 for more articles, videos and podcasts than what are offered here and jobs he is recruiting for.
Visit <a href=”http:// www.TheBigGameHunter.us” >www.TheBigGameHunter.us ; there’s a lot more there
I want to talk with you today about video interviewing and suggest an idea to you that I think might be worth exploring in your budget. Now. It comes from an interview. I did with someone named Chip Luman, who's a founder of a company called HireVue. I want to be clear, I'm not a paid spokesperson. I'm not compensated in any way for this video and you can check out any number of competing products to theirs. But, the idea that I liked about the approach his firm was taking starts off with, number one, what's called asymmetrical interviews. That is, you have a candidate that you're interested in or wants to apply to your job . . . That's the better scenario. . . . They want to apply to your job. You provide them with a video link with a series of questions to answer that they can handle at the time of application. Why is this so worthwhile? Because it cuts through a lot of the noise. A lot of people won't do it because they suddenly realize they're not qualified. Number two is it standardizes the base interview so, this way, your firm can't be accused of bias unless they're bigoted questions, of course, but because the interviews are standardized, there becomes a way that everyone's ask the same question. Different people in your organization can watch the results and get a better feel for the person and their knowledge plus, from the job hunter perspective, they can do it at their convenience using a smartphone like this one. So, what it allows you to do is get what you need in the way of information faster and earlier than most because you don't have to go through the back and forth of the scheduling of the initial phone interview because you're getting basic information right away that allows you to discern whether or not people are a fit. Now, again, if someone in your organization is going to look at all the resumes of a person with one ethnic background and rule them out, you obviously have a problem. But if you set up a system that allows you to have different people reviewing all the videos that you'll receive, the videos going to have 30 seconds answers. Like, there's another service that I'm trying out now called CandidateBroker. Person sees the job description. They apply. You can set up a period of time where they can wind up answering questions at the time of application that I can watch and get a feel for whether or not the person is qualified. Nice systems. Saves time. Yes, there's going to be some expense for each of them but ,at the end of the day. You'll have some cost savings and, I know in the case of hirevue, they have an analytics system that will analyze the video responses based upon the backgrounds and the answers the people in your organization, give or successful hires have given, discern whether or not someone is worth talking to. A nice little feature.
So, explore some of the services that are out there. Doing video interviewing of employees at the time of application. I think you'll find its an interesting idea and will be a big money saver.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years.
No BS Hiring Advice
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
I am 1 of those tough interview questions that is designed to ... I'm not sure what it's designed to do. But the fact of the matter is it's not that tough; however, in the heat of the 2nd interview, (occasionally, it is asked in the 1st), it surprises people because they are not prepared and there is nothing that gives them a context for the question... It kind of stumps them.
The question basically is, "What qualities do you look for in a manager (in a Boss)?" Things along those lines.
Again, not a tough question. Let's break it down.
You start off by going, "I work well with the manager who treats all all sorts of people with courtesy and respect. The manager who values ideas and input from the people. They don't necessarily have to follow those ideas but looks for the input, sorts it out and gives you the impression that matters to them what I think."
"I also work well with the manager is very clear about what is expected of me. What my responsibilities will be. What sort of boundaries exist, work. Someone who can streamline my area so that they remove roadblocks and barriers from doing my job.. Some of the trust me and thus things that I don't need a lot of supervision but also expects I'm going to come to them for advice or help or input or if I'm struggling. I also think availability is helpful." You get where I'm coming from? These are legitimate qualities anyone would expect from a manager. You give them back this kind of an answer.
The key thing is the sound like you are thinking of your answer and that is not rehearsed answer. If you make your answer sound like it is a checklist, is going to sound like you planned for this. If you listen to my answer, you'll notice that might sound a little bit reflective. That's really the key to it.
Then there's one more piece so don't think you're off the hook here. The extra piece is to flip the question and ask, "What is your style like?"
Let's be practical here. Do you think anyone is going to tell you, "I'm kind of abrupt and they don't really care what my people think. It's your problem to get rid of the barriers to your success and I don't really care what you think about or what your thoughts are." Do you think it was good to say that to you? Of course, not.
There going to feedback exactly what they have heard you say and that will help hook them into you. To say anything to the countries and make them feel defensive. If you shared what's important to you that something that they can mirror back.
Again, lack of preparedness is the biggest issue with this question. And forgetting to flip the answer to the manager or future boss and asking them what their style is like is the 2nd mistake. You always have to do that flip at the end. It will help nail the higher.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes and his newest show, “No BS Coaching
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
This is one of those fun trick questions. I have to say, "trick" because let me explain the trick to you because it suggests the answer and most people miss it entirely. The question is, "How lucky are you and why."
The key to suggesting the answer is the "and why" part because most people are going to go off on a tirade about an incredible luck lock luck or they have no luck. Pretty predictable answers.
Now, what the employer is suggesting with the question is that there are reasons why people are lucky and they want to know what your reasons are so it let's you know right off the bat they're thinking it isn't about luck afterall. Now, you might just simply start off by saying, "You know, luck is one of those funny things. You know, for example, there are musicians who are incredibly lucky but no one talks about the 25 years they've spent in the studio working up to the point where someone would notice them. Thus, they become the luckiest musicians on the planet because they've got the hit record. Or, you know, a variety of things. You can use movies as an example of that.
But, fundamentally, what employer generally wants to hear is, "Some people talk about karma and I've thought a lot of great things in my life that help to create circumstances where I receive good fortune. And thus you translate luck into good fortune. "But I don't want to make it seem as though these things happen by accident. I work incredibly hard to make my "luck" as you will to put myself in the position where I have the opportunity to have good things happen to me. You know I do the work. You know I drive the sales (You talk about the nature of work).
You know, in answering the question, you lay out a couple things that you do that helps make you "lucky" so that it is really about the luck. Most people don't know how much I've done up until this point to arrive at the stage. Where they think it's luck, I think it's the effort that's gone into it."
And then they'll ask you, "Can you give me an example of that? Can you talk about something from your history where people were amazed that you did something but you spent 20 years of my life working up to that point?"
Maybe it was how you came up with a solution to a problem where you'd seen something similar or in junior high school. On and on and on. You can use examples like that but you know the trick is not that it's a luck but that you've put effort into getting "luck" to put yourself in the position to be able to be lucky.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes, “Job Search Radio,” “and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
I’ll use a story to illustrate. When my son was really young and it was time to go to bed, he would often ask me to tell him a story.
“Daddy!” I knew he was stalling before going to sleep. “Tell me a story!” One day, I looked over at his nightstand and saw a dollar bill. I held it up to him and said:
“Today, I’m going to tell you story about Bill.” We went on this journey around the world where I would tell a story about Bill … Basically, I was talking about how money moves around the world. Every sentence I ended with ended with an “ill.”
“So, Bill traveled everywhere. He was in a restroom one day and he ate something that he care for and suddenly became . . . My son would say, “Ill!” And it would go on from there, until we got to the point where Bill died and suddenly he needed a “will.” So, we would go on like this.
Stories have a unique way of affecting us and engaging us and that's true in your interviews, too. I want to encourage you, you have got a resume and you be sending it out and some firm is going to call you for an interview,
I want you to look at your resume and what you describe there and I want you to be thinking of stories related to the role, responsibilities accomplishments and such. The format. I want you to think in terms of is
What was the problem that you faced? What action did you take? What results did you get? If you can, the metrics for what you accomplished in terms of dollars saved dollars and dollars earned
I was interviewing a guest on “Job Search Radio” who referred to it as the PAR method. I said, “it's actually Italian. It’s actually PARM.”
Think in terms of comparing yourself by money saved or money earned is the metrics, and, if you are not in a role where you can speak about that, like you are in administrative assistant or you work on a helpdesk, what have you, you can speak in terms of how you handled something 13% more effectively or handle more tickets by 27% than other call center operators did for example.
So, there's always a way of describing it but it starts off with Problem-Action-Result-Metrics. When all is said and done, this is the part of your preparation for your interview that you can do in advance and just jot it down. Become familiar with it so that, in this way, when you get to the first phone interview, a screening call (but is an interview, nonetheless) and they talk with you, “tell me about what you did on the last . . . And they will ask you about something on your resume, “Well, I dealt with a situation where we had a problem with such and such.” Lay out the story of what the issues were. You can just listen to them become engaged. Then, you talk about, “So, I was asked to step in and do such and such.” So, you talk about what actions you did. You mobilized a group people. You talked with the afflicted party. You understood what their needs were and where the deficiencies work, you go on and on and on. Then, you talk about the results that came about from this and how it helped improve results by 70% . . . 2 million dollars. Whatever it was.
Think in terms of PARM
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes, “Job Search Radio,” “and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
This one is about interviewing. Interviewing is one of those areas where we, reveal how we been acculturated, conditioned, put into a box, dammit, throughout our lives.
One of the things I keep pointing to is how the school systems teach us to behave. You know, sit at a desk, shut up, regurgitate facts, be obedient, do what the teacher tells you to do or else you won't get into a good college. Then, from there, we get into a good college, we have to do the same thing all over again except they call it thinking but most of the time is really very little thinking that's involved. So, we wind up being in a situation where we’re told to behave and regurgitate facts or think in order to get “a good job.” Then, we get to that “good job” and, lo and behold, we hate it. It’s a bad game we’re playing there.
So, we get to interviews to change jobs and we’ve been conditioned to be “modest” and to speak modestly about what we've done. The word “we” shows up in our conversation. Our group. We worked on instead of talking about ourselves because we’ve been told that you're not supposed to Bragg. You're not supposed to boast. You’re just supposed to behave yourself and we fall for its because you been conditioned to fall for it. That’s why.
Instead, my friend Rick Gillis has a book coming out call, “Promote.” He has an article on LinkedIn using that word, promote period you might be able to find on Pulse. It’s a nice idea because what you're able to do is succinctly speak about what you've done and how you went about doing it.
So, the word, “brag” has such a connotation. Just reading the dictionary definition – – “ to use boastful language. To boast. Anything to boast of” is the noun version of it, and you can just hear the connotations associated with it that are so problematic.
Rick just puts it very simply because what he wants to encourage you to do is self-promotion because, it's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it. Did it fall? There is a problem unless people know about your successes. So, he offers up a nice little formula.
I was responsible for (fill in the blank) that resulted in (fill in the blank) and then for you to talk about (and he uses an example of being an ex-radio guy) so he talks about “I was responsible for 49% of all sales for one organization that resulted in $3.2 million net to the bottom line.” Just as an aside, he spells and $3,200,000 because he believes that the more zeros someone reads the more powerful the statement is. So, let's follow his advice. $3,200,000 net the bottom line that year.
So, what he does has a beginning (I was responsible for), a middle the (that resulted in) an ending I (that offers up the results and what the accomplishment was). As a result, that one statement helps give an interviewer a lot of positive information about you for them to explore. Then, of course, you want to be able to back it up in your interview so that that you demonstrate credibility with the statements.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 1200 episodes, “Job Search Radio,” “and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Connect with me on LinkedIn. Then message me to schedule an initial complimentary session.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.
Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.
