The Interview Process — Some Advice from the Professionals! — Part 2 “The Don’ts”

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Inter­view­ing is an art not an exact sci­ence.  You may pos­sess all of the needed qual­i­fi­ca­tions and skill sets but can’t get the job.   Per­ceived FIT is often just as cru­cial as qual­i­fi­ca­tions when com­pa­nies are assess­ing your can­di­dacy.  They are assess­ing your abil­i­ties to work well with them and their team.  Per­son­al­ity, appear­ance, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, energy, moti­va­tion, pas­sion, assertive­ness, strate­gic think­ing, creativity/innovation, and prob­lem solv­ing abil­ity are areas you will be mea­sured on by the inter­viewer that may not be depicted in the resume.

Listed below are key “Don’ts” when interviewing:

Don’ts

1. Don’t Ram­ble:  The main rea­son peo­ple don’t get hired is that they do most of the talk­ing.  Answer ques­tions as fully as pos­si­ble, then shut up.  Don’t offer gra­tu­itous infor­ma­tion after state­ments.  Be con­cise.  Stud­ies show the greater amount of time the inter­viewer spends talk­ing, the greater the chance the can­di­date will get the job.  

2. Don’t Over­state Your Respon­si­bil­i­ties or Your Pay:  This can be a real knock out fac­tor.  Most inter­view­ers can size up your degree of influ­ence dur­ing the inter­view and cer­tainly con­firm it dur­ing a back­ground check when appro­pri­ate.  Pay stubs may also be asked to be pro­vided to con­firm com­pen­sa­tion, so be honest. 

3. Don’t Assume you Know What They Want: Ask­ing open-ended ques­tions can pro­vide you an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion to help pre­pare you for tar­geted responses and ascer­tain their true needs. Ques­tions like “what are your key pri­or­i­ties and what is imped­ing you from accom­plish­ing?” can open a great dia­logue in deter­min­ing prob­lems that you can solve. 

4. Don’t Bad Mouth Your Com­pany:  This is a def­i­nite red flag to oth­ers you may be dif­fi­cult to get along with.  Rather, elude to the fact that even though “X” com­pany in which you’ve learned tremen­dous skills, does not align with you cur­rent goals.  And be pre­pared to state how the new com­pany is bet­ter aligned to your goals.

5. Don’t Talk Salary Too Early:  If salary expec­ta­tions are asked of you early in the inter­view, try cour­te­ously to steer the con­ver­sa­tion toward the spe­cific require­ments and respon­si­bil­i­ties of the posi­tion.  You may state “salary is impor­tant but I am really inter­ested in hear­ing more about your spe­cific needs and require­ments for this posi­tion.”   If the inter­viewer per­sists, it may be a red flag that the com­pany is more con­cerned with bud­get than exper­tise.  If salary expec­ta­tions are asked more appro­pri­ately toward the end of the inter­view, you know they have inter­est in you but be care­ful of giv­ing an exact fig­ure which could be too low or too high.  Ask, “I assume this posi­tion has a range, what is the range?”  If they say the range, sim­ply restate the top fig­ure of the range and shut up. After a few moments of silence, they will likely start talk­ing about addi­tional ben­e­fits (Bonus, Vaca­tion, Med­ical, etc.), but you’ve moved them to the top end with­out being pre­sump­tu­ous.  If this tech­nique does not work, sim­ply state “I’m cur­rently in “X” range but desire to be in “Y” range.  Try to get their range prior giv­ing a figure.

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