Make it Stop

 “See,” said the applicant, “there are three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and your company’s way. I have to figure out what the right way is and tell them that. They have to know what really works.” He was interviewing for a job introducing a company’s latest commercial line of climate control microcontrollers.

“Yeah, a week, I’ll know your product, whichever one you guys train on.” The company has a full line of scaled climate systems, plus ancillary lines of humidifiers and air filters.

He was not invited to a second interview.

I am not sure why, but many people interview for a job as if they don’t need one. This is just one example of several a professional acquaintance of mine could tell you about.

In a couple of instances the answer to tell me about yourself and why you would be a good fit for the company turned into a three-minute monologue, with no connection to the job opening.

A job interview is a series of questions and answers, but you can help yourself by thinking of it as a set of small speeches. Every speech should have a main idea, and for these speeches the main idea should be “Here’s why I would be great in this job.” You are not in the room to tell the interviewer how the company should be run. You are not there to show how much wiser you are (see the examples above).

Now it is very possible that the people I am referring to were not interested in the jobs they were interviewing for, but let’s assume they were. How could they have easily improved their answers? By thinking of their job interview as a sales pitch in miniature. How would that work?

Very simple – ask the customer what they want and demonstrate that you have it. Working through a recruiter usually gets the first part. A job posting sometimes has enough information, but there is no reason not to ask for clarification during an interview. The rest is just a matter of finding parts of your skills, training, and experience the meet the job requirements. Formulate your answers as clear two- to three-sentence speeches. Longer answers are okay occasionally, but limit them. And above all, keep it brief. I flipped through an old notebook the other day with notes from an interview in which the candidate would quiz us, almost literally tell us he was smarter than us, then proceed to lecture for three minutes at a pop. This went on for forty minutes. The last line in my notes on the candidate? “Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!”
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