I am always amused at the often-heard career advice "When you go to a job interview, just be yourself!"
Be yourself?
If you were being yourself, you wouldn't sit on a chair and answer questions like a fourth-grader taking an oral exam. If you heard some of the ridiculous questions that job interviewers ask candidates and you were being yourself, you'd get up and leave.
You'd find a gelato place and sit and enjoy your gelato and the day rather than subject yourself to the interview process most job-seekers have to endure.
That's why I don't tell job-seekers "Just be yourself at the job interview!"
Being yourself is easy, when you're in a human situation.
If you and I were sitting at a cafe in Chicago or Paris or anywhere, I'd ask "Have you been to see Antman yet?" and you'd say "No, I tried to go but all the shows were sold out. You think Paul Rudd can pull off the superhero thing?" and I'd say "Paul Rudd rules! He can do anything he wants!" and then we would eat our gelato.
A job interview is a different deal. To get rid of your job-interview jitters, you need a mission. You need a plan.
Here's your mission on a job interview: ask questions to learn about the Business Pain that got the hiring manager to go to his or her CFO and grovel and beg for money. Nobody gets money from a tight-fisted CFO just because they're a nice person.
There has to be pain -- expensive pain!
Your job is to figure out what that pain is, and respond to it by asking more and more pointed questions about the nature of the pain and what the company has already tried to make the pain go away.
You're not, of course, going to give your hiring manager the solution to his or her pain right there in the interview.
That's the worst thing you can do!
When you tell the manager how to solve his big problem, do you think he says to himself "Oh wow, this is a great candidate!"?
No way. He says "That's a great idea!" He writes your idea down. Now you and the idea are separate things.
The manager may decide to hire a cheaper candidate and try to implement your great idea without you. It happens every day.
Instead of telling the manager how to solve his problem, you're going to walk him through your process. Then he'll know that you can solve the problem, but only if he hires you!
Listen as Emily uses this technique:
Manager: So Emily, how long have you been using social media tools?
Emily: (Did he seriously just ask me that? Why would it matter?) That's a great question. I first got into Facebook and Twitter for myself -- my personal life, I mean -- like a lot of people, I guess. I guess it's been about ten years that I've been marketing on social media, if we count LinkedIn - those guys have been around for at least a decade.
Manager: How do you market on LinkedIn exactly? Is it worthwhile?
Emily: (Now I'm teaching him how to market on LinkedIn? Enough of this! I'm going for the pain) That depends. Here at Acme Explosives you're marketing stick dynamite. Let's talk about your buyers. Are they construction-firm Purchasing people, primarily?
Manager: A lot of our customers aren't big enough to have dedicated Purchasing people. The project manager or his or her assistant -- we can say "his" because they're pretty much all men -- orders the supplies they need. Let's say they're doing a demolition project on an old building. They need stick dynamite. They work with one of our sales reps and place an order.
Emily: And these project managers for construction firms -- maybe they have a LinkedIn profile but they're probably not avid LinkedIn users, correct? They don't spend much of their day behind a desk. Is that right?
Manager: That's right. They're out in the field.
Emily: In that case there will be better marketing vehicles for you than LinkedIn, I'd say. This Marketing Manager is a newly-created job, right?
Manager: Yes. I'm glad to be able to hire someone to take Marketing off my plate.
Emily: Why is that? What are the other things you need to attend to? I'm sure it's a huge role!
Manager: I run the sales department - six outside sales guys and two inside people. I don't have time for marketing.
Emily: And yet you know it's important to do marketing because....
Manager: Because our salespeople call new prospects and they say "I've never heard of Acme Explosives." Our salespeople need air support.
Emily: That makes sense. So you need to know where your buyers are spending time, if they're not spending time on LinkedIn?
Manager: Yes. How would you accomplish that?
Emily: I'd start by talking with your salespeople, and then I'd ask each salesperson to give me a customer name or two and I'd talk to those customers. I'd find out why they buy from Acme instead of your competitors, and how they heard about your company in the first place. I'd read construction-industry magazines and see who's doing what and I'd bring you back a plan to consider, with alternatives. I'm sure that budget is a concern - right?
Manager: Exactly. I got the budget to hire someone, but that doesn't leave a lot of money to pay for marketing campaigns.
Emily: You can do a lot with a little budget if you are smart! How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing now?
Manager: We don't. That's something we need to start.
Emily: You have a lot going on. What makes this Marketing hire a priority now -- enough for you to invest time interviewing, with all that you're responsible for?
Manager: It's critical now. We're behind our competitors. It's going to cost us if we don't get our marketing presence going.
Emily: Have you tried to quantify that cost -- the sales you might be losing because your marketing isn't yet where you want it to be?
Emily is a master Pain-Spotter and she knows that a job interview is above all a time to learn about Business Pain. Emily has no intention of sitting in her seat like a Sheepie Job Seeker and waiting for the manager to ask his next question.
The manager knows zip-all about marketing, so why would Emily wait for him to take the lead?
She's going to make it clear to her possible next boss that she can solve his pain. In fact, she's already done that! Now her manager is thinking "I hope I can afford this Emily! She knows what's up!"
The job market is changing, but it's only changing for the job-seekers who take control of their own careers. You have to step out of Sheepie Job Seeker mode to get the benefits Emily is getting.
You have to know which types of Business Pain you solve, and you have to be willing to step out of the traditional good-girl/good-boy mold and ask questions about Business Pain at every job interview.
