Don't Let A Job Interview
It's easy to give away so much good advice on a job interview that your hiring manager decides they don't need to hire you.
They can simply implement the tremendous ideas you shared with them. How can you avoid giving away too much free advice at a job interview? Here's how. Your goal is not to prove you're smart and capable by answering interview questions or telling your hiring manager how to solve their problems. It's easy to give away so much good advice on a job interview that your hiring manager decides they don't need to hire you. They can simply implement the tremendous ideas you shared with them. How can you avoid giving away too much free advice at a job interview? Here's how. Your goal is not to prove you're smart and capable by answering interview questions or telling your hiring manager how to solve their problems. Your goal is to ask questions about the manager's Business Pain. Asking questions about your manager's Business Pain accomplishes a lot! 1. Your questions about your hiring manager's Business Pain make it clear that you understand the subject matter and that you've researched the organization carefully. 2. Your expertise, judgment and insight show more clearly through your Business Pain questions than they ever could if you were answering traditional interview questions! 3. Your Business Pain questions and your hiring manager's answers will gradually fill you in on what your possible next employer is dealing with — the pain that is keeping them from reaching their goals. Everybody likes to talk themselves. Your hiring manager will be happy to talk about what's keeping him or her up at night if you approach the subject politely. 4. As you and your manager discuss their Business Pain, your manager will slip into brainstorming mode with you naturally. That's what you want! If they don't, ask yourself whether this manager is someone you want to spend countless working hours with. Your goal on interview with a hiring manager is to get that manager's brain working. Like all of us, hiring managers spend much of their work day on auto-pilot. You have to get your interviewer out of auto-pilot mode in order to have a productive interview — one that your manager will remember! You will get clear on your hiring manager's Business Pain — and then you will tell a Dragon-Slaying Story about a time when you solved a similar kind of pain before. You will not solve this hiring manager's specific pain in the interview, however! Here's how the process works. Manager: So, what did you do at Angry Chocolates, exactly? You: My title was Senior Buyer/Planner. I was responsible for buying the ingredients and raw materials for Angry's melting chocolates and edible nail polish lines, and I ran inventory and production planning for those two product lines. Since they were our biggest product lines I was always hopping. That job had a lot to do with supply chain management, staying close with vendors and watching for shifts in inventory requirements, because the mix of products we were selling was always changing. Manager: So, what would you say was your greatest accomplishment in that job? You (realizing that your manager does not know how to get off the interview script on their own): I'd say that would be re-engineering the purchasing process to take a week off the schedule — that has a huge impact when you're dealing with perishable products like chocolate. Say, can I ask you a question about your Purchasing Manager job? Just so I keep my remarks relevant.