Royce (and Ross)-
I don't have an especially deep history as an interviewee myself, and I'd prefer to avoid speculative advice, since speculative advice is often wrong advice.
However, I did have a comment response to Bolt a little earlier in the year when he asked about interviews
here; to save you the trouble of clicking, here's the comment re-posted:
Chase said:
Bolt-
Hmm, I might've missed that one on the April 1st piece. On interviews... hard for me to say. I've spent much more time as interviewer than I have as interviewee, so I can't really say, "Here's how I ace interviews," very honestly, because while I have aced a few, I've also mucked up a bunch more.
I can say that as interviewer, when an interviewee clearly tries to take the power away from you, they basically lose any chance of you hiring them because it's just a complete turn off (or at least that's my reaction... it's "Okay, obviously this person has no respect for me as a superior, which means our entire course of working together would be one long, continuous, extremely pointless and petty power struggle - no thanks").
Maybe the best way I can think of is if an interviewee sat and patiently answered all my questions as interviewer, then used his chance to ask his own questions as an opportunity to find out a lot about the organization and then stitch that back to his qualities and present how great a fit he is. The (relatively few) times I succeeded as an interviewee I did something like this, or else had already done a lot of homework on the company and my answers to my interviewers' questions already incorporated this - I'd answer by saying, "Well, one of the things COMPANY X focuses on in its mission statement is Y VALUE, and this is a big one for me too - I..." e.g., try to educate the interviewer on the company's own values and operations with your answer, while tying yourself in, and you're a shoe-in.
Chase
I'd also recommend studying common interview questions and preparing your responses to them. There's a website called
Big Interview that has a pretty nice setup for helping you do this.
My biggest interview coup was for a job I very much wanted back in university - it was a great position at a very prestigious multinational brand. I still use my time there as cachet with people I meet from the professional world ("I used to work for X" and everybody goes "Oh, you worked for X! My father worked for X!"). Because I knew I wanted the job, I spent hours the night before consuming information on the company from Wikipedia and Hoovers, compiling custom responses to common interview questions like:
- "Why do you want to work for [company name]?"
and
- "What questions do you have for me?"
with responses like:
- "Well, [company name] actually has three core values, and there all values that really tie in closely with my own personal and professional values, which makes me think I'd be a great fit for [company name] and [company name] would be a great fit for me. The first value is [x], which has been vital for me in my professional experience; dealing with [situation], [x] has consistently been the most effective way to create value for the customer and create long-term customer satisfaction while also racking up sales in a sales position. In my second year at [former company], we were starting July and hadn't hit a monthly sales budget in 8 months. I swore to my manager we'd do it, and the primary way we did it was [x]. I... [story]", and then I went through all three of the values and tied these to my own experiences and kicked out little stories like this demonstrating capability, initiative, and drive.
and
- "Well, I noticed that [name of the company division I was interviewing for] is expanding its global footprint in [continents and service areas] - just in the last five years alone it's grown from # consultants in [place] to new # consultants in [place], and business there is booming. If I did an absolutely stellar job with all my local projects and begin to work up the ranks, what do you think the odds are that I'd be able to take some of these international positions in locales like [country] or [country] or working on [thing they work on] or [thing they work on] at some point?"
What I went for with these responses was to give the interviewer the impression that I was every bit as familiar with the company as s/he was, that I was a super dynamic, excited, driven, effective person, and that I was already planning out my career trajectory to do an awesome job, climb the ranks, and start branching out into other areas of the business where I could be effective and learn a lot while upping my contributions even more.
Needless to say, I got that dream job.
Another way of thinking about it: the interviewer is just like a hot girl, entertaining multiple suitors all day long who bore her and tell her the same things as the last guy, again and again, with nothing new, refreshing, or gripping. How can you make the session fresh for her? One way is interesting stories that feel personal to you, demonstrate good things about you, and yet relate back to the company and position; another is expressing large degrees of well-thought-out interest that show you are already planning out something long-term and mutually beneficial with her (or the company) - the interview equivalent of future projection / role-playing.
I had 8 or 9 more interviews after this one I busted my chops for (and got), none of which I was especially excited about, none of which I prepared nearly as well for, and none of which I got.
Your interviewers can smell it, whether you are excited about the job or not. If I had to give any strong advice, it'd be prepare the heck out of your answers, know them front and back, know the business front and back, sell yourself as effective and weave this naturally into the conversation and continually tie it back to the company itself so that the interviewer knows what the point of your answer is (why your skills and effectiveness are going to be an asset to the business), and try to interview for jobs you really want to interview for.
It's like girls; when you're warmed up and well-prepared and ready to take action, the biggest decider from that point forward is, "How bad do you want it - can she tell you really want it, or does something feel off?"
If you're not excited about a job yet, I'd recommend reading more about it, attending any talks they have on the company, and picking the brains of as many people who work there as possible to see if you can find something to get excited about. Worst case, you'll phone it in, but in a pretty knowledgeable way, and they may still hire you; best case, you find something to get really excited about, and coming in excited + knowledgeable + excellent at weaving in tales of your own effectiveness and ambition within the company with continually tying this back to the company makes you one of the best damn interviewees that interviewer has ever seen.
Make them feel like you want to be there, and you belong there, and you're going to come in and be an instant value add to the business. Of course, to do all this, you must know what they are looking for (so you don't sell the wrong aspects of yourself or tell them you're going to add value that they don't personally value), which is where the research and preparation comes in.
Chase
