4 Keys to Job Hunting: Developing an Unfair Competitive Advantage & Maximal Probability of Conversion

For Hiring Technical People With Little To No Experience (although the process is universal)

There is significant and irrefutable evidence of what is a major problem facing new employees (entrants) to any industry. Whether that be due to recent graduation or changing stream sometime later in life, generally speaking though, the challenge remains the same.

With the experience of hiring, training, lecturing, coaching, and mentoring many hundreds of people across many industries, roles, and levels of seniority; and, while also reflecting on the advice that too often is misrepresented or characterized, I thought that I would provide my perspective of how job candidates can influence their opportunities by developing an unfair competitive advantage, leading towards the greatest probability of conversion.

In my experience, you will be dealing with 2 types of hiring people, and you need to understand how they make a buying decision.

You will encounter technically-minded people and not-so-technically minded people.

You need to tease out from your interviewers what they are looking for, their cognitive biases, and their heuristic or default decision-making process. Thus, to vastly improve your interview performance and conversion, here are 4 undeniable strategies that will help you convert your dream job.

Let us begin.

1. Discovery

To vastly improve your capacity to engage with your interviewers, you first need to understand or discover what is important to them…?

This will provide you a baseline in regards to the approach of your replies and follow-up questions.

So, you’re going to ask "how is this achieved"?

Prior to answering questions, you ask for clarification, even if it's after the first question or throughout the initial chit chat, you ask if you may ask a question. The reply will always be yes.

You then say, “so that I can better respond to your questions, is it possible to ask what key attributes or characteristics of prior successful candidates you have identified as paramount to the performance of the role?”

Probe the interviewers what technical skills and or soft skills they believe are important when engaging with the broader organization. These things will help you answer questions helping to present you as the preferred hiring choice.

2. Mitigate Risk

If you have discovered the key requirements, you will be able to point out pertinent STARs (Situation, Task, Actions, & Results) that align or resonate with the decision-makers to strengthen your probability of conversion.

For this though, you need to also understand that most people are seeking to remove risk, which is essentially hiring someone that won’t make them look bad, or even better, making them look good.

So the goal of the candidate is to achieve both of these key needs.

Obviously, as a new entrant into a vertical (say Cyber Security), you will have likely completed your studies giving you the opportunity to apply for such roles in that stream; but you will face challenges that all new entrants face, such as no or little experience, a perceived lack of practical or transferable capabilities, and often no relatable referees. Of which, all of these things will sink your boat.

Remember, the prime humanistic psychological aspect of organizational hiring decision-makers is to make sure that you won’t make them look bad. The reason for this is, no one wants risk! And to be honest, people are incredibly complex, which translates into being the greatest risk.

So, as a new entrant, there is yet still more to do.

3. Evidence (Portfolio of)

Next, you need to show evidence of how and why the option of hiring you is the best, least risky option. A subconscious winner here is that if you turn out to actually be a dud, you have provided your hiring decision-makers with a plausible and reasonable ground for their rationale (defense). People always like to have an evidence chain to protect themselves.

The best way to achieve this is by developing a portfolio of evidence that demonstrates your capabilities, and also shows your ongoing commitment to learning, such as through industry skills certification, academic studies, and possibly research within your vertical.

The development of your evidence portfolio is best accomplished by conducting an analysis of roles within your target vertical. Review a dozen or so different job advertisements and record all the details sought by the hiring organizations. This will provide you with a list of contemporary perspectives of what the industry is seeking and what you should consider including in your portfolio.

This list is the basis of your core portfolio of evidence; and perhaps even more importantly, it’s the glue that drives your interview replies (STARs), linking your Portfolio of Evidence to your skills, knowledge, and capabilities.

4. Critical Thinking

Now, the most important thing that will help you stand out from the crowd, is what nobody will explain, and most can’t articulate.

There are 6 key elements to success. They operate across two key cognitive domains of operation, the tangible and the intangible. Both are critical to success, but little understanding or acknowledgment of what the intangible aspects are or even how to recognize or tease them out in the hiring process is known, even for very experienced recruiters.?

The Tangible (you know it when you see it)

1. Attitude?
2. Skills
3. Knowledge?

These things are observable. Connections can be made from the CV, the STARs, and the confidence you demonstrate throughout the interview.

The Intangible (you feel it, but can’t explain it)

1. MetaThinking (thinking how to think)
2. MetaLearning (learning how to learn)
3. MetaConscientiousness (the discipline of discipline, or consistency)

These things are difficult to identify, often impossible to measure, but are what amounts to a person's predispositional characteristics of success. The “intangibles” also indicate critical thinking, creativity, or innovation, which everybody wants to hire for, but have little to no hiring process to identify or measure it.

If you can demonstrate each of these factors, you will present yourself as not only the least risky option but the one that also “just felt right”.

Your resume is the door opener, these 4 things and 3 Intangible Factors are the deal (employment offer) closers.?

Good luck. Happy hunting.

By: John Mackenzie