Gary Vaynerchuk's Secret to Getting Hired

Do You Have Self-Awareness?

It’s impossible to fake being genuine. You have to know who you are and be self-aware, which, in a nutshell, is Gary Vaynerchuk’s secret interview tip.

If you’re a marketer or an entrepreneur, there’s a strong chance that you’re familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk and his business empire. If you’re not working in these areas, you may not know that Gary Vaynerchuk builds businesses by enlisting the time-honored techniques of understanding and appreciating customers.

With an outrageous and contagious focus on creating value, Gary might be the ultimate connector; he engages directly with customers at unprecedented scale and speed.  The best word to describe him: genuine.

Hacking The Interview

Self-awareness is one of the most important skills to acquire before you begin interviewing. The good part of this internal inventory is that you will learn crucial aspects of yourself, which will propel you forward for the rest of your life. It’s similar to what Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, pioneers in Ruby on Rails and 37Signals, said in their book, ReWork. Being able to understand your strengths and weaknesses is the key to moving ahead. Accepting your shortcomings and striving to become more conscious of who you really are is how you will improve.

Whether you’re speaking with an internal recruiter, hiring manager, or a panel of future coworkers, the interviewer wants to know if you know yourself.

In order to be as aggressively sincere as Gary, it’s critical to be in the habit of constantly asking for feedback. On his podcast, YouTube channel, Instagram, and Facebook page, he's constantly asking for feedback. “Your comments are my oxygen,” is something he says and means.

Who is the best person to give you that type of feedback?

Is it Gary?

Is it your Mom?

Or... is it the person right in front of you who is interviewing you?

Of course, it's the person interviewing you! It’s important to ask for feedback while you hold their attention, which you acquired the moment the interview began.

Why not ask the hiring manager for live feedback? Gary does it during a Facebook Live event, why can’t you? When you ask the hiring manager or recruiter for feedback, you’re asking, “Hey, do you have any hesitations about moving forward in the process?” When you ask this question, you’re asking for someone to point out your faults, where you don’t fit, what they don’t understand about you, and what the challenge is that you’re addressing.

Getting Real-Time Feedback at Unprecedented Scale

Asking for feedback happens in real time. Thia allows you to address concerns at that moment. You can do this with a calm demeanor and process it with the hiring manager. You can immediately reflect a level of self-awareness that is valuable to the hiring manager. By understanding and addressing this feedback, they can accurately discern how you will perform on the job. Remember, the interview is really a short window into your career and how you do what you do. Asking for this feedback in real-time separates the real innovators from the posers.

Every day, candidates want to know the easiest path to obtaining a job.

We are people – we naturally gravitate to the path of least resistance. Fortunately, life is not a video game with cheat codes. You can’t forego years of development and discipline and hop straight to success.

But… becoming successful is not “getting a job." It’s finding and growing a career.

How to Use Self-Awareness to Your Advantage

When you're sitting in your next interview, evaluate whether or not the hiring manager has the capacity to tell you the raw truth. Don't forget, you are interviewing them to see if they are the right vehicle to help you grow your abilities and pursuits. They are not just a paycheck. They are far more than that.

You need to understand:

1. Does the company that you are interviewing with have the capacity to praise you for accomplishments and look out for you when they see you heading down the wrong path?
2. If the hiring manager or the new company are “yes men” who treat you with kid gloves no matter your failure, then how will you grow?

A career is more than a paycheck – you want people who will tell you the hard truths and help you get to where you are going next. If the company and hiring manager don’t have the same level of self-awareness, then there’s no connection and it doesn’t bring value to either of you.

As a member of Relus' recruiting team, Brian Fink focuses on driving talent towards opportunity. Whether helping startups ascend or enterprises adapt to the unknown, Fink works with innovators who can handle ambiguity of a constantly changing technology landscapes. His career includes 10+ years of successfully scaling IT, Recruiting, Big Data, Product, and Executive Leadership teams across North America. As an active keynote speaker and national commentator on recruiting trends and talent acquisition tactics, Fink focuses on client development, candidate engagement, organizational transformation, and recruiter education. Follow him on Twitter.