The Job Interview: Before, During, and After

From my very earliest memories, my father and much of his family were in the construction business. My father was a bricklayer and ran his own company. I went to work with him on Saturdays and during the summer from a very early age and got to know many other people in construction. I learned a lot about the entire homebuilding process from start to finish. Most all of my family, neighbors, and people we went to church with were blue collar workers and many of them owned their own small businesses. 

I had the belief instilled in me from that time that to go to work meant to build some tangible product.

As I entered my high school years, I felt certain that the right path for me was to complete an architecture degree and become an architect and homebuilder. I dreamed of building houses. I drew up house plans in my spare time. I took a drafting class in high school. All of this convinced even more that building houses was my path.

Things changed late in high school when I was presented the opportunity to attend the US Naval Academy. Even then, I expected to get the education, complete my required service in the Navy, and then come home and resume the homebuilding path. Later, I realized that the Navy was a great fit for me and I stayed for twenty-six years. I completed a variety of assignments on ships, ashore, and overseas. I was a member of several major senior staffs and was a commanding officer twice.

During my Navy career, I was involved in multiple technical pursuits: operating the engineering plant on a ship, navigating another ship, and later meteorology and oceanography. I also was able to lead progressively larger numbers of people up to a thousand during my second command tour.

After leaving the Navy, I spent four years as a supply chain manager, first managing a transportation office and then directing the operation of a distribution center. Working with a hundred fifty truck drivers, along with the office staff and a truck shop was a different experience and it stretched my leadership skills. I continued to learn and grow.

Moving to the warehouse was yet another big transition. I was introduced to managing a large workforce of people on production standards. This was simultaneously a great tool and a difficult leadership challenge. I learned that it is possible to both take care of your people and continue to produce higher and higher productivity and quality.

After all this time, though, I still miss the satisfaction that comes with creating a tangible product that defines what I have traded my time and energy for. I have somewhat filled that gap by making custom knives as a hobby and then side business, but I feel that I would be more satisfied with a full time move into manufacturing.

Throughout my Navy and supply chain time, I have developed essential transferable skills such as leadership, time management, cross-functional team leadership, organizational planning, budgeting, training and coaching people, developing policies and procedures, and executing complex plans. As a supply chain manager, I have honed skills that directly relate to manufacturing such as leading a workforce on production standards, systems improvement, achieving cost reductions and process improvement, and driving continuous improvement programs.

This is a different career story than the one I told at the beginning of “Finding Your Stories”. This is the one that I would use if I were looking to make a career transition from supply chain management to manufacturing management (which I am not, it is just an example to show how the story can be tailored for the job interview at hand). See how everything along the my entire path, starting with childhood through education, military experience, and current job are woven together in such a way as to support qualification for the new job. If you look up some job postings for production manager at a manufacturing business, you will likely see many of the same keywords that I have used throughout and especially near the end of this story. This is by design. If you are looking to make a career transition, and almost everyone moving from the military into civilian employment is, then you want the hiring manager to be able to picture you already in this new role.

I have researched production manager jobs to see what the hiring managers are looking for and used that information to tailor my career story to illustrate that I am able to solve the problems that those companies face. “Tell me about yourself” is not an invitation to talk about your family and your hobbies and your dog. You have to find out what the company needs and use this opportunity to show how everything that has happened in your career so far has uniquely prepared you to be the solver of their problems (Moore). This must be a part of your preparation for the interview. 

We will discuss what you need to do before the interview, during the interview, and after the interview. The preparation prior to the interview is at least as important in determining whether you get the job as anything that happens during the interview.

Before the interview

There is a very common saying “proper prior preparation prevents poor performance.” I would offer a slight variation to say “proper prior preparation and practice will put you in the position.” That’s not quite as much alliteration with the p’s, but it makes the point. You must spend far more time preparing and practicing than actually interacting with the company in phone calls and the interview if you want to win the job. 

Hiring managers are looking for confident leaders who can step in and make a difference. In any leadership role, you will have to speak in front of people, interact one-on-one and in small groups with your team, and frequently have hard conversations with people. If you are not confident in an interview, how should they expect that you will be confident and able to successfully handle a tough conversation where you have to discuss attendance problems or poor productivity with one of your employees? Those conversations are much more difficult than a job interview for many people. This is another reason for thorough preparation. If you are fully prepared and feel that you really know your business and are ready for any questions that they can throw at you, then you will be much more confident (Weiser 1).

Preparation

Sun Tzu said (paraphrasing), Know thyself and know thy enemy and you will not be imperiled in a thousand battles. We can take that advice here to increase our chances of success. Certainly your potential employer is not the enemy, but the advice still holds true. You preparation should include thoroughly knowing yourself and learning everything that you can about the company you are applying to and the interviewers that you will be meeting. Know your strengths, know what the job requires, and be able to articulate how you can meet those needs (Weiser 11-13).

Research the company

Thoroughly research the company ahead of time and make sure you are well versed on the challenges facing the company and any recent changes that they have been through. This will allow you to engage your interviewers in conversation and show them that you have done your homework and understand the challenges of this job. You can show them that you have the experience and aptitude to meet those challenges and succeed in this job. If you already know a lot about the job and can show them this knowledge in the interview, it is easier for your interviewer to picture you in the job. If they can already see you in the job, it greatly increases the chances that they will hire you for the job (Goodman).

When researching the company, start with the “About” link on the company page on LinkedIn. This page is a standard format which starts with a few paragraphs of overview on the company that usually includes their major locations. After that there will be several specific headings including web site, industry, company size, headquarters, type of ownership, year founded, and sometimes a few others. This is a great starting point.

Next go to the company web site. Pay particular attention to the home page for any news postings. Most companies will update this front page with the news that is important to them. Follow any links to “news” or “latest updates” or anything of that nature. Read their “about” page and any history and overview sections they offer (Doyle).

Finally, search for the company on search engines. Familiarize yourself with any recent media coverage, either positive or negative. Read any reviews from customers and former employees. Finally, see how the company has been performing financially and know their current stock price if it is a publicly traded company.

Important things you need to know about the company:

·        Company history

·        Current news

·        Mission statement

·        Number of employees, locations, earnings, type ownership

·        What do they actually do?

·        Industry trends and major competition (Weiser 4-5)

Be very familiar with the job posting

Your goal in the job interview is to show the interviewer that you can excel at this job. In order to do that, you must know what the job requires. The job posting is the document that tells you that information. Read it, study it, and know it thoroughly. Also print it out and bring it with you. As you are answering your questions in the interview, it may be helpful to glance down at it from time to time for a reminder of something that may be important to them that you will want to mention.

Research the interviewers

Try to find out who your interviewers are. Sometime, the person who calls or emails to set up the interview will just tell you. If not, you can ask. If they will tell you, then you need to do some research on those interviewers just so you can be more familiar with them, what they may like, and can better tailor your answers to fit. Google each of them and see what media coverage you find. Also check their LinkedIn profiles and read every section. Be very familiar with the information they have shared on LinkedIn. If the person is active on the platform, read all their recent articles, posts, and comments. You can learn a lot about how they think that will better enable you to respond to their interview questions. DO NOT, however, keep going back to their profile multiple times, because they can see that activity and it makes you look like a stalker.

Be very very familiar with your resume

I cannot overstress the importance of knowing what is in your own resume! What?! You are probably saying, “I wrote my resume. Of course, I know what is in it!” I know this sounds like common sense, but it is amazing how many people cannot answer questions about something that is written in their resume or they use a story from the resume and the details they tell are different from the details documented in the resume. This is embarrassing and will probably prevent you from getting the job.

Prepare your stories

As discussed in “Finding Your Stories”, you need to have at least six or eight good stories ready to use in answering the job interview questions. In each of those stories, you need to practice good storytelling, with a relatable protagonist (you), an inciting event (some problem or challenge that you encountered), barriers that you must navigate around, and a successful resolution to the problem. This is just another way of looking at the STAR (situation, task, action, result) method that you have heard so much about (Gage 4-5, 68-69).

For longer term preparation, you should be keeping a notebook of situations as they occur that you can use later for resume and job interview stories. If you have done this, you simply need to refer to your notebook, pick out the applicable stories for this interview, and practice them. If, like most people, you do not have such a notebook, you will have to comb through every document you can use to jog your memory and create that notebook now. Useful document for this purpose will be anything that documents your performance, accomplishment, and career path. Good examples include your annual evaluations and all awards.

Pick out the stories that you think will be most impactful for this job interview and refamiliarize yourself with them. Practice telling the stories to answer various interview questions. There are six general types of questions that you should expect and you need to prepare stories to answer each of them:

1.      When you solved a problem

2.      When you overcame a challenge

3.      When you made a mistake

4.      When you worked as a leader

5.      When you worked with a team

6.      When you did something interesting

That doesn’t mean you should expect to be asked those exact questions but having at least one of each of these types of stories ready will allow you to answer a very broad range of questions that may be asked (Boogaard). I also recommend that you do a Google search for job interview questions for the industry you are interviewing for. If it is a large company, you may even find that people have posted exact questions they were asked in job interviews for that company. These will all help you prepare your stories.

Practice Interviewing

Though most people don’t think of it this way, interviewing for a job is a skill. Like any other skill, it can be improved with the correct, focused practice. After you have prepared your stories and done some research to find a long list of the most likely questions you will be asked for an interview in your industry, you need to practice both tailoring those stories to answer the questions and practicing the delivery of those questions.

I recommend that you complete this practice in three stages. First you need to just practice making the stories fit to the questions. You can do this alone. Go through your list of questions and think about which of your stories would be well suited to answering that question. You may want to write out your answer at first to ensure you are covering all the details you want and to be certain that you are quantifying your accomplishments and finishing off with an actual result.

After you feel confident about tailoring the right stories to the questions, you want to start practicing delivery of the stories. In the beginning you just want to practice telling the story, making sure it is clear, you aren’t saying “um” or “ah” or other filler words, that you are covering all your key points, and that it is neither long and rambling or too short. This can be done with someone very close to you like a spouse or close friend.

Finally, you need to add the element of stress to the practice to better simulate the actual interview. This cannot really be done with someone that you are completely comfortable with. For this step, you at least need to work with a mentor (Doyle). If possible, you can use one of these mentor pairing organizations to pair you up with someone or you can find someone through LinkedIn. A career coach is a good option for this step if you have one.

You need to practice the interview in the same format that it will be conducted. If it is an in-person interview, you need to dress as you will in the actual interview and sit across the table from your practice interviewer. If it is a phone interview, have your mentor ask you the questions over the phone. Zoom has become a very popular option for doing interviews remotely. I recommend that you become very familiar with this program.

Doing a phone or Zoom interview gives you the option of having some materials which will help you laid out on your desk so you can refer to them. Be careful not to get so deep into reading them that you lose track of the conversation in the interview. I would suggest laying out your resume, the job description, a brief overview of your research on the company and the interviewers, and a list of questions for you to ask the interviewers. If you are doing a Zoom interview, check your camera view to ensure that there is nothing distracting or inappropriate in the background and that your reference materials are not visible on the camera.

Prepare questions to ask the interviewer

Usually, after the interviewers have asked you their questions, they will ask if you have any questions for them. First, it is vitally important that you do not say you have no questions for them. They can form several different impressions from a candidate having no questions and none of them are good. They may feel that you think you know everything already so you don’t need to ask anything. They may feel that you are just not serious enough or maybe not truly interested in the job enough to come up with some questions.

I recommend that you come in with at least five well thought-out questions ready. They should be printed out and brought with you in your portfolio so if you enter a state of brain fog, they will be right there in front of you to save the day. Depending on the length of their answers, you will only want to ask one or two of the questions, but you need at least five in case they answer some of them in the course of conversation before you have a chance to ask them. If you only have two questions and they have already answered both of them, you will be hard pressed to come up with another two good questions on the spot.

Here are a few that I like:

·        What do you believe are the keys to success in this job?

·        What do you expect from me in the first 90 days?

·        What do you see as the most important areas of growth for the company?

·        How would you describe the company’s culture?

·        What can you tell me about the morale and turnover of your workforce?

·        How important is employee engagement to company leadership?

·        What are the strategic priorities for company leadership?

The best closing question is:

·        “What do you love about working here?”

This will bring to mind fond memories for them and they will associate you with that good feeling. It is a great note to leave everyone feeling good about themselves, the interview, and you.

At the interview

Dress appropriately

Dress up enough to let everyone know that you are serious about the job but not so much so that you look and feel out of place. Make sure your clothes are clean and pressed and that you are well-groomed so that you look good (Martin). A good rule of thumb is to dress one level of formality higher than the normal dress code for the workplace. If you are applying for a job where business casual is the norm, you should probably wear slacks and a sports coat, probably without a tie. If everyone in the office normally wears a sports coat, you may want to show up in a suit.

What to bring

You don’t want to bring a lot to the interview. Keeping up with too many things can be awkward and cause problems. Bring a good leather portfolio and put everything else inside it so you don’t have much to carry (Doyle). This will allow you to easily keep up with everything and nothing will get in the way of greeting people and shaking hands. Inside the portfolio, you should bring:

·        Several copies of your resume. You want to have enough to hand out to each interviewer and still have one left in the portfolio for you to look at. Bring more than you think you will need in case there are additional, unannounced interviewers.

·        A one-page summary of your research on the company. If you also bring the summary of research on the interviewers, be very careful to ensure that no one sees it. Some people may feel spied on and not react well. It is probably best left in the car.

·        A copy of the job description.

·        A notepad and a pen to take notes.

Be very sure you know where it is and don’t be late

If possible travel to the interview site prior to the day of the interview to ensure that you know exactly where it is and how long it will take you to get there. On the day of the interview, leave early enough to get there at least a half hour prior to the interview time, even in the worst possible traffic you might encounter. If you really do arrive that early, sit in the car and review your resume and your story notes until about fifteen minutes prior to start time. You should be walking into the building ten to fifteen minutes prior to the appointment time (Martin).

Be polite – to everyone

This shouldn’t even need to be said, but for some people it does. Be nice to everyone you meet! I have heard it said (though I don’t remember from whom) that you can tell a lot about a person’s character from observing how they treat a server in a restaurant. I can promise that if you are rude to the admin assistant, she will the hiring manager and you probably won’t get the job. Be nice to the security personnel and anyone else you meet in the building.   

Confidence and body language

You have prepared well, so you should be confident. Don’t be afraid to look confident. Firmly shake hands, don’t hesitate when greeting people, and make good eye contact especially when they are asking you a question. Make eye contact alternately with each interviewer when answering the questions. Sit up straight and pay attention. Be very careful with your body language (Doyle) 

Other best practices

Here are a few other things to keep in mind:

·        Make sure you turn off the ringer on your phone and keep it out of sight (Doyle).

·        Ask questions to follow up and ensure that you are clear on what is being asked of you. This can also serve to help turn the interview into a conversation (Goodman).

·        Always have good manners.

·        Be truthful. Don’t embellish or try to inflate your accomplishment.

·        Keep a positive attitude.

·        Smile a lot!

“Tell me about yourself”

As I briefly mentioned after the example career story I started this chapter with, this is not the wide open, innocent, getting-to-know-you conversation starter that it may seem to be. It is a very real job interview question, even if they tell you the interview hasn’t started yet. And it gives you a very long rope with which you can easily hang yourself.

Weave a tale through your entire career and even passions dating back to school or early life to show them that you are exactly the right person to solve their problem. You want them to see you as the perfect fit for their job as a result of the story you tell. If you can paint that picture for them right here at the beginning, you have an unfair advantage over the other candidates throughout the rest of the process.

Answering the other questions

You have prepared your stories and now you are ready to share them. Listen carefully, and take notes if necessary, to be certain that you understand what the interviewer is asking. You don’t want to give a great answer…to the wrong question. Most of your stories can be tailored to many different questions. You have researched job interview questions for your industry and maybe even for this specific company. Here are a few more common questions you should be prepared to answer:

·        Tell us about a stressful situation and how you dealt with it?

·        Tell us about a challenge you faced and how you dealt with it?

·        What is your greatest strength?

·        What is your greatest weakness?

·        Describe how you handle difficult situations?

·        Tell about a time you handle work with a difficult or unreasonable client?

·        Talk about a time when you were not able to deliver the promised results?

·        Where do you see yourself in five years?

·        Tell about a time you improved a process?

All these questions are paraphrased from The STAR Method Explained by Martha Gage (20-52). This list, and the general categories of questions discussed above in the preparation section, are a great place to start. You can practice tailoring the same five or six stories to answer multiple different questions from the list by emphasizing different aspects of the story.

Make sure that as you tell your stories to answer the questions that you are giving very specific examples, not just vague stories. Also ensure that you choose stories that showcase your successes (Martin). Most importantly, you want to tell a story of something that actually happened, not how you think you would respond in a give situation. If your answer starts with “I would…” then you are not on the right track.

When you answer the questions, emphasize what you did, don’t just tell how the team succeeded. Good leaders tend to talk more about the team than about themselves, and even give credit for their own actions and successes to the team instead of taking credit themselves. Humility and giving credit to the team are valuable leadership attributes, but the job interview is a little different. You need to emphasize what you did to contribute to the success. If it truly was a team effort, you need to discuss your leadership and how you directed the actions of the team to achieve that success. If you describe everything in terms of the team instead of yourself it leaves the interviewer wondering if you were even necessary or whether the team would have done just as well without you.

The most dangerous question!

The most dangerous interview question is “How much did you make at your last job?” Obviously, if they are asking you this question, they will use it to start the salary negotiation if you are offered the job, so if you are looking to move up, you can easily harm yourself with this answer. The first instinct may be to inflate what you are making now in hopes of getting a raise with the new job, but this is very dangerous. You should always tell the truth. If you inflate the number and they find out about it before you start, they very well may rescind the job offer. If they find out about it later, at best case, it will hamper their trust in you and may have more negative consequences. 

It is better to dodge the question in one of two ways. First you can try to turn the question back to the interviewer with something like “what were you thinking would be a good place to start with this job?” You can also try “Based on my research and our discussion here, I think this position should start somewhere between $XX and $YY. What were you thinking?” If really pressed to answer the question, answer it truthfully.

After the interview

The process isn’t over when you walk out of that interview. There are several more steps you want to take to ensure you stay top of mind as they are interviewing other candidates and increase your chances of getting that job offer.

Send a thank you note

Immediately after the interview, buy some thank you cards and take the few minutes necessary to hand write a brief but thoughtful note to each interviewer. Thank them for taking the time to interview you, tell that that you appreciate the opportunity to interview and to learn more about their company, and cite one example of something you learned from them. Tell them to please contact you if they have any further questions for you. Mail the cards to their company address.

Handwritten thank you cards have become so rare that when you send one it gets noticed. This is one more little thing to set you apart from your competition. It will also arrive two or three or four days after the interview, when they have probably been interviewing other candidates and it will bring you back to the top of their mind. It paints a favorable picture of you at the time when they are thinking about your competition. That may not win you the job, but it will definitely win you some points!

Follow up with an email

You also want to go ahead and email a thank you either the same day as the interview or the next day. Let them know right away, without waiting for the thank you note to arrive in the mail, that you appreciate the interview. Restate your qualifications, why you want the job, why you are passionate about joining their company, and ask any follow-up questions you may have (Doyle). Encourage them to call or email you if they have any further questions.

Follow up again if you haven’t heard anything

If you haven’t heard anything within a week or two, email again to let them know that you are still very interested and politely ask if there has been any progress in the hiring decision. Continue to reach out every second week as long as they are engaged and quickly answering your emails. You want to make sure that you don’t contact them so often that you become annoying but contact them enough to be certain that they know how serious you are about the job. You can never predict how long it will take to get to a decision and a long delay may have nothing to do with you. A key decision maker may be out of the office on travel or someone may unexpected get sick. There may be a change in the budget that causes delays. Be patient, but don’t stop looking elsewhere!

Conclusion

Put in the time making sure that you are fully prepared and you can go into the interview with confidence. Make sure you prepare your stories and practice answering every question you can find. Quantify your answers, concentrate on results especially in cost savings and increased efficiency and effectiveness, and don’t ramble on too long. Be polite to everyone you meet and follow up with a thank you card and emails.

Finally, don’t get discouraged if you do everything right and still don’t get the job. You will probably have to interview a few times before you find the right fit for you and start getting job offers. Following these steps will hasten the time until that happens and help you get more offers.

Notes:

1.       Moore, Emily. “Stop Rambling! How to Tell a Concise, Compelling Career Story in an Interview.” Glass Door, August 9, 2018, https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/how-to-tell-a-career-story/.

2.      Weiser, Katie. Answers to the Top 20 Interview Questions: Conquering the Job Interview Process, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017, pp. 1-13.

3.      Goodman, Don. “3 Most Important Things to Do in a Job Interview”, Work It Daily, June 19, 2015, https://www.workitdaily.com/important-things-job-interview.

4.      Doyle, Alison. “How to Prepare for a Job Interview”, TheBalanceCareers, June 25, 2019, https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-job-interview-2061361.

5.      Gage, Martha. The STAR Method Explained, Amazon Digital Services, 2019, 4-71.

6.      Boogaard, Kat. “6 Types of Stories You Should Have on Hand for Job Interviews.” The Muse, 2019, https://www.themuse.com/advice/6-types-of-stories-you-should-have-on-hand-for-job-interviews.

7.      Martin, Carole. “10 Interviewing Rules”, Monster, 2019, https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/ten-interviewing-rules.

8.      Chatzky, Jean. “The Most Dangerous Job Interview Question (and How to Dodge It)”, TheBalanceCareers, April 22, 2019, https://www.thebalancecareers.com/most-dangerous-job-interview-question-4150002.