Nuts and Bolts: Career Q&A - How can I be the best possible candidate when interviewing for a position?

When in a field of other unknown candidates, you can always set yourself up as a top candidate.

You should always do everything in your power to stand out as the number one candidate for any position you are interviewing for. It is not about checking every box on the job description, but more about have the right fundamentals and being a good company fit. Unfortunately, you cannot just say that you’re the best candidate. You need to signal this to the recruiter and hiring manager through your communication and actions you take. You want to show them how you think and what drives you. I did this exact thing while applying for a job which seemed far out of reach for me.

A large company invited me to interview for a role opening a new engineering office. I hadn’t ever managed an office before, nor had I done many of the office management activities including large scale business development, recruiting and finances. I wanted to be the best possible candidate for the position or else I knew I would be out of the running.

I knew some basics about their needs from the job description. The hiring manager was looking to expand an engineering service offering to the northeast as part of a nationwide rollout. This person would need to be a leader, a salesperson and be able to manage an office. So I thought to myself, “If I were already doing this job, what types of things would I need to be doing?” I came up with a list of three major activities: business development, building out the team, and managing the finances. Based on these few basic items, I started working on an office plan.

I took each of these three categories and came up with a plan for each. I incorporated potential new internal and external clients for business development. Then, I created a pipeline of work with a rough schedule and then highlighted the resource requirements to support those projects. Finally, I performed a financial analysis of the potential Revenue, Costs and Profitability. I took all this info and threw it into a slide deck, adding company logos, charts and schedules and presented it during my interview with the hiring manager.

When the day of the interview came, I had printed copies of the slides and all the slides queued up on an iPad. We started off the interview casually and getting to know each other and when there was a brief pause, I asked if I could show the hiring manager my plan. He was suprised I had a plan and we jumped right in. I walked through the plan, with details of the who’s, when’s and how’s. His eyes opened wide while we were doing this, which told me that he had found his top candidate for the position.

You can always stand out as a candidate and you should always do everything in your power to do so. It is not about checking every box on the job description, but more about have the right fundamentals and being a good company fit. Unfortunately, you cannot just say that you’re the best candidate. You need to signal this to the recruiter and hiring manager through your communication and actions you take. You want to show them how you think, how you work and what drives you.

Begin by taking stock of the job description. Read between the lines of the job requirements to understand what they truly need. Are they looking for a project manager? That probably means other project managers are overloaded. How can you fix that? Put yourself in the company’s shoes and ask yourself why they need the role.

Once you identify the likely need, think about how to deliver an outsized impact. Following on the project manager example, how could you make the other project managers more efficient? Where can you add value to the rest of the team to alleviate their needs? Are there innovative processes which and streamline project management tasks?

Once you’ve brainstormed ways to add value, translate those into a plan. How long will it take you to implement each of your ideas? What is the potential impact? Turn your idea’s impact into dollars and cents to evaluate the financials of your ideas. Make some charts and graphs to visualize that impact for the hiring manager. Then, once you are in the interview, present your plan with confidence. You will certainly wow your interviewer and stand out from 90% of other candidates.

Take action today by applying these principles in your day-to-day life. Looking for some new responsibilities? Build something to move the ball forward on an activity. Share this with the appropriate people and ask what else you can do.

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