Preparing For Your Interview With A Recruiter

Today’s job search tip is about the interview. This one will specifically be about the initial interview with the recruiter. I will write a separate post about interviewing with the hiring manager and the final panel later this week.

The through line for the whole interview process, and the biggest takeaway that I want you to get from this piece is BE YOURSELF. You are not going to end up in a position at a company that fits with your values, style, and culture if you’re not projecting your authentic self. I understand that it’s sometimes difficult to see things this way, but any job that you aren’t hired for by being yourself is definitely a job that will make you unhappy eventually.

I do want to go off topic to tell you that you should not let losing out on a job opportunity affect your self esteem. I know that this is hard, especially if you’ve been laid off and are in a dire financial situation but you really need to try. Not every person is a good match for every company or every team. That is not a reflection on you or your self worth. As someone who has been behind the curtain for decades now, I can assure you that there are a myriad of reasons why a candidate isn’t chosen for a particular position and those reasons are very VERY rarely that they’re a jerk. When you let your job search affect your self esteem, that loss of self esteem comes through in your interviews and then a vicious cycle is created. I mean it sincerely when I tell you that very few rejections are a judgement call on who you are as a person so you absolutely have to brush them off and move on with your confidence in your skills in tact.

Now back to the recruiter interview. Here’s something that you should know about the recruiter interview: we’re largely trying to assess whether you’re a good fit for the company and for the team.

As I said in the beginning of this article, it’s important that you relax and be yourself. We want your personality to come through during our interview with you. Be honest in your answers. Share the reason why you’re looking for new opportunities. If you’re looking for more compensation, say that. There’s nothing wrong with telling a potential employer what your priorities are right at this moment. If you’re trying to escape a psychopathic manager who you suspect is prowling around their neighborhood in the evenings looking for cats to murder, be honest but tactical! Seriously though, if you’re being asked to work a lot of hours that you don’t want to work you should communicate that to the recruiter. If your manager’s management style isn’t one that works for you, definitely share that information and be specific about where the disconnect is and discuss the type of environment that you thrive in.

A good recruiter is trying not to put you into the same situation that you’re trying to get out of. If you’re not honest with us, we can’t do that. If you are a person who needs to be promoted every year or year and a half, you should make that clear. You should also make clear the steps you’ve taken in the past to grow and develop into a bigger role, and to articulate what that bigger role looked like. As a recruiter, I need to know these things about you in order to determine if my company is right for you.

My next tip is an important one that applies to every single interview you will ever have in your life: answer the questions that you’re being asked concisely. Listen to the question carefully and limit your answer to the parameters of that question. When I ask you why you’re looking to leave your current employer, I don’t need a 3 minute preamble with effusive praise for your current company and manager. I know that you’re unhappy because you’re looking for a job. You’re not scoring any points by praising your current employer. Answer my question because I have a reason for asking it. When a hiring manager asks you about a particular skill that you picked up in a specific role, they don’t need an accounting of the 2 years that led up to your being moved into the role where you picked up that skill. Being overly verbose will cost you a job over 90% of the time. I’m not exaggerating. Nobody likes verbosity. The internet has diminished all of our attention spans. That includes mine, yours, and literally every single person you will ever meet again. If you’re not sure how much detail to give, my advice is that you give the answer that stays within the scope of the question and then ask the interviewer if they would like some more details.

My final tip for your recruiter interview is that you should be prepared to answer the question about your compensation requirements. This is not a question that should confound you, especially since the salary ranges for each and every position I’m currently recruiting for are in my job ads. Get it together. Create a spreadsheet so that you can easily access the published ranges for every position you’ve applied for. I’m not going to go into how to approach salary negotiation in this article but I will tell you that if you don’t tell me what your salary requirements are, there won’t be any further conversations about the position we’re discussing. I am not going to wait until the end of an interview process to find out that your salary requirements are wildly beyond the range I have to work with and you’re not going to dazzle anyone enough to move that range. I don’t care how charming you were up to that point. If I don’t have your salary requirements, I’m not setting you up to speak with the hiring manager.

I’m extremely transparent with every candidate that I work with in regard to compensation because I don’t believe that the experience of landing a job should in any way mirror that of buying a used car. Negotiating is an unpleasant experience for everyone so I don’t do it. I honestly put together the best compensation packages I can for every single person I work with and I’m very clear about precisely what that package is going to look like in my very first conversation with a candidate. Believe me, I would never, ever undervalue a lifetime of experience and skills that someone has built up. It’s happened to me and it’s not a good feeling.

Let’s assume that you’re working with a recruiter who isn’t as forthright. You should ask for what you want to make when you’re asked the question. Playing coy is not going to advantage you in anyway and it’s not a cute negotiation strategy. If you really take a minute to think about it, that recruiter has negotiated dozens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of salaries. How many have you negotiated? Your best strategy is to work in partnership with the recruiter toward the same goal. Both you and your recruiter want to hire you. We recruiters actually all develop an attachment to every candidate that we put through a full interview process. Believe me, we’re rooting for you. Establishing an adversarial relationship with that recruiter around your comp package will absolutely result in a smaller comp package. Whether consciously or subconsciously, that recruiter will start the compensation conversations with finance and HR at a smaller number because it’s human nature to be more generous when you like someone. We are all humans and we all want the same things. We want to be trusted, treated fairly and most of all we want to feel good about every interaction we have with each other.

The hiring manager will not be able to help you get a bigger salary. They are completely shut out of the compensation package process for a reason so you shouldn’t even bother trying to go down that road.

My final tip is another one that applies to every step of your interview process. When the person that you’re interviewing with has finished asking their questions and asks you if you have any questions for them, you should remind yourself that a question is a request for more information. It is not an opportunity to emulate someone in a mattress commercial and pitch yourself. That interviewer got the information that they needed to determine if there’s a good match. What you’re doing is annoying them with a sales pitch and implying? that they just didn’t get all of the information that they need about you to make a decision. Don’t do that. You should also not waste that time by asking generic questions that in no way demonstrate that you were engaged in the conversation that you just had. You should ask questions about things that are broadly important to you like culture, challenges, career progression, etc. Make sure that you’re asking the appropriate question to the appropriate person. A question about career progression would not be appropriate for an interviewer from a cross functional team who is on the panel to assess the skills you have as it pertains to that team but it is an appropriate question for the hiring manager. You should always, ALWAYS look up every single person you’re going to interview with on LinkedIn so that you know who you’re about to speak with.

I will get into the rest of the? interview process and what you should and shouldn’t do once you’ve completed your interviews in my next post.

I hope this one was useful!