Interview secured, research done, the job matches your career goals, and you prepped with your recruiter. Nothing can stop you now! But first, read through these interview myths and tips to make sure your interview goes well.
1. HALF-TRUE: You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.
The employer is the one to make the job offer—you do not have any decisions to make until they want to hire you. Treat the interview as a sales call and avoid interrogating the hiring manager.
We have often heard candidates say, “The interview went well, the hiring manager addressed all my concerns, and now I think I am interested. This could be a good step for me, let’s go to next steps.” However, the interviewer felt the candidate was off-putting and drilled them with questions. As a result, they passed.
An aggressive interviewing style can cost you the potential of a new position.
2. HALF-TRUE: Always e-mail an immediate thank-you after the interview.
Sending a prompt thank-you is an opportunity to keep your candidacy fresh, reiterate your enthusiasm, and provide closure. Rather than dashing off a few standard lines on your way out the door, take time with the wording, highlighting one or two salient points from the conversation.
This is your last chance to sell yourself. The hiring managers will imagine your note as an example of what would go out to their best customers if they hired you.
Often, thank-you notes are passed along internally as the hiring manager represents you to their peers and managers as a potential hire. Reiterate what specifically you bring to the table. Give them good material to work with in vouching for you.
What if you bombed a question or left out an important point? Your thank-you is a second chance. Avoid negative language, such as “I forgot…” or “I mistakenly said…” Write a few succinct sentences amending your answer in the interview.
See more tips for writing thank-you notes on our website here.
3. HALF-TRUE: Present strengths as a “weakness.”
“What’s your biggest weakness?” Common wisdom says you should answer with a strength posing as a weakness; you care too much, work too hard, etc. These answers come off as insincere.
The better strategy is to accurately self-diagnose a real weakness, explain the steps you took to improve, and relate your success.
Examples:
“I didn’t have a strong grasp of MS Project, so I took a training course to help my understanding. It’s now my go-to project planning tool.”
“I wasn’t a great public speaker, so I signed up for Toastmasters and pushed myself. Now I lead most of my company’s presentations.”
4. HALF-TRUE: Ask lots of questions.
Do not just kill time with rapid-fire questions at the end of the interview. Good questions highlight your selling points, show understanding, and help you stand out. It is important to prepare a lot of questions, but you will likely not use them all. Many interviewers allow a time slot for questions. If you are caught off guard, the interview may end early, ending your opportunity to bring up key strengths that set you apart from your competition.
The interviewer may answer some questions during the conversation. Ask open-ended questions that prompt dialogue about your skills. Ask specific, targeted questions. As recruiters, the best feedback we can hear is, “Your candidate asked three or four great questions. We could tell they know the space and did their homework.” Quality takes precedence over quantity.
Want personalized interviewing advice? Contact our recruiters directly at info@bluesignal.com.
Very interesting!
“you do not have any decisions to make until they want to hire you”
I do not agree with this statement. That smacks of the passive candidate and I am anything but that. When I am interviewing for a position, you’d better believe that I am sizing up the company and their staff while they do the same for me. I have had several occasions where I withdrew from an interview process because I felt that this was not a good fit for me or for other reasons. The time to think about these things is while you are in the process, not when it has come to an offer.
Hi Erika,
Thank you for reading and replying to our blog. We appreciate your interest. We agree with you that once you know a job is not for you, you should withdraw from consideration immediately. We also agree the ‘time to think about these things is not only during the process,’ but also before initiating an interview and most importantly when it has come to an offer. This is a big decision and should not be taken lightly.
The reason we called this post “Half-Truths” is because the statements are true half of the time.
‘Sizing up the company and their staff while they do the same for you’ is a normal practice and how we guide our candidates. We do however want to ensure the candidate receives the whole picture before making that decision and often times the questions they ask can jeopardize their candidacy while trying to learn the whole picture. This is an integral reason they have us as an intermediary as we can ask any question no matter how ridiculous or offensive without naming them specifically as the source of inquiry.
Most of the questions a candidate will have about a role we are able to answer beforehand, and rarely do we set up an interview unless most of their concerns have been addressed.
Now on the flip side, most companies will have a candidate interview with many people before they make an offer. Some of these folks are not professional interviewers, some are not fully aware of the job and/or any potential changes that have been made to the job. Some have a completely different interpretation of what the job entails. We are simply saying don’t make the decision to withdraw too early based on information you might hear that could be inaccurate or clarification. You could love everything you hear from that point on and you can’t go back and change how you responded to a question or a comment you made while ‘sizing up the company’.
We have had several candidates accept amended offers because they followed our advice and stayed in sales mode while interviewing. After the company said “we want to hire them”, then we were able to go back and inquire about changing some of the items brought out in the interview- duties, perks, title, budget size, etc.
Just like any business decision or life decision, it is better to have options. It’s better for you to walk out of the meeting or call with them wanting you and you being the one who takes a pass vs. the other way around.
Don’t let a snap judgement while ‘sizing up the company’ and an aggressive interview style cost you your potential dream job.