Beth Ross and Total Picture Radio (1 of 4) Career Coaching - Interview technique

Welcome to a special careers transition edition of Total Picture Radio. This is Peter Clayton reporting.

Joining us today in New York is Beth Ross, a certified career and executive coach. Her background includes a distinguished career as an executive search professional maintaining a bicoastal practice and executing select executive searches.

Beth’s coaching practice is global in scope. Her sessions with clients in the greater New York area are in person, while working with individuals in other areas and time zones by telephone. The protocol includes all areas of the job search and career transition process with particular emphasis on interview training.

Be sure to visit Beth’s feature page in the careers transitions channel of Total Picture Radio. That’s TotalPicture.com for resource links and show notes. Beth’s website is BethRoss.com.

Beth, welcome back to Total Picture Radio.

Beth: Thank you.

Peter: We’ve done an awful lot of talking here on Total Picture Radio about how you go about preparing for a job interview, and I would really love to get your input on this because as we both know, the job market has substantially changed over the last couple of years. It’s become much more competitive again and you really have to go in with an understanding of how to approach an interview if you’re going to be successful.

Can you tell us how you go about approaching and working with your clients in developing those kinds of strategies that helps them (A) get in the door and get past that first interview with the gatekeeper.

Beth: Yeah, you know since we first talked – it hasn’t been that long – I think the job market has changed dramatically. More people come to me for interview training than anything else. And that means it’s a very emotionally charged subject. It’s like oh my gosh, if I get an interview, then what do I do? Everything that happens in that interview is really, really, really important. So what do you do to prepare?

The first thing you do is get prepared. Information is power; you’ve got to know everything there is to know about the company, and that’s pretty easy with the Internet. But more importantly, know everything you can about the person who is going to be interviewing you.

These first interviews can be anything; it can be, heaven forbid, a telephone interview which has its upsides and its downsides. It can be an HRR person that you have to get past. You have to figure out the purpose of this first interview is never to get a job; it’s to get the next meeting – and whoever is interviewing you, you have to get to the next meeting – because even if it turns out to be the hiring authority, him or herself, it still means you’re going to need to come back and talk to others.

Peter: In your experience currently, how many interviews do people normally have to go through before they even get close to getting a job offer?

Beth: It seems as if that number is increasing. That’s why preparation for the interview is so important; the questions that you as a candidate ask. You’ve got to remember that some time in that experience, having wooed the person in front of you, knowing that they’re liking you and that things are really looking good, you’ve got to find out where they are in the interview process, how many candidates they’ve already interviewed, or how many more they expect to interview, when do they expect to make a decision, and then the clincher is, being able to look across the table at whoever this person is or persons (sometimes it’s a multiple interview) and say “how do I stack up with the competition.”

Peter: So that’s a question that you often ask in an interview is you want to know how you stack up, how far they are in the interview process and you’re hoping that you are probably the last interview, right?

Beth: That would be very, very, very good if it turns out that way, and sometimes it doesn’t. If you’re the very first one, you know you’ve got your work cut out for you; you’re going to have to keep a lot of contact going through the process.

Now having said that about multiple interviews, it can turn around and be totally different. If your qualifications look just right and there is really synergy with that other… especially with this first person, whoever it is.

Look, everybody ultimately gets a job because somebody likes them. You wouldn’t be sitting in the room in the interview unless you’ve got the requisite qualifications.

Peter: One thing that we had talked about is the fact that the traditional job is dead. Can you elaborate on that and explain what you mean by that.

Beth: It is dead in the sense … think about it, it was fairly recently when people thought okay, I’m going to go to college, I’m going to get out, I’m going to have a degree, and then I will line up with other people, take an entry level position and grow for 30 years until I retire. Forget it.

Whatever job you have today, at this moment, or whatever one you’re about to get, I guarantee it won’t be the last one. You’ve got to distinguish between jobs and careers in today’s marketplace.

Peter: What are some of the things you can do to help create a career path for yourself because as we both know the career – and as you just said – the career and the job are two very separate things and you really… people are overwhelmed today with the amount of responsibility that they have in their jobs and trying to do some sort of balance with their home life and their work life but they really still have to figure out a way to carve out time for promoting themselves and their career and sort of keeping that on track.

What are some of the strategies you give your clients to help them do that?

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