3 Unasked Questions You Need to Answer to Get Hired
You probably already know the most popular interview questions, like “Tell me about yourself,” “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” and “What are your compensation expectations?” What you may not have realized is that these, and questions like them, have very little to do with the real questions that lie behind virtually every hiring decision.
Memorize answers to these questions to your heart’s content, but if that is all you do to prepare for a job interview, you won’t guarantee success.
Why?
Simple: These questions don’t directly address the underlying concerns of the employer. To get to the heart of those concerns, you’ll need to step back and look at all your job-hunting communications differently. Recognize that your interviewer won’t likely tackle the concerns head on, so you need to, in order to create a strong comfort level for your candidacy.
Instead of preparing for the standard stuff, think about the real issues that hiring authorities must address in order to cross the hiring decision point.
Once you figure out what the employer’s real need is, you are in a better position to market yourself not simply as a bunch of skills, education and experience, but rather as a solution to the employer’s problem.
You’ll then be able to speak to what you can do to solve that problem, based on your abilities and knowledge.
Have you done it before … recently? Every employer wants and needs to know if you’ve done what needs to be done before. What’s the nature of your relevant experience? Employers don’t care, by and large, what you were doing more than 15 years ago, because it likely isn’t relevant to how anything is done today. You might argue the point. You might want to grasp on to that as a point in your favor.
Get over it!
Demonstrate in your cover letter, resume and in your interviews what you’ve done recently that specifically relates to key elements of the job for which you want to be hired. Tell stories about how successful you’ve been, and what you did to achieve those successes.
Can you do what needs to be done here and now? Maybe you haven’t had a similar job with like responsibilities. That doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t land the job. However, in order to do so you certainly need to demonstrate that you are capable of fulfilling its responsibilities.
It might be that you’ve been doing the same kind of thing at a lower level. Or, you might be making a more dramatic career change. Regardless, it is up to you to understand what needs to be done in the role, and convince the hiring authority that you can succeed at it. Don’t just claim that you can do the job. Show how you will be successful doing it!
Make sure you highlight the specific transferable skills, explain how they are relevant and how you would adapt them to your new job.
Or, you might want to explain why you are seeking a greater level of responsibility with an improved rank and salary to go along with it. Highlight this in your cover letter, and be prepared to speak directly to this point when you meet face to face for an interview.
What are the chances you’ll wash out or flee to another better opportunity as soon as one presents itself? When you are looking for a job, it’s easy to forget that the people interviewing you will themselves be evaluated on the quality of the people they hire. If they hire people who consistently fail to work out well, or alternatively are such stars that they are off to another company as soon as “the right thing” comes along, it will be a blot on their record.
That’s why it is often difficult for people who are overqualified to convince interviewers that they want to dial back their responsibilities, and, alternatively, why employers are reluctant to hire you if your past experience and achievements don’t align with the job perfectly.
Again, if this sounds familiar, you’ll want to take the bull by the horns and make a convincing case why this really is a good fit in your cover letter, and throughout the hiring process.
Happy hunting!
Credit : usnews.com
