Read What Color Is Your Parachute? Online
Authors: Richard N. Bolles
What Color Is Your Parachute? (21 page)
Click
here
to view a PDF version of The Ten Greatest Mistakes Made in Job Interviews.
1.
This statistic, first popularized by David Birch of M.I.T., and widely quoted for years, was challenged during the 1990s by economists such as Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and Harvard economist James Medoff. The debate was fueled by a study conducted jointly by Steven J. Davis, a labor economist at the University of Chicago, John Haltiwanger at the University of Maryland, and Scott Schuh at the Federal Reserve. Their study, however, was of U.S.
manufacturing,
not of the economy as a whole. Anyway, what these researchers discovered at that time is that small
manufacturing
companies with fifty or fewer employees created only
one-fifth
of all new manufacturing jobs (
New York Times,
3/25/94). Other researchers, notably Birch, claim that if you include all small companies, they create as many as two-thirds of all new jobs. Has this changed in the new millennium? Hard to tell. Certainly, the U.S. dot-com meltdown back in 2000 made many people afraid to work for small companies—in the Internet field, at least, and in the so-called “New Economy” for sure.
An interview
resembles
dating
, more than it does buying a used car (
you
). An interview is two people trying to decide if they want “to go steady.”
An interview
is not to be thought of as
marketing
yourself: i.e., selling yourself to a half-interested employer. Rather, an interview is part of your
research
,
i.e., the
data-collecting process
that you have been engaged in, or should have been engaged in
,
during your whole job-hunt.
While you are sitting there, with the employer, the question you are trying to find an answer to is: “Do I want to work here, or not?” You use
the interview to find out. Only when you have concluded, Yes, do you then turn your energy toward
selling
yourself.
An interview
is not to be thought of as a test. It’s a
data-collecting process
for the employer, too. They are still trying to decide if you
fit
. They are using the interview to find out “Do I want him or her to work here? Do they have skills, knowledge, or experience that I really need? Do they have an attitude toward work, that I am looking for? And, how will they
fit in
with my other employees?”
An interview
is best prepared for,
before
you go in, by taking these three steps:
Research the organization or company, before going in. Go to their website if they have one, and read everything there that is “About Us.” Ask your local librarian for help in finding any news clippings or other information about the place. And, finally, ask all your friends if they know anyone who ever worked there, or works there still, so you can take them to lunch or tea or Starbucks and find out any inside stories. All organizations love to be loved. If you’ve gone to all this trouble, to find out as much as possible about them, they will be flattered and impressed, believe me, because most job-hunters never go to this amount of trouble. Most just walk in the door, knowing nothing. One time, an IBM recruiter asked a college senior he was interviewing,
What does IBM stand for?
The senior didn’t know, and the interview was over.
(Answer: International Business Machines.)When setting up the interview, specify the time you need. Experts recommend you only ask for twenty minutes, and observe this commitment
religiously.
Once you’re into the interview, stay aware of the time, and don’t stay one minute longer than the twenty minutes, unless the employer
begs
you to—and I mean,
begs.
Always respond with, “I said I would only take twenty minutes of your time, and I like to honor my agreements.” This will always make a big impression on an employer!As you go to the interview, keep in mind that
the person-who-has-the-power-to-hire-you
is sweating, too. Why? Because, the hiring-interview is not a very reliable way to choose an employee. In a survey conducted many years ago among a dozen top United
Kingdom employers,
1
it was discovered that the chances of an employer finding a good employee through the hiring-interview was only
3 percent better
than if they had picked a name out of a hat. In a further ironic finding, it was discovered that if the interview was conducted by someone who would be working directly with the candidate, the success rate dropped to
2 percent below
that of picking a name out of a hat. And if the interview was conducted by a so-called human resources expert, the success rate dropped to
10 percent below
that of picking a name out of a hat.No, I don’t know how they came up with these figures, but they sure are a hoot! And, more important, they are totally consistent with what I have learned about the world of hiring during the past forty years. I have watched so-called experts make
wretchedly
bad choices about hiring
in their own office
, and when they would morosely confess this to me some months later, over lunch, I would playfully tease them with, “If
you
don’t even know how to hire well for your own office, how do you keep a straight face when you’re called in as a hiring consultant by another organization?” And they would ruefully reply, “We act
as though it were
a science.” Well, let me tell you, dear reader, the hiring-interview is
not
a science. It is a very, very hazy art, done badly by most of its employer-practitioners, in spite of their own past experience, their very best intentions, and their carloads of goodwill.The hiring-interview is not what it seems to be. It seems to be one individual (
you
) sitting there, scared to death, while the other individual (
the employer
) is sitting there, blasé and confident.But what it really is, is two individuals (
you
and
the employer
) sitting there scared to death. It’s just that the employer has learned to
hide
his or her fears better than you have, because they’ve had more practice.But this employer is, after all, a human being just like you. In most cases, they were
not
hired to do
this
. It got thrown in with all their other duties. And they may
know
they’re not very good at it. So, they’re afraid.
The employer’s fears include
any
or
all
of the following:
That you won’t be able to do the job: that you lack the necessary skills or experience, and the hiring-interview didn’t uncover this.
That if hired, you won’t put in a full working day, regularly.
That if hired, you’ll be frequently “out sick,” or otherwise absent whole days.
That if hired, you’ll only stay around for a few weeks or at most a few months, and then quit without advance warning.
That it will take you too long to master the job, and thus it will be too long before you’re profitable to that organization.
That you won’t get along with the other workers there, or that you will develop a personality conflict with the boss himself (or herself).
That you will do only the minimum that you can get away with, rather than the maximum that they hired you for.
That you will always have to be told what to do next, rather than displaying initiative—always in a responding mode, rather than an initiating mode (and mood).
That you will have a work-disrupting character flaw, and turn out to be dishonest, or totally irresponsible, a spreader of dissension at work, lazy, an embezzler, a gossip, a sexual harasser, a drug-user or substance abuser, a drunk, a liar, incompetent, or—in a word—
bad news.If this is a large organization, and your would-be boss is not the top person:
that you will bring discredit upon them, and upon their department/section/division, etc., for ever hiring you in the first place—making them lose face, possibly also costing them a raise or a promotion.That you will cost a lot of money, if they make a mistake by hiring you. Currently, in the U.S. the cost to an employer of a bad hire can far exceed $50,000, including relocation costs, lost pay for the period for work not done or aborted, and severance pay—if
they
are the ones who decide to let you go.
No wonder the employer is
sweating
.
And now, to the actual Interview.
An interview
is best conducted by You, in the following way:
Studies have revealed that, in general, the people who get hired are those who mix speaking and listening fifty-fifty in the interview. That is, half the time they let the employer do the talking, half the time in the interview they do the talking. People who didn’t follow that mix, were the ones who didn’t get hired, according to the study.
2
My hunch as to the
reason
why this is so, is that if you talk too much about yourself, you come across as one who would ignore the needs of the organization; if you talk too little, you come across as trying to hide something about your background.
Studies
3
have revealed that when it is your turn to speak or answer a question, you should plan ahead of time not to speak any longer than two minutes at a time, if you want to make the best impression. In fact, a good answer to an employer’s question sometimes only takes twenty seconds to give.
