What Color Is Your Parachute? (23 page)

1. “What does this job involve?”
   You want to understand exactly what tasks will be asked of you, so that you can determine if these are the kinds of tasks you would really like to do, and can do.
   

2. “What are the skills a top employee in this job would have to have?”
   You want to find out if your skills match those that the employer thinks a top employee in this job has to have, in order to do this job well.
   

3. “Are these the kinds of people I would like to work with, or not?”
   Do not ignore your intuition if it tells you that you would not be comfortable working with these people!! You want to know if they have the kind of personalities that would make it easy for you to accomplish your work, and if they share your most important values.
   

4. “If we like each other, and both want to work together, can I persuade them there is something unique about me, that makes me different from nineteen or nine hundred other people who are applying for this job?”
   You need to think out, way ahead of time, what does make you different from other people who can do the same job. For example, if you are good at analyzing problems, how do you do that? Painstakingly? Intuitively, in a flash? By consulting with greater authorities in the field? You see the point. You are trying to put your finger on the “style” or “manner” in which you do your work, that is distinctive and hopefully appealing, to
   this
   employer.
   

5. “Can I persuade them to hire me at the salary I need or want?”
   This requires some knowledge on your part of how to conduct salary negotiation. That’s covered in the
   next chapter
   .
   

You will probably want to ask questions one and two out loud. You will
observe
quietly the answer to question three. You will be prepared to make the case for questions four and five, when the
appropriate
time in the interview arises (again, see the
next chapter
).

How do you introduce these questions? You might begin by reporting to them just exactly how you’ve been conducting your job-hunt, and what impressed you so much about
their
organization during your research, that you decided to come in and talk to them about a job. Then you can fix your attention, during the remainder of the interview, on finding out the answers to those five questions—in your own way.
⁴

These five questions pop up in a slightly different form (yet again), if you’re there to talk
not
about a job that already exists but rather, one that you hope they will
create
for you. In that case, these five questions get changed into five
statements
, that you make to the person-who-has-the-power-to-create-this-job:

1. What you
   like
   about this organization.
   

2. What sorts of
   needs
   you find intriguing in this field and in this organization (unless you first hear the word coming out of their mouth, don’t use the word “
   problems
   ,” as most employers prefer synonyms such as
   “challenges”
   or
   “needs”
   ).
   

3. What
   skills
   seem to you to be needed in order to meet such needs.
   

4. Evidence
   from your past experience that demonstrates you have those very skills. Employers are looking for
   examples
   from your past performance and achievement; not just vague statements like: “I’m good at…” They want concrete examples, specifically of your transferable skills, your content skills, and your self-management skills, i.e., traits. If you read
   here
   , you already know this. It’s the underlying principle of
   Behavioral Interviewing
   , or
   competency-based interviewing
   .
   

   You may be asked, or you can pose the question yourself: “What are the three most important competencies, for this job?” Then, of course, you need to demonstrate during the interview that you
   have
   those three—for the job that you want them to create.
   

5. What is
   unique
   about the way
   you
   perform those skills. As I’ve said before: every prospective employer wants to know
   what makes you different
   from nineteen or nine hundred other people who can do the same kind of work as you. You
   have
   to know what that is. And then not merely talk about it, but actually demonstrate it by the way you conduct your part of the hiring-interview.
   

   

In the U.S. employers may only ask you questions that are related to the requirements and expectations of the job. They cannot ask about such things as your creed, religion, race, age, sexual orientation, or marital status. Any other questions about your past are
fair game
. But don’t be fooled by any employer’s absorption with your past. You must realize that the only thing any employer can possibly care about is your future…with
them
. Since that future is impossible to uncover, they usually try to gauge what it would be by asking about your past (behavior).

Therefore, during the hiring-interview before you answer any question the employer asks you about your past, you should pause to think out what fear about the
future
lies underneath that question—and then address that fear, obliquely or directly.

In most cases, as I have been emphasizing, the person-who-has-the-power-to-hire-you is
anxious,
or
afraid,
or
worried.
And this worry or fear lies beneath all the questions they ask.

Here are some
examples
:

Click
here
to view a PDF version of Employer’s Questions and Answers.

When the interview is going favorably for you, the time-frame of the employer’s questions will often move—
however slowly
—through the following stages.

1. Distant past:
   e.g., “Where did you attend high school?”
   

2. Immediate past:
   e.g., “Tell me about your most recent job.”
   

3. Present:
   e.g., “What kind of a job are you looking for?”
   

4. Immediate future:
   e.g., “Would you be able to come back for another interview next week?”
   

5. Distant future:
   e.g., “Where would you like to be five years from now?”
   

The more the time-frame of the interviewer’s questions moves from the past to the future, the more favorably you may assume the interview is going for you. On the other hand, if the interviewer’s questions stay firmly in the past, the outlook is not so good.
Ah well, y’ can’t win them all!

When the time-frame of the interviewer’s questions moves firmly into the future,
then
is the time for you to get more specific about the job in question. Experts say it is essential for you to ask, at that point, these kinds of questions:

What is the job, specifically, that I am being considered for?

If I were hired, what duties would I be performing?

What responsibilities would I have?

What would you be hiring me to accomplish?

Would I be working with a team, or group? To whom would I report?

Whose responsibility is it to see that I get the training I need, here, to get up to speed?

How would I be evaluated, how often, and by whom?

What were the strengths and weaknesses of previous people in this position?

Why did
you
yourself decide to work here?

What do you wish you had known about this company before you started here? What particular characteristics do you think have made you successful in your job here?

May I meet the persons I would be working with and for (if it isn’t you)?

Remember,
the hiring process is more like choosing a mate, than it is like deciding whether or not to buy a new car
. “Choosing a mate” here is a metaphor. To elaborate upon the metaphor a little bit, it means that
the mechanisms
by which human nature decides to hire someone, are
similar
to the mechanisms by which human nature decides whether or not to marry someone. Those mechanisms, of course, are
human
: impulsive, intuitional, nonrational, unfathomable, and often made on the spur of the moment.