Questioning the Questioner

What do you think is the purpose of asking questions at job interviews?

The common view appears to be that it is a way of showing you are a better, cleverer or more motivated candidate than others.  There’s plenty of advice around about how you can and should impress the interviewer with smartly asked questions.  I’m sure there are enough recruiters and hiring managers out there who are impressed but personally it doesn’t sit comfortably.  I couldn’t ask questions with this intention because it would feel inauthentic, even manipulative.

Nonetheless asking questions are a natural part of the dialogue and helps to build the relationship between you and the interviewer.  It’s also necessary for you to be able to decide if you want to pursue the opportunity.  In short, it’s a good idea to ask questions during the interview, but please do it for the right reasons, not to look clever.

That means asking the question because you genuinely want to know the answer.

There are two motivations for asking questions in interviews:

1. to help you to decide if the role or organisation is right for you
2. to enable the organisation to know everything they need to know about you.

For the first category there may be any number of questions you have.  Your questions will arise out of gaps between what you are looking for from your next role and the information that has been provided about this particular role.  It’s not unusual for most, if not all, of these questions to be answered during the course of the interview without your having to ask them and this situation is a common cause for concern – “They answered all my questions and I felt stupid because I had to tell them I had none when they invited me to ask them anything”.

Fine if that’s the case but there is always at least one question you can ask: category 2, and there’s one other from category 1 that you can ask that probably won’t have been covered in the interview.

It has to do with your performance in the first few months of joining the organisation.  What success in the role looks like over time is crucial for you.  You’re likely to be on some kind of probation period.  How will you know if you are performing well enough to get through that probation period successfully?  You need to ask something like:

“If I’m offered this role, what will success for me look like after 3/6/12 months? What will you be looking for me to have achieved in that time?”

This will get them thinking about expectations and will tell you what you need  to achieve.  If you don’t think what they tell you is realistic it will help you to decide either to withdraw from the process, or to enter into a conversation with them about what you feel is achievable.

Moreover, and this is where NLP experts get excited, by phrasing the question in that way you are placing a image in the interviewers head of you succeeding in the job.  This can be influential in the recruitment decision-making process, particularly if they’ve not given much consideration to the matter (so perhaps I am advocating a bit of manipulation?)

You have to judge the situation when deciding if you are going to ask questions during the meeting as the opportunity arises, or wait until the end when you may or may not be invited to ask questions.  If the conversation is informal then it would seem appropriate to ask as you go along, and mop up with any outstanding questions at the end.  If it is more formal you will usually be given your chance at the end, but if you are not, do ask if there is time for you to ask questions.  If there isn’t then ask when it would be possible to do so.

Now, category 2.

I said there’s always one question you can ask, the purpose of which is to make sure they have been given every opportunity find out all they need to know about you, and it’s this:

“Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to know about me, or are there any areas we have discussed that you’d like to know more about?”

Oh, and one last thing.  Never ask about the salary.

If you are currently or thinking about a new job and would like to excel at interviews why not attend my next  half-day workshop on Interview Preparation skills.  It takes place on March 29th in the Barbican, London.  Full details and registration here.

I’m also running a workshop on Networking for Job Search on March 8th in London.  Details here.

One easy way to fail a job interview

It’s very easy to fail a job interview, and many people manage to do it within the first few minutes.  In fact many people fail at an interview before it has even started, but I’m going to focus on the way we lose out during the conversation.

The really important work in this area has been largely misunderstood so before I go any further I’ll try to clear up this common misconception about first impressions.

Back in the 1960′s psychologist Albert Mehrabian researched and wrote about the importance of, and relationship between, verbal and non-verbal communication.  Ever since then people around the world have been flashing up his famous 7% – 38% – 55% pie chart and explaining it incorrectly.

Here it is again, and this time I’ll try to explain what it is really saying.

The three components of communication

The common misconception is that when we communicate, 55% of the information is visual, 38% is vocal or tone of voice and 7% is verbal or the actual words used. This is wrong.  If it were true it would be saying that 93% of any message received by a person from another is non-verbal.  Mehrabian stated categorically that it was not the case that the non-verbal elements carry the vast majority of the message being communicated.

What he did assert is that any communication between people contains visual, vocal and verbal elements, and that what is important is that all three should be congruent with each other – in other words that they communicate a consistent message.  Why?  Because the non-verbal elements are noticed – they irritate – if they are inconsistent with the words.

When it comes to the extent to which we like another person (and this is the important point when it comes to first impressions at interview), Mehrabian stated that the visual accounts for 55% of the liking, the vocal accounts for 38% of the liking and the verbal accounts for 7%.  To put it plainly, people don’t tend to like a person because of what they say, they like them because of how they say it, how they look when they say it, and the extent to which they sense congruence between the verbal and the non-verbal.

It’s the non-verbal elements of communication that convey a person’s feelings about what they are saying and this is why congruence is critical.  If you say one thing but do not mean it, or are not convinced by it yourself, you will betray an inconsistency that is noticed, subconsciously, by the other person, and that will give them an uneasy feeling that translates into their overall assessment of you, and in particular the extent to which they like or trust you.

Your words must convey your feelings.

Have you ever asked someone how they are and they’ve answered “I’m fine” yet you know from their demeanour that they are not.  That’s what we’re talking about.  The lack of eye contact and tone of voice are the clearest signals that what they are saying is not consistent with how they are feeling.

If, during an interview, particularly close to the beginning, you are similarly inconsistent, the interviewer will pick up on it and it will influence their level of comfort with you.

So what’s the answer?  How do you make sure there is no incongruence between your words and feelings?

The first thing to do is to make sure you are as self-aware as possible.  If you are self-aware you will not find the questions that challenge your feelings come as a surprise and you will be more able to say what you really think and feel than desperately trying to say something you hope will be acceptable to the other person.

Secondly, if you are really well prepared for the interview you will know exactly what you want to say for each of the questions you are asked, because you will have anticipated them.

Third, think about the question before you speak, and tell the truth.  The truth is always congruent for you and while you may think the truth is not always going to get you the job, I’ve never found that the the job is right for a person who has to lie to get it.  Besides, the truth is often appreciated as a merit.  Even if the answer you give is not what the interviewer was expecting, your honesty may be what gets you the job.

If you are currently or thinking about a new job and would like to excel at interviews why not attend my next  half-day workshop on Interview Preparation skills.  It takes place on February 22nd in the Barbican, London.  Full details and registration here.

Who comes first, the employee or the customer?

Of all the perennial business debates I find this perhaps the most irritating.  There’s no answer to the question because it’s the wrong question.

It’s the wrong question because it assumes a zero-sum game.  It’s one or the other.  It’s the customer or the employee.

Who’s more important?  The customers – after all they are the ones who pay us, and if they don’t come first they’ll go to our competitor then our business will fold leaving our employees without a job.

Oh but hang on, if the employees don’t come first they’ll go away and work for our competitor and we won’t be able to give our customer what they want so they will follow the employee to our competitor.

What about the idea that the two are not competing for the same resources and attention from the business managers, but that they share a single objective – excellence?  Excellent service, excellent value, excellent product, excellent working environment.

Now there’s no need to think about either of them coming first, because what is good for one is good for the other, and vice versa.

They both come first.

The real question is, “How do we take care of our customers and our employees?”

Are there ever times where we must divert our resources toward one or the other?  How about money?  Should we discount our prices or increase our bonuses?  If we increase bonuses are we denying benefit to our customers?  Only if it means that our prices are uncompetitive as a result.  Why? Because if our prices are uncompetitive then sales will go down and if sales go down, so will bonuses.  If our customers are happy with us and sales are healthy, then bonuses are the right thing to do – both for the customer and employee.

If, on the other hand, we are losing market share and paying our employees bonuses that are unjustified, then we are doing both customer and employee a disservice, because we are not giving our customer value, and the short term benefit to our employee is not only creating a complacent culture (the exact opposite of what a bonus scheme is supposed to do), but is hastening the decline of the business, which puts their job at risk.

And if we are fortunate enough to run a business that enjoys a massively dominant position then we may be able to protect ourselves to some degree against customer attrition in the face of undeserved bonuses, but in the long term our quality of service and reputation will diminish which will lower the barriers to entry or increase the customers search for a substitute product.

Are there any businesses where it is possible to categorically say that the customer or the employee should always come first?  I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Are you looking for a new job?  My workshop on Interview Preparation will get you there faster, and at only £54.00! It’s in London on February 22nd  Details here