What Exactly Is a ShowStopper in Job Interviewing?

Introduction  

I f you’d rather fight off an alien invasion than be grilled in an interview, take heart — you’ve come to the right guidebook. With the help of dozens of interviewing authorities, I make your interviewing challenge easy, success ful, and even fun (steal a peek at the last chapter).

 I share with you lots of new things in this fourth edition of Job Interviews For Dummies, ranging from the cosmic shift sparked by the rise of social media that changes what privacy means, to increasingly popular video interviewing that changes how communication occurs

 What hasn’t changed is the fundamental role in the employment process played by job interviews — those crucial meetings that seal the deal on who gets hired and who gets left on the outside looking in.

 Job interviews are a slice of performance art. They’re staged theatrical sketches rather than X-rays of life histories. That’s why theater and drama are the themes of this book, and I hope you have some enjoyable moments with the show-biz motif

So on with the show! With the help of this guidebook, you, too, can be a ShowStopper.

What Exactly Is a ShowStopper in Job Interviewing?

 In the drama of job interviewing, a ShowStopper performance is one that wins so much enthusiastic, prolonged applause that the show is temporarily interrupted until the audience quiets down.

A ShowStopper meeting causes the interviewer to mentally shout, “Bravo! More!” Your stunning impact quickly translates to a preliminary decision in your favor. If follow-up interviews, testing, and reference checking support that reaction, a job offer is on its way to you. The employer may continue to see other candidates to round out the interview process, but in reality, no one else stands a chance of landing the job after you figuratively stop the show

 Job Interviews For Dummies is packed with the essentials of performing ShowStopper interviews:

 ✓ Strategies and techniques

✓ Sample dialogue and research tips 

✓ The best answers to make-or-break questions 

And the Interview Winner is … You! 

Job Interviews Are Show Biz. Seriously

A resume or profile functions as bait to snag a job interview. The inter view is the decisive event when a hiring authority decides whether you’ll be offered the job

Because the job interview is the single most important part of getting a job — and you may not have interviewed in awhile — any number of unfortunate scenarios may be sneaking into your subconscious, including fears of these confidence-disturbers:

✓ Stumbling and mumbling your way through the ordeal 

✓ Being glued to a hot seat as they sweat the answers out of you 

✓ Forgetting your interviewer’s name (or the last place you worked) 

Exhale. You’ve come to the right book. Take the suggestions within these pages to heart, and you’ll head into every interview feeling confident, calm, and well prepared. What more can you ask? 

Interviewing As Theater

When you’re engaged in a selection interview, your entire future may rest on how successful you are in presenting yourself to a stranger across a desk in 15, 30, or 60 minutes. Making life-altering decisions during this micro slice of time isn’t real life — it’s show biz.

Like reality shows on TV, interviews are based on reality but, in fact, are staged. And as in reality shows, only one survivor beats the competition to win the prize

The most successful interviews for you require solid preparation to learn your lines, showing your future bosses that you’re smart and quick on the uptake, as well as able to communicate and not likely to jump the tracks.

At each meeting, your goal is to deliver a flawless performance that rolls off your tongue and gets the employer applauding — and remembering — you. Perfect candidate, you!

But what about all the people who tell you, “Just be yourself and you’ll do fine in your interview”? That advice doesn’t always work for you in the the ater of job interviewing

Why “be yourself” can be poor advice

A scene in the movie Children of a Lesser God features a speech teacher (William Hurt) and a deaf janitor (Marlee Matlin) duking it out in a jolting battle of wits.

In a climactic verbal battle, the janitor signs to the speech teacher, “Let me be me,” to which the speech teacher replies, “Well, who the hell are you?” There is no answer.

The troubled janitor isn’t the only one who has trouble with that question. The bromide “Be yourself” is very difficult to articulate with consistency. Be yourself? Which self? Who is the real you? Our roles change at various times.

Your role: Job seeker

Jerry is a father, an engineer, a marathon runner, a public speaker, a law stu dent at night, and a writer of professional papers. Jennifer is a loving daugh ter, the best salesperson in her company, a pilot, a tennis player, a football fan, and a history buff.

But at this time in their lives, Jerry and Jennifer — like you — are playing the role of a job seeker. Similarly, the stranger across an interviewing desk is playing the role of interviewer

Getting real about the job seeker role

Playing the role most appropriate to you at a given time, and playing it effectively enough to get you the job you deserve, isn’t turning your back on authenticity. To do less than play the role of a hard-charging job seeker courts unemployment — or underemployment

Why “be natural” can be poor advice

First-cousin advice to urging you to “be yourself” in a job interview is the “be natural” admonition. On the whole, isn’t natural better than artificial? Not always

Is combed hair natural? Shaved legs? Trimmed beard? Polished shoes? How about covering a cough in public? Or not scratching where you itch

Being natural in a job interview is fine as long as you don’t use your desire to be natural and authentic as an excuse to display your warts or blurt out nega tive characteristics

Never treat a job interview as a confessional in which you’re obligated to dis close imperfections, indiscretions, or personal beliefs that don’t relate to your future job performance.    

Job interviews are time-centric. Every minute counts in the getting-to-know you game. And to really know someone in a brief encounter of 15, 30, or 60 minutes is simply impossible. Instead of real life, each participant in an inter view sees what the other participant(s) wants seen. If you doubt that, think back: How long did you need to really get to know your roommate, spouse, or significant other?

If you insist on being natural, an employer may pass you over because of your unkempt beard or unshined shoes, or because you don’t feel like smiling that day.

The things you’ve done to date — your identification of your skills, your resume and profile, your cover letter, your networking, your social media efforts — all are wasted if you fail to deliver a job interview that produces a job offer.

Because job interviewing is show biz, make the most of your critical brief encounters by learning the acting skills of storytelling, using body language, establishing rapport, and more in this modern interview guide

New Faces, New Factors in Interviewing

Are you having trouble staking out your future because you can’t close the sale during job interviews? This mangled proverb states the right idea:

If at first you don’t succeed . . . get new batteries

Recharge yourself with knowledge of the new technology and trends that are affecting job interviews. Here are highlights of the contemporary job inter view space.

Curtain going up on tech trends

Classic interviewing skills continue to be essential to job search success, but more technology firepower is needed in a world growing increasingly com plex, interconnected, and competitive.

The new tech trends revolutionize all components of the job search, includ ing the all-important job interview. Here are examples of technological new comers and how they change interviewing practices:

Lighting up screens: Both live and recorded video job interviews are coming of age, requiring that you acquire additional skills and tech niques to make the cut. Chapter 3 is a primer on how you can outflank your competition by presenting like a pro in video interviews.

One and done: Automated and recorded phone screening services permit employers to ask up to a dozen canned screening questions and allow candidates up to two minutes to answer each question. Informed interviewees anticipate the questions and must hit their marks the first time because there are no do-overs on recorded answers. Read about this technology in Chapter 2.

The real deal? Credibility issues are surfacing for multitalented job seekers (or those with a checkered work background) who, by posting various resumes and profiles online, come across as different people with different skill sets. This development can be a knock-out punch for you in a tight job market where employers have plenty of candidates on offer. Sidestep the emerging problem of identity contradictions in inter views by following the advice offered in Chapter 16

Deep web woes: Employers can hire a service to dig deep beyond the usual suspects (Facebook and Twitter) to check out your online history. The service rakes through closed databases in the deep web, leaving vir tually no secrets unrevealed. If the deep web reveals negative informa tion, you may get a chance to defend yourself in an interview — or you may never know why you struck out. See Chapter 16 for more informa tion on this 21st-century sleuthing tool. 

Expect new kinds of interviewers

If the last time you trod the boards of job interviewing you went one to one with a single interviewer, usually a white man or woman, get ready for a dif ferent set of questioners, like these possibilities

✓ A veteran team of six managers — individually or collectively 

✓ A hiring manager (especially in technical and retail fields) who is two decades younger than you

✓ Someone of another color or heritage 

Turn to Chapter 5 for a broader picture of group interviews, and to Chapter 15 for a good tip on interviews with younger bosses.

Showcase your ability to start fast

Because you can’t count on being on the job more than a few years — or, in contract assignments, a few months — the hiring spotlight lasers in on com petencies and skills you can use from Day One. The question is, What can you do for our company immediately?

You can come across as ready to blast off if you do enough research on the company’s goals (increase revenues, reduce costs, acquire new market share, land larger accounts, create a technical breakthrough), think about how you can help the company reach those goals, and remain ready to speak the insider jargon of the industry

If the job you’re applying for isn’t at the professional or managerial level, research the nature of the company’s business, assume that it wants to make or save money, and stock up on a few good buzzwords used in the industry.

Scope out more ways to show your launch speed in Chapter 6.

 Overcome job-hopping objection

 The current employer-driven job market makes it easy for companies to buy into the “job-hopper objection” and, as a matter of policy, turn away unemployed candidates and people who’ve held three jobs in five years. Unfortunately, many of these automatic rejects have been trapped in a cycle of frequent layoff’s, part-time work, temp assignments, seasonal employment, contract jobs, freelance gigs, and company shutdowns

 Some companies refuse to hire so-called job hoppers, claiming that they’ll quit before employers can get a return on their training investment — or that, if the unemployed candidates were any good, they’d be on someone’s payroll.

What’s a sincere, hard-working person to do? Try this quartette of basic rebuttals

✓ Say varied experience beats repeated experience. Explain how your dynamic work history makes you a far more vibrant and resourceful contributor than if you’d been stationary for four years.

✓ Briefly explain departures. Give a reasonable, short, even-toned account of why you left each job. (It wasn’t your fault.)

✓ Review your accomplishments. You can’t change the amount of time you were on certain jobs, but you can divert the focus to your accom plishments and contributions. Employers are impressed by candidates who are good at what they do, even if they had only a short period of time in the role.

✓ Confirm interest in stable employment. Forget the “loyalty” chatter. Make a point of your intense interest in a stable opportunity where you can apply all your considerable know-how for the employer’s benefit.

Cut out the loyalty oath 

Answers to certain questions are pretty much the same year after year, but watch out for one humdinger requiring a new response: Why do you want to work here? The old “I’m looking for a home and I’ll be loyal to you forever” statements don’t play as well as they once did

Many employers now solicit contract employees — no muss, no fuss in get ting them out the door when a project’s finished or when a decision is made to outsource the work.

Rather than pledge eternal fidelity, talk about your desire to do the work. Talk about how you are driven to funnel substantial amounts of productivity into the job quickly. Talk about wanting to use your superior technology skills. Talk about your interest in work that excites you, work that matters.

But fidelity? Pass on that as a theme song; it won’t make the charts today.