Preparing for an Interview

Business of yester year, was about what you knew, yesterday it was about who you know. Today it is about who knows you and more importantly what do they know or believe about you. The past, success was based on skills and networking. Our current social media and technology age, as brought strangers into our lives and home (binnekamer), managing your personal professional brand has never been this important, interviewing is a critical marketing opportunity for your business, Me Inc.

Pre- Interview Research

1. Your career path

Interviews are important and needs to be a conscious strategy not just window shopping. Redefine and reset your career path. Creating a career plan, knowing yourself, your needs and desires for the future before you enrol in an interview process is critical. We have been seeing a rise in counteroffers as individuals are not aligning interview processes opportunities to their career, and are being swayed by their current companies with promises and promotions only for the benefit of self preservation, prevention of inconvenience of the managers. The only consequence of counteroffers are that your character comes into questions, you are buy-able, and research shows most people make a change within 6 months after counteroffers anyway. When you have a clear career path, decisions making is easy and congruent and facilitate growth.

1. Company

Researching an prospective employer is not about facts and their annual report, it is about finding information what your can leverage in a discussion. Twitter to get an understanding of the kind of conversations that are happening in the organisation and their view on issues.

The Waiting Room

Is like a glass display box, you need to be ready, poised and present. Arriving a few minutes early allows you to settle yourself as well as get a feel for the culture and environment. Power pose in the bathroom will charge your batteries of confidence.

First impressions are lasting, a firm handshake and good eye contact is key. A great tip for a smooth transition to the interview room is to ask the interviewer to lead corridors, so you don’t do the awkward dance of left and right, fall over your feet or each other. A powerful NLP technique is the Match and Mirror the person’s voice, in terms of pitch, volume and speed, the result is instant report.

The Interview

Panel interviews are becoming more prevalent due to time constraints, don’t get intimidated. Make a connection with each member, address your answer to the person who asked the question as well as making eye contact with the rest of the member, view is as a presentation with a bigger audience than one.

Telephonic interviews are challenging as your voice needs to convey your personality. Be prepared brush your hair put on your lipstick, get in the zone. NLP research has shown that our non- verbal communication is more important than the words we use. We recommend standing up for the duration or at least the start of the call, the elevation with assist with voice projection and confidence. Smile, the vibration is visual and audible across a telephone.

Key competencies for Procurement and Supply chains of the future

Our clients has expressed great frustration around candidates impressing on paper (cv’s) and disappoint in real life (interviews). The challenge is the lack of intention  and alignment in cv’s. often is a list of skills and facts, rather than a portfolio of evidence. Skills are not a measure of success, competencies are.

Key Competencies:

1 Managing Vision and Purpose

2 Strategic Agility

3 Innovation Management

4 Creativity

5 Building Effective Teams

6 Motivating Others

7 Planning

8 Dealing with Ambiguity

In the wake of the 4^th industrial resolution the Master competency is Emotional Intelligence, which will be on the top job skills for the future. This has been confirmed by the Career Builder Survey where 71% of hiring managers stated they valued emotional intelligence in an employee over IQ.

Tough questions

Deal breaker questions we see people fail at

1. Tell me about yourself: This is the easiest and hardest question, be the story teller of your career story, prepare your elevator speech, engage your audience, show your career highlights. Where have you saved costs, increased revenue, or affected change in business or people?
2. 5 year plan: You don’t need the perfect answer, you don’t need to know the future, but it is important that you have a direction.
3. Reason for leaving: Know why you want to leave, how this role lines up with your future plans. What you are not getting for your career or life based on your priorities and what you need.

Interview the interviewer

Show an interest in this person, they leadership, they company and how you can add value to them and yourself. Employment is a reciproprical relationship. What is the company and the line managers goals, priorities and vision for the next period, and how can you contribute to that.

Post interview

One your exit, thank people for their time, if you are interested in pursuing the role, tell them so. If you are uncertain sleep over night, have your questions clarified and be decisive about continuing the engagement. We often say that the way you project management the recruitment process with the client is the only way for them to see how you would management yourself and the work in their environment.

Your career is your life’s work, choose it consciously, represent your brand authentically and live your best life!