Gary Will's WORKSEARCH:
Selling Yourself To An Employer
Chapter 14-Part One
[a] [b] [c] [d] [e] [f] [g] [h] [i]
Asking questions -- an essential and overlooked step
From the book How to Prepare for an Employment Interview.
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This book shows you how to sell yourself in an employment interview.
In traditional employment interviews, once the interviewer has asked all their questions, they will
ask if you have any questions for them. You would prefer to be able to ask questions as early in the
interview as possible to get some feeling for the employer's situation and needs. Unfortunately,
many interviewers -- especially those from HR -- will tell you right away that they aren't interested in
hearing any of your questions until they've finished theirs.
Trained interviewers invariably use some form of "structured interview" (which we'll talk about in
Chapter 20). They have been taught that skilled interviewers come in with a prepared list of
questions and don't allow the interviewee to "take control" by asking their own questions. I can
guarantee that you're not going to convince them to abandon this approach, so just accept it and
work with it.
Unlike many other interview guide writers, I don't recommend that you try to take over the
interview by answering questions with questions or using similarly irritating techniques. You should
try to gauge your interviewer's receptiveness to adopt a more give-and-take approach, and have the
flexibility to respond appropriately. If they're open to questions, by all means go ahead. If they want
you to wait until they've finished, comply with their wishes and be patient ... you'll get your turn.
If you've arranged the interview with a company that doesn't have an advertised opening, the
interview will be less structured and more balanced between their questions and yours. You can't
walk in expecting the interviewer to have planned out the first 85 percent of the interview. You
must be prepared to ask questions to reveal their problems and position yourself as the answer to
those problems.
If you don't have any questions, the interviewer will likely be left with one or more of these
impressions of you:
- You're not really interested in the position or the organization
- You're so lazy you couldn't be bothered to put any thought into it
- You're so desperate you'll go anywhere
Not the image you're trying to project in any case.
Despite this, very few people go into an employment interview prepared to ask questions. There's a
reason employers usually leave so little time for questions at the end. They know they don't need
any more than a couple minutes to answer the dull, perfunctory queries that interviewees routinely
ask.
Most interview books go on at length describing techniques and strategies for "getting control" of
the interview from the interviewer (books aimed at interviewers talk about maintaining control --
both sides are trained for a confrontational atmosphere). And now here the interviewee is being
handed "control" and the best they can come up with is something like "What would my hours be?"
Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to know the hours you'd be working! It's often a
perfectly acceptable question. But if this is all you ask, you've missed a wide-open opportunity to
reinforce your credibility and help the employer see the value that you offer.
There are three ways to handle this part of the interview:
Continued here: OPTION 1: Wing it
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