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The Art of Interviewing Part 2: Preparing for the Interview
Gus Downing, CEO Downing & Downing, Inc.
Loss Prevention Magazine - December, 2003
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In Part I in the September/October issue, we talked about the importance of conducting your due diligence before your interview. We suggested that you thoroughly investigate the company you’re looking at as well as their competitors. You should also seek advice from a financial analyst and a mentor. We also encouraged you to visit the prospective company’s stores and talk with a current store manager. And, reluctantly, we mentioned the need for caution when seeking advice from a family member.
Preparing Your Family
Before moving on to discussing the actual personal preparation you do before the interview, I’d like to comment on the common cliché, “Behind every good executive is a good wife.” Now understanding that this is the 21st century and the quote is rather chauvinistic, old school, and certainly not reflective of current trends, I’d like to change it to, “Behind every good executive is a supportive spouse.”
This expression, which all of us have heard many times, is profoundly true and actually represents...all other things being equal...the number one reason an executive either reaches his or her goals, modifies them, or is forced to eliminate them all together.
Now I’m certainly not a psychologist, but after twenty years of placing people in jobs, I can say that every successful executive I’ve placed has a spouse that is supportive of their careers and the sacrifices they must make to reach the top. And yes, the sacrifices are many and the price is high, but so are the stakes and so are the rewards.
At the end of the day, our lives are basically comprised of two things–our families and our careers. Without question, our families are the most important factor in our lives and give us meaning for life. But our career is what allows our families to experience and feel the benefits and quality of life. It is in our career where we spend the majority of our time during our working life. It is in our career where we can escape from the tragedies and pain of life. And it is in our career where we can find definition and make a difference in the larger scheme of things. And at the end of our working life, it is our career that determines how we and our family live the end of our lives.
Given these factors, it only stands to reason that you should spend as much time discussing your career goals and plans with your spouse as you do other family matters. Your career has a direct impact on your family, and your spouse has more impact on your career then your employer does. And it is your obligation to your family, your spouse, and your retirement, to educate them, to develop their understanding of what it takes to be successful, and to constantly evaluate and decide what sacrifices you and your family are willing to make to improve the quality of your lives and your retirement years.
It is your responsibility to communicate with your spouse and develop a plan that will eliminate future regrets and decisions that are motivated by the daily dysfunctions of life that all of us fall victim to. Remember that it is only through mutual sacrifice that one can expect to reach a balance between personal and professional goals, and that dreams can only be reached if two people are willing to work hard enough and make sacrifices.
Your Personal Super Bowl
Now that you’ve prepared your family and finished your research, the time has come to prepare for the interview itself. This is the most important meeting of your entire career up to this point in time, because it is a time when you are trying to increase your earnings, to continue to develop your career, and to market yourself to corporate America. It is a meeting where you are trying to show who you are, what you know, and how far you can go. And it is a meeting where corporate America evaluates you, and with all due respect to all of you, this is not your opportunity to evaluate them yet...more on that in Part III.
Preparing for an interview is not as easy as most like to think. It is an opportunity for you to show corporate America the absolute best you can be. It is in effect your Super Bowl. It is a time when all that you have done, learned, and accomplished must come out in a professional, articulate, polite, and conversational way. And the only way to accomplish all of this is to prepare the night before the interview.
In essence, get on the field and practice the night before the game. Take your resume and a legal pad into a secluded room and go through your entire career from start to finish. Write down every lesson learned, every mistake made, every position you’ve had, and what you learned in each one. Force yourself to remember as much as possible about each job, each boss, and each company and write it down. Go through your entire career leaving no stone unturned. And when you remember your biggest lessons learned, I’ll bet they’re a result of your biggest mistakes, and only now can you see the humor and feel the humility in them.
This is a time for reflection, a time to look at your entire career and see yourself. This is an opportunity to pull all of this information from the subconscious level to the conscious level by writing it down and taking a new picture of it. This is in effect you interviewing yourself. You are preparing yourself for any question asked about you and your career. It is like running plays on the field the night before the game, so that no matter what is asked, it becomes not a question of what to say, but a question of how to say it better. The ultimate objective is to help you effectively communicate and be totally prepared.
Professional football teams run plays in practice over and over again to increase execution and finesse and that is the exact same objective here. By reviewing your entire career the night before, you are preparing yourself for the game and it will allow you to be the best you can be. It will show in your delivery, and it will show in your demeanor. And at the end of the day, it will improve your performance and drive more money to your bottom line.
This exercise, if properly done, will take several hours, but the rewards could last a lifetime. And, quite frankly, reflection is a good thing. It gives us the hindsight that is so critical in growing our foresight, in order for us to develop as individuals and as leaders.
Focusing on the Position
Now it’s time to work on the actual position you are interviewing for. By this time you’ve thought about it quite a bit and probably have as many questions as you do ideas as to how to approach it and be successful in it. But once again, corporate America right now isn’t as interested in your questions as they are in their own. With that in mind, I suggest you take a few minutes with your legal pad and write down how you would approach the position and what you would do in the first ninety days, six months, and first year. Walk yourself through your first year and set goals and objectives that you think are critical to your success and the company’s success. This will make an impact during the interview and give you a game plan. And ultimately it will give you the confidence to succeed.
The Day of the Interview
Once you’ve completed this exercise, get some rest. Go to bed early and get up early. That morning exercise to the level you’re comfortable with, but make sure you exercise none the less. Regardless of what physical shape you are in, make sure that you do something physical even if it’s just taking a long walk outside. But make sure you do something. What you are trying to do here is to wake up the body. Get the endorphins going so that the mind and body can peek simultaneously, because that puts you in the absolute perfect state for maximum performance. And that’s exactly what you want to do, to perform to your absolute best. And without a good night’s rest and exercise you are increasing your odds of failure.
On the day of the interview, try not to schedule anything else of importance, if possible. Try to make the interview your priority of the day. Give it the emotional, physical, and professional importance that it deserves. After all, isn’t this what you’ve worked for throughout your career? In order to truly maximize your potential, isn’t career advancement your objective? Therefore, study the interviewing process and improve your execution.
Professional football teams look to win games by education, improving execution, studying their opponents, and developing effective game plans. And in these first two parts of the series of the art of interviewing, we’ve talked about educating yourself, preparing yourself, improving your execution, and preparing a game plan. In the last part, we’ll talk about the intangibles that every coach struggles with in every player–attitude and game-day performance.
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