Approach the Interview Like You Would the Job

Most job seekers prepare for an interview by trying to anticipate the questions they will be asked.

Tell me about yourself. What is your greatest accomplishment? Why are you leaving your current position? What is your greatest weakness? Where do you see yourself in five years?

Preparing for those questions makes sense. But after spending years asking thousands of hiring managers what they ask candidates and, more importantly, why they ask it, I came to believe that focusing too much on the questions can actually get in the way.

An interview is not an oral exam. There isn't a correct answer sitting in the interviewer's desk drawer. The employer is trying to determine whether you are the right person to solve a business problem. Your job is to help them get the information they need to make that decision.

I sometimes tell clients to approach the interview as though they were consultants brought in so the interviewer could pick their brain. A good consultant certainly walks into the meeting knowing what they are capable of doing. But they probably don't start by telling the client everything they know. They ask questions. What are you trying to accomplish? What's getting in the way? Who is affected by the problem? What would a successful outcome look like?

Then they decide which parts of their knowledge and experience might be useful.

A job interview shouldn't be that different.

Great Managers Aren't Necessarily Great Interviewers

One of the more interesting things I learned from talking with thousands of hiring managers is that very few companies actually teach managers how to select the best candidate.

They may receive training on questions they legally shouldn't ask. They may be given an interview guide or a list of questions. But that is different from being taught how to determine which candidate is most likely to produce the results the organization needs. Someone can be an outstanding manager and still conduct interviews only occasionally.

That means candidates shouldn't simply wait for interviewers to ask the perfect questions. You can answer every question accurately and still leave without giving the interviewer some of the most important information they need.

That isn't the interviewer's problem alone. If you were hired, you probably wouldn't sit at your desk waiting for your manager to anticipate everything you needed to know. You would ask questions. You would try to understand expectations. You would learn how your work affects other people. You would adjust how you communicate depending on who was sitting across from you.

Why behave differently during the interview?

What Return Is the Employer Looking For?

Job descriptions don't make this particularly easy.

Most are built around activities and credentials. Manage a team. Prepare reports. Work with customers. Oversee projects. Five years of experience required. Knowledge of a particular software package preferred.

Naturally, candidates prepare to prove they can do those things. But if you have been invited to interview, the employer has probably already decided that you meet enough of those requirements to warrant a conversation.

The more important question is why the company is investing in the position in the first place.

Every position represents an investment, and the employer expects a return. The company may need to increase revenue, retain customers, improve efficiency, reduce costs, complete projects faster or improve the performance of a department.

The duties tell you what the person will do. The expected return tells you why the job exists.

Before an interview, I ask clients to take their best shot at identifying three ways each interviewer might measure the success of the person hired. They don't need to be mind readers. They need to think about the position from the other person's perspective and then use the interview to find out whether their assumptions are right.

Once you understand what matters, you can decide which parts of your experience the interviewer actually needs to hear.

Don't Just Answer the Question. Use It.

Suppose someone asks, "Tell me about your greatest accomplishment."

You could answer the question literally and describe the accomplishment you personally consider the greatest of your career. It might be a terrific story.

But is it the story this interviewer needs to hear?

If you have learned that one of the biggest challenges in the new position is retaining major customers, and you have an example of solving a similar problem, the accomplishment question gives you an opportunity to tell that story. You answered the question. You also made the answer useful.

This isn't about being evasive or manipulating the conversation. It is about being considerate of the person trying to make a good hiring decision. If they don't happen to phrase the perfect question, you can still help them get the information they need.

This is also why I like the STAR approach to interview stories. Situation, Task, Action and Result provides a useful structure for showing what problem existed, what needed to happen, what you did and what resulted. Behavioral and situational interviewers may specifically ask for stories like these, but examples are useful in almost any interview.

The important thing isn't simply having stories prepared. It is knowing which stories to use and which parts of those stories matter to the people listening.

Different Interviewers May Need Different Things

The story you choose matters, but so does who is listening.

Different people involved in the same hiring decision may have very different measures of success. Sometimes those measures even conflict.

I once worked with a supply-chain executive who was interviewing for a position with a utility company. He would be meeting simultaneously with the COO and the Vice President of Construction.

As we prepared, we realized these two executives were likely to view his role very differently. The COO would be focused on controlling costs. The Vice President of Construction would be focused on keeping projects on schedule, regardless of the cost.

Our client needed both of them to sign off on hiring him.

He explained that one of his primary responsibilities in supply chain was making sure construction schedules were never delayed because materials weren't available. This was very appealing to Construction. But it was only when he emphasized how his network of A, B and C tier suppliers gave him alternatives when problems arose without blowing the budget that he emerged as the consensus candidate.

He got the job. I doubt many of his competitors prepared for the interview that way.

Panel interviews make this issue particularly important. Several people may ultimately have to agree on one candidate even though they have different, and sometimes conflicting, reasons for making the hire.

But the principle applies even when you meet interviewers separately. Before each conversation, think about that person's relationship to the position. What would a great hire make better for them? Then make sure the examples you choose help them understand how you could do that.

The same thinking applies to how you communicate. A technical interviewer may want to understand exactly how you solved a difficult technical problem. A nontechnical executive may be much more interested in what the problem was costing the organization and what changed after you solved it. Some people want detail. Others want you to get to the point.

You aren't changing your story. You are communicating it in a way that makes it useful to the person hearing it.

Even numbers should pass the same test. Job seekers are constantly told to quantify accomplishments, but the biggest number isn't necessarily the most helpful one. A global vice president who managed teams across 40 countries may find that number impressive. If the next job involves managing six people in one location, however, emphasizing it may create more questions about fit than confidence in the candidate.

The objective isn't to tell every interviewer the most impressive things about you. It is to help each interviewer understand the things about you that matter to them.

Sometimes Today's Problem Gets in the Way of Tomorrow's Opportunity

There is another reason this approach matters, particularly for career changers or candidates whose technical skills may not be quite as current as someone else's.

The fact that a job has been posted usually means it is vacant. That often means some work isn't getting done or is being handled by people who already have other primary responsibilities. The hiring manager may even be covering some of it personally.

Under those circumstances, the candidate who can walk in and do the job this afternoon can look awfully attractive.

That's interesting because when I have asked hiring managers in classroom settings whether they would prefer someone who could do the current job immediately or someone with substantially greater long-term upside, the candidate with greater upside wins overwhelmingly.

Then somebody quits.

Immediate relief suddenly matters a lot.

A career changer may not be able to beat another candidate on ramp-up time. Someone else may know the technology better, come directly from a competitor or have performed the identical job. The answer isn't to pretend that disadvantage doesn't exist. It is to make sure the interview also gets to the employer's longer-term ambitions for the role.

Once the person is fully functioning, what would the manager like them to accomplish? What could be improved? How might the position evolve? What would distinguish someone who merely performs the activities from someone who produces an exceptional return on the company's investment?

Now you have an opportunity to demonstrate future impact rather than spending the entire interview defending a learning curve.

Give Them a Preview

A successful interview isn't one in which you correctly answered every question. It is one in which the people making the decision leave with the information they need to understand what you could accomplish for them.

You should leave with better information, too. You are trying to determine whether these are problems you can solve and, equally important, whether they are problems you want to solve.

Years ago, I summarized the candidate's responsibility this way:

Tell them what you want them to know about what they want to know.

That isn't an invitation to avoid questions. Answer them. But don't assume that answering them is the entire job.

Ask questions yourself. Be curious about what success looks like. Learn how your work would affect the people around you. Listen for competing priorities. Tell stories that provide relevant evidence. Communicate in language the person across from you can understand.

In other words, approach the interview the way you would approach the job.

Because how you behave during the interview may be some of the best evidence an employer gets of what it would be like to work with you.