5 Steps to Take Before Your Next Job Interview

Copyright © 2013, 2016 Lawrence OLeary, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6292-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6293-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6294-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015903949

iUniverse rev. date: 6/6/2016

Contents

Introduction

Part 1

Become an Informed Job Seeker

What Are the Interviewers Looking For?

Chapter 1

Getting the Job You Want---Prepare Now for Your Next Interview

Chapter 2

What You Can Expect in Your Next Interview

Part 2

From Reading to Action

Applying a Five-Step Plan for a Currently Advertised Job

Chapter 3

A Five-Step Action Plan to Prepare You for Your Next Interview

Chapter 4

Using Your Military Experience as an Asset

Chapter 5

A Demonstration of the Five-Step Plan in Action

Chapter 6

A Demonstration of the Five-Step Action Plan for a Managerial Job

Part 3

Additional Tools to Prepare You for Your Next Interview

Chapter 7

Behaviors That Weaken Performance During an Interview

Chapter 8

Employment Tests and How to Do Your Best on Them

Appendix A

Glossary

Appendix B

A Dictionary of Job-Related Competencies

Appendix C

References

This book is dedicated to Shae Brianne, a curious, loving, lively young girl who is a source of joy and personifies the phrase being alive.

Acknowledgement

I want to acknowledge the valuable contributions to the creation of this book by a number of people who significantly enhanced various aspects of it. They are Mary Tricamo Park; Beth OLeary; Ed Gaydos, PhD; John Munnelly, Colonel USA (Ret.); Lee J. Konczak, PhD; Mary Suszko, PhD; Therese Macon, Ph.D; Meredith Knopp, Captain USA (Ret); Anthony Arnett, Sergeant USA (Ret); David Grantt, Airman E4 USAF (Ret); Mark Coffin, Colnel USA (Ret); Julie Breiner MA; and Bridgette Daly.

Introduction

How can you use this book to your best advantage?

This book provides valuable and immediate assistance to people who anticipate an employment interview. This applies to you whether you are still employed, have been out of work for more than a year, never had a job, or are anywhere in between. It will also be useful to a new college or high school graduate. The military veteran will find the book of value; there is an entire chapter devoted exclusively to veterans. Finally, the person who has recently lost her job and has not interviewed for a new job in a few years will also find value in the book.

It is organized in a logical manner, starting with usable information about some of the elements you will encounter in your upcoming interview (e.g., who the interviewers will be, the types of questions they may ask, what they will be looking for, and what types of employment tests they may give.)

The book will also provide insight into the process that almost all employers go through prior to conducting the interview and making a hiring or promotion decision. This information will help you understand what the decision makers are using to prepare for the employment interview. This information includes the process used to gather data and create a system to recruit and process applicants before conducting the interview and making a hiring decision.

It should be noted at the outset that I will provide you with a specific set of five simple-to-understand steps that will result in you maximizing your performance during your next job interview.

The ability to maximize one's effectiveness during an interview is a learnable skill. Recent research by the author and one of his colleagues establishes that 75 to 90 percent of Fortune 1000 organizations are using the same type of format in almost all of their employment interviews (Konczak and OLeary 2007). This has significant consequences, which are valuable to you.

This means that key elements of the vast majority of today's employment interviews are knowable by the job candidates prior to their next employment interview. This knowledge will empower you to prepare not only for future interviews in general but also for the employment interview for your specific job.

This book is informed by these research findings, combined with my professional training as a psychologist and more than thirty-five years of creating and conducting thousands of employment interviews to create the action plan in this book. This professional experience has been and continues to be implemented for organizations in the private and public employment sectors in both the domestic and international economies.

These organizations include Anheuser Busch Companies, Barnes-Jewish and Children's Hospitals, Boeing, Edward Jones, Enterprise, XTRA Lease, General Motors (Buick Division), Graybar, Monsanto, the Missouri Botanical Garden, PepsiCo, Ralston Purina, Rockwell International, 7 Up, Sprint, Ungroup, and police and fire departments in Akron, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Birmingham, Alabama; Clayton, Missouri; Kansas City, Missouri; Little Rock, Arkansas; Miami, Florida; Jackson, Mississippi (the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics); St. Louis, Missouri; Rochester, New York; and Washington, DC.

This training and professional experience has resulted in my being asked to make presentations to such professional organizations as the American Psychological Association, the Division of Industrial/ Organizational Psychology, and the International Congress on Assessment Centers in London, England as well as a variety of cities in the United States.

I have also taught graduate and undergraduate courses and seminars covering the interview and other assessment devices at the University of Missouri, Missouri Baptist University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Webster University. This also included overseeing graduate students throughout their nine-month internships for their PhDs in industrial/organizational psychology.

This book contains concrete, specific, and valuable information to prepare you for your next interview. Learning each element will improve your effectiveness in your next interview. This is another situation where knowledge is power. After reading this book, you will

1. Be more aware of what the interviewers are after and have a general idea of the types of questions that you will be asked in your interview;

2. Be able to prepare for your interview by identifying relevant experience that you can describe in your upcoming interview to substantiate that you are qualified for the job you are pursuing (doing so in a relaxed, timely, and proactive manner);

3. Be more confident and prepared going into your interview;

4. Be able to nurture and recognize the importance of bringing you (i.e., your own identity) into your employment interview as opposed to putting on some act;

5. Be aware of what other assessment components accompany your interview but also what the decision makers are trying to learn about you by using these components and how you can do your best on each one;

6. Be able to maximize your ability to communicate your job-related qualifications for the specific job you are pursuing;

7. Be aware of a simple, straightforward, five-step action plan that you can implement immediately to maximize your performance in your next employment interview;

8. Be aware of what the five-step action plan looks like when implemented;

9. Be aware of others' mistakes in their employment interviews, as reported by a number of experienced employment interviewers;

10. Be aware (specifically for military veterans) of how to use your military experience and the five-step action plan to support your case that you possess key competencies that your civilian employer is looking for; and

11. Be able to practice your interview and receive feedback on your performance (optional).

Finally, this book provides you with a comprehensive plan to obtain all of the above benefits. While I believe that reading this book and implementing the five-step plan clearly has merit, I want to emphasize at the beginning that it will not prepare you for everything that will occur in your interview.

This means that you should go into your interview informed and flexible enough to adapt to unanticipated events. Some examples of these events are questions that attempt to measure a competency you were never aware was important or a question about some part of your past experience about which you never anticipated being questioned.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 covers much of what the interviewers will be looking for and some of the specific experiences you can anticipate in your next interview. Part 2 moves from learning about the actions of the employer to developing the five-step action plan to prepare for the upcoming interview. It contains an entire chapter that demonstrates how the plan is applied to a real job. This demonstration can be used as a template for the reader when preparing for an interview. This part of the book also includes a chapter specifically devoted to job candidates who are military veterans.

The third and final part of the book deals with additional selection components that are frequently part of an interview process and how to prepare for them. Various employment tests often accompany employment interviews, and the third part of the book explains those tests and offers advice to help you perform your best.

Part 3 also includes a chapter that provides a brief description of a number of behaviors that previous job candidates have displayed that markedly hurt their chances of getting the job. These behaviors have been consistently reported as damaging to the candidate's chances, by various professional interviewers over many years.

The purpose of this book is twofold. It will provide you with what you can expect in your next interview and what specific steps you can take to prepare for your next interview. It will help you understand competency-based interviews and what to expect in your next interview. For example, why are the vast majority of the Fortune 1000 organizations using the same competency-based interview format? What is the reason behind competency-based interviews? How do they work in practice? As an interviewee, what types of competency-based questions can you expect to be asked during your job interview?

In addition, many of you will also encounter one or more employment tests before or after your interview. I will familiarize you with the most frequently used types of these tests and what you can do to maximize your performance on them. The book offers specific strategies and tools to help you evaluate the competency requirements of your target job, assess your background and experience relative to these competencies, and prepare for the types of questions that you are likely to be asked in a job interview.

This book does not attempt to provide standard responses to a laundry list of interview questions that might be asked. Rather, the book arms you with an awareness of the competencies your potential employer is seeking and how you can demonstrate that you possess these competences during the interview process.

With your new awareness, you will be able to produce a one- or two-page document that contains the specific competencies for your target job and your experiences that you will use to communicate that you possess the competencies that the interviewers are looking for. You can use this document as a reminder and as a reference when preparing for your interview.

Finally, I will describe and demonstrate how to plan, prepare, and practice for your next job interview to maximize your potential for a job offer. My specific intent is to communicate a thinking process, not a set of standard interview responses. This will help you think through, plan, and prepare effectively for your next interview.

This book will be helpful to virtually any job seeker, but it will be particularly useful to new entrants to the job market, including new college graduates, more seasoned workers who are reentering the job market due to downsizing or a career change, and to military personnel who are leaving the armed services, planning to enter the job market. This book can also be of value to those who are currently employed and anticipate being considered for a promotion, which will involve an interview as part of the promotion process.

Interviewing more effectively in an employment screening process is a skill that can be learned.

It's really about communicating your specific value to the hiring organization, a skill that can be nurtured and developed through increased awareness and practice. I believe that you will enhance your interviewing skills and increase the likelihood of job offers by following the process defined here and applying the tools described.

Some of you who are going to an interview have a limited awareness of what to expect. Others will already be familiar with some of the elements that are part of the competency-based interviews. It is recommended that you review the list and concentrate on areas with which you are unfamiliar.

This book will address this information gap. You are probably in the midst of your job search and trying to figure out the best way to handle your next employment interview. What can you expect? How can you best prepare? What should you do differently in the interview? In order to address these questions, it is critically important to understand what employers are looking for during the interview and how interviewers gather and use interview information to make hiring decisions. Recently, Michael Mathieu, CEO of YuMe, an online video advertising firm in Redwood City, California, was asked about his approach to hiring in a New York Times article (2010). Excerpts from the interview are below.

Q. How do you hire?

A. By the time people come to me, I know they can do the job, whether they're engineers or salespeople. So when I interview people, I look for leadership characteristics and their ability to thrive in ambiguity. So I try to ask questions about how they handle adversity. I want to get people's thought processes on how they deal with something that's not black or white, but gray. I ask questions about their leadership, like, are they selfless mentors? Do they try to make people around them better? Are they proactive? Do they take initiative, so they don't wait to be asked to do something? I try to get examples of that.

Q. What are your best questions to get at those qualities?

A. What I try to do now is find examples of how they've worked. One thing