Just get me in front of the right people…
We heard this statement so many times we decided to survey our recruiting and search partners on this subject. There was not one who has not heard this statement hundreds of times. Interestingly, few could give us examples where in the end, the statement was found to be true.
If you are a job search candidate and have never been a recruiter you just don’t know the lay of the land. You rely on your instincts, just like when you drive for the first time in a city you are unfamiliar with. You make mistakes. Interviewing is both tactical and instinctive but it is not like making a sales pitch. It is like making a sales pitch without looking like you are making a sales pitch. How much experience could a person have doing that?
The search firm owners and managers we surveyed said that thay work in the profession every day and see business titans make silly (some said stupid) mistakes during the interview and then rationalize why they did not get the job.
Here are a couple of comments we heard when we asked our search firms about this subject;
“When a candidate says; “Just get me in front of them. I will get the job!”, it’s like my 5 year old asking me to let them play with the real shotgun because they are good with the plastic one!”
“Dad, let me take the motorcycle out, I ride my bicycle every day!”
Have you seen that commercial where the dad is giving his daughter the keys to the car and when they show the daughter she is 8 years old? It’s not until the end of the commercial that you see the 8 year old is really a young woman going off to college. Unfortunately, false reasoning is the most common mistake made by executive level job seekers. The second is the notion that a great writer makes a great resume writer. In desperate situations it is even more common. The frustration we heard from our recruiters when asked about his subject was
“I cannot get executive candidates to just stop talking and listen.”
Our advice to the recruiters was that they have to do something that will convince the executive or manager that they don’t know the lay of the land. To ask them some of the questions that have caused others to lose the opportunity in an attempt to show the candidate what they don’t know and convince them to be more prepared.
It is interesting that we as human beings will plan and prepare for a presentation to sell a product that does not mean all that much to us personally, but do not prepare nearly as intensively for something like this, which is so much more important to our future.
If we truly were all great presenters then why so often are there people in authority over us who do not offer as much as we do?
The moral of our story is;
Try not to fool yourself into thinking that interviewing is a core competency. Ask any recruiter anywhere about the people who interview for positions in leadership and they will tell you what they told us.
Think about it for a moment. If you are really great at what you do at work, how could it be possible to develop a core competency in an area that you have so little experience? Have you ever seen a commercial where the star is the business owner? Have you ever seen one where you thought the business owner was fabulous? Have you ever seen a freeway billboard with a confusing message? You think; I know they didn’t have professionals involved in that one!
If you have only interviewed from the candidate’s side of the desk a few times in your life, how could you be an expert?
Expert candidate interviewing is a gift that very few people in the world have. We polled our Search firms and they agree. Most cannot think of one candidate that “aced” every question but they could all think of several situations where a candidate was fabulous at what they did at work but failed to make an impression on the employer.
So take the time to truly prepare yourself for the interview, just like you would an important sales call. If you are not the persuasive type, ask around and find someone who can help you but make sure they have worked at your level in an organization and have extensive candidate side interviewing experience, then, only work with a firm that will allow you to pay them by the hour.