Don’t let this happen to you!

Failing to Listen to the Question

I have seen this happen in my own interviews and there is nothing more frustrating than trying to have a conversation with someone who is not fully engaged. Even if you are not connecting 100% with the employer you have to stay engaged. They may seem dull or maybe they are just cocky and it is turning you off a bit, but stay engaged to the discussion and to the questions that are being asked.

If you are not sure what the employer is looking for in the question then always ask for clarification.

Eye contact is a huge factor in the interview process. You need to sit up and keep your eyes fully engaged on the interviewer at all times. Your eyes tell a lot even when your mouth is not moving. I have had candidates in interviews that liked to draw on paper, look around the room a lot or have that glassy eye look. Just remember that your eyes tell a story.

Body language is also important if you are fidgety or not sitting in an engaged mode in an interview it can comes across as you not being interested. I have an exercise that might seem silly for you but just might put the pieces together for you. You should probably do this with no one around. Find a mirror and sit in front of it and pretend that you are being interviewed. Try your best to act like you normally would and see how you come across. You could also try recording yourself as if you were in an interview and then watch it back. You might just find some interesting discoveries.

Another good idea is to ask a recruiter that you trust to be honest with you. When I am interviewing a candidate I write down at the top of the CV things that I think they are going to need to improve on before they step into an interview with me. I don’t do that to be mean. I want them to get the job and most candidates really appreciate the advice as it was something simple they could fix.

So, make sure you watch your eyes and your body language in a job interview so that you will not appear that you are failing to listen to the question being asked. Do this and get rid of those bad job interviews.

Having Bad Personal Hygiene

Performing up to 10 face to face interviews a week over the last 15 years has put me in some interesting situations to say the least. Having bad personal hygiene is no different than having mustard on your chin during a dinner conversation. You have no idea but it is obvious to everyone else.

There are three main areas that are turn offs:

1. Bad Breath – You cannot take this for granted. Have a mint before you go into the interview. You always want to give off a good impression. Avoid gum. Especially if you get nervous because you will be chomping on that before you even realize what you are doing.  Never take this for chance. I know it sounds silly but all of your accomplishments can be thrown out the door. Bad breath leads to a bad interview.

2. Smoking – Some candidates will have a cigarette before the interview as they say it relaxes them. Then they try to cover the smoke smell (which I will be getting to in a minute). In most cases, you will want to avoid this scenario at all cost. If they smell smoke it could be more damaging then the smell itself. Although most employers allow for smoke breaks, some hiring managers actually wonder if the candidate is going to be productive enough if they need regular smoke breaks.

3. Too Much Aftershave or Perfume – This is a interview killer. More is not better. Use this in moderation or not at all.

Click on the link below for useful information on the outlook for jobs from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation.  Well worth a read I reckon!

http://www.rec.uk.com/about-recruitment/research/jobsoutlook

When candidates get too comfortable they can begin to do or say things in order ‘to be accepted’.  Be mindful of this to avoid the following happening to you!

Bad-mouthing another employer

Bashing your current or former employer is a huge mistake. Even if the Hiring Manager is starting to egg it on you still need to stand your ground. It is important for you to remember that they do not really know you all that well yet. They could read you as a complainer, gossiper, or negative person all together if they see you bad-mouthing another employer.

You need to fight off the urge and find a better way to present the facts. Your last company may well have treated employees badly or made them work too many hours without recognition. However, best to keep this to yourself and say that although they did all they could your career progression will be best served by moving on.  Remember the Hiring Manager is thinking that there are two sides to every story. They are asking this question: If I were to hire this person, would they bring the same division, negativity and poison into my department? They are looking for employees who up lift the team and speak words of encouragement. They want team members that are easily managed.

This is also especially true if you are working with recruiters. Sure they want the good, bad and ugly, but you want to let them know that you would not discuss this negativity on any future interviews that they might send you on. That will give them a sense of comfort about placing you in front of their clients.

Answering a Question that was not Asked

You always want to let a competent interviewer lead the process. It is easy for some people to start dominating the process or taking control of the interview without even realizing it. I think that this can happen for two reasons:

1. Nerves get the best of us - Sometimes we go into an interview with all of this nervous energy. What we do is channel that energy in the wrong way. We start rambling or start trying to fill in the dead spaces of the conversation with too much side conversation.

If you can learn to harness that energy in a good way then you will begin to benefit from your nerves. Nerves are not a bad thing. Nerves can create energy and excitement and help you from coming across as dull and boring. At the same time, when you let nervousness get the best of you, then you start to do certain things like answering questions that were not asked.
You have to remained focused in an interview and stay with the task at hand.

Do not try to give 7 different answers to 1 basic question.

2. You are a natural leader - Some of us just step and lead a conversation from the start. We may not be all that nervous but we do like to get to know people, converse and fit in. Those are great business qualities to have. However, a more important business quality is understanding your place in the room at any given meeting. Sometimes, you need to step up and lead and other times that could be the damaging thing to do.

In an interview, you are the guest. You were not invited in to interview the other person or the company to find out if it is right for you. That happens later on. Let me say that again:

Do not go to an interview and begin interviewing the other person.
You need to allow them to lead and you answer only the questions that are asked of you. Now, in almost any interview there comes a time when you can ask questions. As long as you ask the right questions, you can get your answers just fine.  It is at this time that you can ask if any remaining skills and experience you have and feel could be of relevance maybe of interest to the client.

Lastly, answering a question that was not asked can come across as cocky and self-indulgent. Your goal is not to take every question and squeeze your top 10 life accomplishments in the question whether it was relevant or not.

Nov 6th 2009
From Economist.com

A popular way for managers to put quality management into effect

This is an approach to quality improvement based on the statistical work of Joseph Juran, one of two American pioneers of quality management in Japan. Sigma is a Greek letter used in mathematics to denote standard deviation, a statistical measure of the extent to which a series of numbers or readings deviates from its mean. One Sigma indicates a wide scattering of the readings. If the mean is the required quality standard of a particular process or product, then One Sigma quality is not very good. The higher the number, the closer the readings come to total perfection. At the Six Sigma level, there are only 3.4 defects per million.

This may sound complicated, but in practice it has proved a popular way for managers to put quality management into effect. One of its great advantages is that it eschews the idea of aiming for “zero defects”, or total perfection-a dauntingly inaccessible goal for most. It presents a system for improving quality gradually. Companies or operational groups move step-by-step up the Sigma ladder, the ultimate goal being to reach the Six Sigma state-still just short of perfection. Reasonably unsophisticated computer programs do the necessary calculations when fed with data on the goals (the specifications of the perfect product or process) and the organisation’s actual achievements.

Six Sigma sounds like some sort of secret coven. Its advocates insist that it is no such thing. But it has certain attributes of the exclusive society. Anyone in an organisation who goes on a basic training course for a Six Sigma programme (and training is essential to an understanding of what it is about) is called a Green Belt. Anyone who is given the full-time job of leading a team that is embarking on a Six Sigma exercise is given further training and is called a Black Belt. Beyond this there are a special few who are trained even more, and they are called Master Black Belts. Their role is to champion the exercise throughout the organisation and to watch over the Black Belts and ensure that they are consistently improving the quality of their team’s output.

In its annual report for the year 2000, chemicals giant DuPont reported:

Six Sigma implementation continues to gain momentum. At the end of the year, there were about 1,100 trained Black Belts and over 3,400 active projects. The potential pre-tax benefit from active projects was $700m.

Pioneered in the United States by Motorola in the 1980s (and registered by the company as its own trademark), Six Sigma became hugely popular in the 1990s after Jack Welch adopted it at General Electric. Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder, the two men who introduced the method to Motorola, went on to set up the Six Sigma Academy, a consultancy which has worked with such companies as Allied Signal, GR and ABB.

To achieve Six Sigma quality at GE, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million “opportunities”. An opportunity is defined as “a chance for non-conformance, or not meeting the required specifications”. The company says: “Six Sigma has changed the DNA of GE. It is now the way we work-in everything we do and in every product we design”.

However, Six Sigma has not been an unmitigated success for everybody. Robert Nardelli took it with him when he moved from GE to head up Home Depot. But in August 2007 the Wall Street Journal reported that he had angered employees greatly with his attempt to force it upon them. Nardelli went on to try to resuscitate General Motors.

Further reading

Pande, P.S., Neuman, R.P. and Cavanagh, R.R., “The Six Sigma Way”, McGraw-Hill, 2000