Why Do You Want The Job?

This can be a very tricky question to answer, because although some interviewers might ask that question directly, many others will not.

The interviewer’s job is to find out whether you fit the job and the Company – and the easiest way to find that out is to ask you about your ideal job, and see how closely you and your ideal matches what’s on offer now and what might be on offer in the future.

You therefore have several options – and all of them require prior thought and planning.

1. Write out an answer to the question ‘Why do you want the job?’ based on the job description and what you have learned about the Company from its website and other sources.

2. Write out an answer to the question ‘What is your ideal job?’ based on the job description and what you have learned about the Company from its website, etc.

3. Visualise your genuinely ideal job, and write down a description of it.

If the interviewer asks ‘Why do you want the job?’ you can use the answer you formulated based on the job description and etc – item 1.

If the interviewer asks ‘What would be your ideal job? You can use item 2 or take a chance and go for item 3.

You might think it would be safer and more productive of success to stick to item 2 – but I wouldn’t take that for granted if I were you.

In the first place item 2 would be, to a greater or lesser degree, a lie – and few people are as good at lying as they think they are. An experienced interviewer would almost certainly notice something missing: the genuine and unmistakable enthusiasm of a person describing something they really want.

Secondly, a job description (however good) isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of what a Company is looking for in a potential employee. Your ‘ideal job’ might make you an ‘ideal person’ in the long, albeit not the short, term.

And please don’t forget that you are interviewing the Company just as surely as they are interviewing you. The Company may not be right for you – and you need to find that out. The easiest way to do that is to ask questions and tell the truth about what you want.

And in any event, appreciating that you are an interviewer and not a supplicant can make you feel a lot less nervous and a lot more confident about being interviewed - and having confidence and showing it can give you a huge advantage.

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Interviews - Research, Rehearse, and Tell the Truth

Sorry I’m late - and I know that I am very, very late with this post. I've been visiting the wife’s relatives in Armenia, and I’m still trying to catch up.

I think Emily told you that I was a political correspondent for many years before I became a therapist, so you’ll probably appreciate that I’ve spent a big chunk of my life interviewing people. Some of those people were very good, and came out of their interviews looking great and smelling of roses – and some of them weren’t and didn’t.

What made the difference between good and bad was preparation, rehearsal, and a willingness to be honest.

• Good interviewees do a lot of research, know they want to say, and rehearse how they want to say it.
• They anticipate the questions they're going to be asked, decide in advance what they're going to say in reply, and they rehearse their replies.
• They have relevant stories to tell about their experiences, and they tell them confidently and well because they have rehearsed telling those stories.
• They answer hard questions honestly even if the answers don’t reflect well upon them (have to say that many politicians stumble over that one!) – and they answer those questions well because they have anticipated and thought about them and understand that honesty is the best policy and that fudging isn’t going to fool anyone.

And they don’t try to blind the interviewer with science, or use acronyms unknown to anyone but themselves, because they’re intelligent enough to realise that that is really very, very irritating!

Over the next couple of days I’m going to be talking about some of the questions you might be asked, and we can discuss how you might answer them, but in the meantime, a couple of things to bear in mind:

• Every interviewer begins with an ‘icebreaker’ question that is actually a leading question. A job interviewer is likely to use ‘What are you doing now or what were you doing in your last job?’ as an icebreaker/leading question.

This is your chance to shine, because what the interviewer really wants to know is why you took that job, what your role is or was, whether you understand and can explain how your role related to the rest of the company as a whole, whether you were really interested in the company, or whether the job was just a job and, of course, why you have left or want to leave it.

‘Icebreaker‘/leading questions are designed to allow the interviewer to frame follow up questions. If you answer an icebreaker fully and well you will have made a good beginning – so take some time to formulate and rehearse an answer to the icebreaker!

• Every interviewer wants to know about your strengths and weaknesses. Most people are good on their strengths, but fall down on their weaknesses because they try to portray them as potential strengths.

Please, please, don’t use the same old, same old, ‘I’m a perfectionist’ or ‘I expect everyone to work as hard as I do’ answer to this question! Everybody knows that people are trained to use the ‘my weaknesses are my strengths’ technique, and nobody is fooled by it anymore – if they ever were. You'll be far better off telling people that you’re a lousy timekeeper or that you have a low threshold of boredom than going down that route - not least because if you do go down that route people are likely to fall about laughing the minute you leave the room.

Think about it. What are your weaknesses? Be honest with yourself, because you really need to come up with some genuine goods here. If you stumble over weaknesses and come up with nothing but platitudes you’re going to lose credibility all the way along the line. Rehearse what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

• Interviewers do research, too. If you screwed up somewhere – they’ll probably know all about it. And in the nicest possible roundabout way, they’ll ask you about it. Just as I would, and always did, albeit that I was rarely roundabout and wasn't employed to ask questions in the nicest possible way.

If you've screwed up somewhere – be prepared to admit it and explain what happened. Truthfully, with no fudging, no evasions, and no excuses. Politicians are bad at this one, too – which is why they’re so often publicly discredited by people like me.

Honestly is really very, very important when it comes to interviews, because one lie (or even one fudged or evasive answer) casts doubt on the integrity of every other statement made - and on the integrity of the person who makes those statements.

Research, rehearse - and tell the truth!

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Interviews Are a Two-Way Street

Sorry we’ve been missing for so long – Geoffrey and I have got decorators and a heatwave, and Bill’s just back from visiting his wife’s relatives in Armenia. Actually, it’s probably cooler in Armenia; it was 115 degrees in the shade in my garden at six o’clock this afternoon , and here it is nearly half past twelve and it really doesn’t feel any cooler.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that interviews are a two way street. The question isn’t just ‘does this employer want you?’ It’s also ‘do you want this employer?’

Asking the right questions can put you onto an equal footing with an interviewer. That’s purely psychological, but it’s a powerful tool when it comes to interviews, because you might be considered more qualified than other applicants simply because the right questions can bring the interviewer to consider you – quite unconsciously – as an ‘equal’. However, the basic question remains: 'do you want this particular employer?'

Bill Doult was a journalist and a political correspondent for many years before he became a therapist. He’s therefore an expert interviewer (Maggie Thatcher always addressed him as 'dolt' - as in 'Oh, it's you again, Dolt' - but she usually answered his questions anyway), and he’s going to be talking about asking questions and fielding them, and I think that’s going to be very helpful. In the meantime though, and if you are going to be on the hotspot come Monday - ask who your immediate superior is going to be.

Quite often one of the people involved in interviewing you will be the person you end up working for, but if it isn’t, you should ask to meet him or her – and when you do, pay very, very close attention to how he or she reacts to, deals with, and speaks to you, because if the Company offers you a job, that person is going to be an important part of your life.

Don’t take a job if you feel you can’t get along with the person who’s going to be an important part of your life. In the present climate that probably sounds ridiculous - but it isn’t.

Try not to think of any interview as your last chance, or as any job as being better than nothing, because if you take something that you don’t feel good about, you could end up back on the market with a six month stint on your CV/resume that it’s going to be difficult to put over well.

It’s best to take the time to find the right job and take the pressure off by setting long term goals, rather than jumping at the first thing that comes along like a cock at a blackberry. I know it isn’t always possible to do that, but you may have other options that you haven’t thought about that don’t involve messing up your CV - and we can talk about that when Bill’s gone though asking and fielding interview questions!

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

I've Got Nothing To Wear!

Yes you do.! You have a whole wardrobe of stuff that you've worn to work for ever. It's good and it's comfortable - so stick with it. New clothes are lovely to have - but they're not familiar - and familiar and comfortable is what you need when you have do have to do something 'scary' like going to an interview.

And the last thing you need is new shoes.

I have to say that I love shoes. I've bought ridiculous shoes with four inch heels in silly colours at silly prices (and worn them in some very silly places!) and I've bought plain black flats for interviews. They all pinched. Take my advice - polish your old ones.

If you're really worried about what to wear to an interview - stand about outside the building the morning before your interview, take a look at what everyone else is wearing, and take your cue from that. Normally you'll find that it's plain, dark and discreet. No flashy ties. No big chain jewellery. No pale green shoes with four inch heels. And certainly no skirts split all the way to anybody's bum. In other words - business as usual.

Confidence comes from inside you, not from new, unfamiliar and (usually!) uncomfortable clothing. Worrying about what to wear is wasted energy. Concentrate on what you need to say instead.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Being Interviewed Can Be Scary - BUT...

Being interviewed for anything can be scary; being interviewed for a new job (particularly if you’ve been in the same job and off the market for years) can be particularly scary – BUT...

...being interviewed can be a lot less scary if you bear in mind that you got the interview on the strength of your CV, your Application Form, and your covering letter, and that although your prospective employers might have received fifty or even hundreds of sets of paperwork they chose yours, and were interested enough in it to want to see and talk to you. You can gain a certain amount of confidence from that!

In the meantime, if you’re not getting interviews, or not doing very well with the interviews you do get, remember that constructing a good CV and performing well at interviews takes practice, and the more you practice, the more confident and skilled you are going to become – which makes recruitment agencies a very useful resource:

• Recruitment agencies interview you – which is great because not only do you get to practice being interviewed, you can also ask for feedback and get constructive help with working on your interviewing technique.


• Recruitment agencies evaluate your skills – which is great because an evaluation can reinforce your belief in yourself and your abilities, or highlight areas that need improvement.


• Recruitment agencies go through your CV with you – which is great because they see an awful lot of CVs, and will certainly be willing to suggest how you can improve yours because it’s in their own interests to do so. They are, after all, going to try to sell you on the strength of it.


• Recruitment agencies discuss what you’re looking for – which is great because it can help you to clarify exactly what it is you do want.

There are a lot of businesses that give courses on writing CV’s or improving interviewing techniques – but they cost money, and you don’t need (and maybe can’t afford) to spend that money. Recruitment agencies are good at what they do – they wouldn't stay in business if they weren't - and they’re free to you. They’ll get you a job if they can – and they’ll also get you the best salary they can because they earn a percentage of the annual salary of every single person they place.

There are a lot of recruitment agencies around. If you live in a big city you can find one on nearly every street corner. Make plans to register with some of them. They might not be able to come up with an ‘instant job’ – but they can certainly give you some instant interview practice and give you some very practical advice and help on presenting your paperwork and yourself for success.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Don't Cross Yourself Out!

Speaking of old friends and filling in forms and signing them: do you backslash right through your signature when you’re signing your name? A lot of people do that – in fact a lot of people aren’t content with just one single backslash; they go over it two or three times to make sure that their name is effectively well and truly crossed out.

Your signature reflects your personality; it’s personal logo - a written picture of how you see yourself in relation to other people. In fact, many Graphologists believe that when it comes to analysing people, signatures are more revealing than handwriting.

Whilst it's very unlikely that the people who read your Application Forms or covering letters will be trained Graphologists, those people will still be influenced by the way you sign your name, because signatures send signals about the personality of the writer to the conscious and subconscious minds of the reader.

So please don’t cross yourself out!

P.S. What prompted to me to mention this is a book called “Love Letters, The Romantic Secrets Written in Our Handwriting” - which was written by the same old friend who reminded me that ‘CVs’ are ‘resumes’...