Hey everyone, it's Andy with this week's Tips
for Work and Life. I've got a great one for everybody but especially
the top brass, those executives who are searching and job interviewing. I've got three keys to getting that senior
role. If you are a junior or mid-level resource,
if you can do these three things, I promise you'll get hired. If you are an executive or a senior manager
or a director or somebody at that level, you won't get hired unless you do these three
things. Let's talk a little bit about it. Think about what's happening when you're job
interviewing. You go in there, you're exchanging information. You've got to have the right responses to
their questions. You've got to have good questions that you're
asking. You've got to have the right background. You need to impress. When you're at the junior and mid-levels,
that's usually good enough, but when you're at the senior levels it simply is not. There are three things you absolutely must
do, so let's roll. Number one, you need to get the interviewers,
likely the senior interviewers, and the company thinking into the future. If you can't get them to imagine what their
life will be like and what their company will be like with you there, you'll never get hired. You can have a great background. You could have been there, done that. That's great, but if you can't shift their
mindset to thinking you're serviceable as opposed to you're going to catapult them forward
you're not going to get hired. One of the easiest ways to do that is to shift
the discussion from your background and your credentials, which you will review undoubtedly,
to the future. What are their goals? What are their ambitions? Where do they see the company going? What exactly do they want to accomplish? Then you need to articulate how exactly you
would do it to take them there step by step and walk them through what the future could
like with you "and here's what I would do, then I would do this, and then I would do
that." You need to make sure that in your responses
to their questions or in your line of questioning, when you get a chance to ask questions, that
you're asking that about their future goals, and then make sure you articulate specifically
how you're going to accomplish that. That's number one. Number two, leaders are inclusive and they're
inspiring. You are the high tide that has to lift all
the boats. Right? Leaders build more leaders, they don't build
more followers, so how are you going to show them that you're great at inspiring, you're
inclusive, you're great at building teams. They're probably going to ask you questions
about how you're going to build your team and that's great, but I'm talking about giving
them that deep, good feeling that having you there is going to inspire everybody and that
you actually are inclusive and that you're a great person to work with. One of the best ways to do that is ... Now,
think about your job interviewing process. A lot of these very senior-level interviewing
processes they start with senior people up front because you don't want to waste anybody's
time, you're trying to get a feel for each other. Then you have a middle part to it that has
a lot of other people. You're probably interviewing with colleagues,
potentially internal customers, maybe some of your staff, and so on. At the end, you revisit or visit for the first
time with a lot of the senior folks. Along the way, you're going to be able to
gather a lot of information and you're going to be able to talk to a lot of people. One of the best ways at the end to show that
you're extremely inclusive is to make lots of references to the other people and the
insight that they brought up. For example, "Hey, Mary Jane said, when I
was talking to her she said something about this. It really struck me. I love that idea. Hey, Mr. Executive Man, I'd love to get your
perspective on this as it relates to something else, something greater, something more grand,
a deeper level of insight." If you can include a number of references
to other people in the organization and the good conversations you've had with them, what
you're doing is you're planting seeds in the interviewer's mind that you are an inclusive
person, you're interested. They can start to see you as part of the team
working with the other people who you're referencing almost like you're already there. That's another way, this is also a great way
to also get them to look into the future by making references to other people that you've
interviewed with, ideas they've come up with, your thoughts on them, and getting additional
insight from the senior executives in the company. That's number two, make sure your inclusive
and inspiring. Number three, you're going to get a chance
to ask questions throughout your interviewing process. In some cases you might be asking them along
the way through the interview, in other cases you're going to be asking them at the end,
but one thing that you absolutely need to do in addition to asking great questions is
you need to make sure that you do not ask questions, however awesome they are, that
lead to a dead-end answer because if they lead to a dead-end answer you're a dead end. I'm talking about you ask a great question,
they give you an answer, and then you're moving on to the next question. That's the big mistake. The message that you're sending to them is
that you are a puddle skipper. You are not somebody who's digging deep to
get information, collecting it all. You're not well-researched, you're not digging
deep enough to get the information that you need to make a good decision, and now they're
starting to imagine you as an employer there and you're working with the people in your
group or other units and you're not digging deep enough. If you have follow-up questions and you start
to drill down in your line of questioning, that sends the message that you are well-researched,
you're thoughtful, and you're making sure that you're getting all the information that
you need to make a good decision. It also sends them the message that when you're
working with your staff you will make sure that you're getting all the information to
make good decisions. That is something that they want so that when
they give you the autonomy to run your unit or run your division or whatever it might
be they've got confidence that you're going to be a great researcher, you're going to
get that information, and you're going to make well-educated decisions because you're
informed as opposed to people who skim the surface and oftentimes make great mistakes
and make bad choices because they didn't have all the information. There you have it, three biggies. Number one, you got to get them to thinking
in the future, number two you've got to get them to feel you're inclusive, and number
three you're asking questions that have follow-up questions to show that you're well-researched
and that you're great at getting the information you need to make executive-level decisions. Those are three great points. If you want more insight on how to do all
three of those, I've got two great resources for you. One is an e-book. It's called Ace Your Job Interview. I give it away free. It's mastering the best responses to the 14
most effective job interview questions. There's also 43 variations of those questions
in that e-book, so you'll have a great resource to anticipate the types of questions that
you're going to have to address so your responses will be great. I also have a fantastic webinar. It's a solid hour of teaching. It's also free. It's called Three Keys to Ace Any Job Interview. The participants, the attendees get a couple
of great e-books, one of which is How to Interview the Employer, 75 great questions to ask before
you take any job so you will have loads of questions to choose from and really help catapult
your researching and your prep as far as asking them questions. I hope you take me up on those. There's links in the description. If you enjoyed this video, give me a like,
a comment, and a share. You know I love your circulation and I love
your help sharing my message. If you're watching this anywhere other than
my YouTube channel or my Tips for Work and Life blog, hop over to the blog, I've got
loads more content on these and other subjects. Until next week, have a great one.
