Treat the job interview like a sales call for a consulting project. The prospect couldn't care less about your trophies and accolades unless they believe that you understand their particular problem.
How do you let a hiring manager know you understand his movie and can solve his biggest problem?
1- You can let your hiring manager know that you have a good idea of what he's up against.
2- You can let him know that you have a sense of the Business Pain he's facing.
3- You'll do that by asking questions and putting forth a Pain Hypothesis:
- In the beginning of the interview resist to talk about you, You'll get to that part later. You're going to talk about him right now, not about you. Saying that I want to know more about your pain, so I have more leverage in the conversation, too.
- Probe for the gap between what they are doing and what they want to be doing is more Pain!)
- You're naming the Pain. Make it real for the hiring manager. Dang – ten million dollars unrealized! That's a lot. For a mere hundred-and-ten-thousand dollars a year you can make that excruciating, career-limiting pain go away.
- When you dive into the storytelling part of the interview, don't go into exhaustive detail. You have to leave some parts of the story to the imagination, because lots of hiring managers will imagine that they know all that you know by virtue of hearing the five-minute version of your story, and will feel they don't need to hire you! You have to keep the part of the story they didn't hear more intriguing than the part they did.
And Here's a step-by-step on that process.
Here are ten questions to jot down on your interview pad and bring with you to the interview:
1) So it sounds like you're dealing with [X - the Business Pain]. How long has that been going on?
2) How does it show up? How did that problem get the attention of your management team, and its current priority?
3) What bad effect does the Business Pain have on your business? Why is it a problem?
4) What is the Business Pain costing you, roughly? (If the Pain takes the form of missed opportunity, the question is "How much are you leaving on the table?")
5) What have you tried so far, to relieve the Business Pain? (You need to know, so you don't suggest something that already failed.)
6) How did it work when you tried that? (It couldn't have worked all that well, or you'd be talking about a different Business Pain.)
7) What is the appetite here in the organization for solving this problem? (Is this your hiring manager's own pet project, or is there organizational support for it?)
8) What is the ideal state, let's say a year from now? (What does pain relief look like to your hiring manager?)
9) Since the problem is costing you roughly $X per year (from question Four, above) what have you budgeted to relieve it? (This will help get you over the hump, "We have a forty-million dollar problem and we're creating one sixty-thousand-dollar job to solve it." REALLY, Jackson?)
10) What's your timeline for solving the problem?
Now, Starting with a Pain Hypothesis, the way our imaginary job-seeker did. (i.e. He threw out two hypotheses: That direct website sales were bugging Acme's partners, who don't want to be in competition with them, or that website sales alone wouldn't get Acme to its revenue goals).
Likewise, You can start with one Pain Hypothesis:
MANAGER: So, can you tell me about yourself?
YOU: Sure! I'm a Marketing Manager, I've been involved with digital marketing for about a decade, and I'm excited about what I've read about your company. Can I ask you a quick question, just to make sure I understand the role?
MANAGER: Sure! (Here comes your Pain Hypothesis)
YOU: If I'm reading the job ad correctly, you need someone to support the salespeople in the field with marketing materials and competitive information, so they don't lose sales or have to make things up on their own. Is that anywhere near what you're thinking?
MANAGER: Bingo! We have a Marketing department, but they're very concerned with product numbers and styles, keeping our catalog up to date and keeping our website running. All that stuff is great, but we need true sales aids that our salespeople can use at every stage of the sales process. So this is a very sales-support-focused role.
YOU: How would one of your salespeople articulate the problem he or she is experiencing as they sell without benefit of these sales tools?
MANAGER: Great question! I know, because they tell me all the time. "How am I supposed to make a sales presentation without marketing decks? I used Stacy's slides in my last presentation, and they didn't match the information we'd already sent the prospect." So you see.
The hiring manager may give you the pain outright once you show that you have some understanding of his or her movie. Resist the urge to jump to solutions! There is no sense shoving solutions at a hiring manager who's heard it all and then some.
Wait and be patient, little Grasshopper. Pique the hiring manager's interest and gain his trust by letting him know that you've lived his movie already.
(But I haven't lived his movie! Yes you have. Don't think so narrowly. Business Pain takes many forms. Your story may have right-brain relevance to the hiring manager's pain, even if you worked in a different industry and function.)
You'll get your chance to tell your story when the hiring manager leans forward and says "So, you've done this before! I want to hear all about it.")
Now, go forth! Just don't forget to probe for pain first, and share your awesome story afterwards!
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