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How a successful interview candidate shows up

Last week I summarized a few past experiences as a job interview panelist, some of which experiences ranged from simply utter frustration to the more extreme stab-my-neck-with-a-blunt-fork boredom. The common denominator in all those experiences was a stark lack of self-awareness amongst many of the unsuccessful candidates, some of which can be cured by undertaking interview rehearsals with a trusted person while being filmed with a smart phone. Today I want to share the attributes of some of the best interview candidates I have seen.

Susan walked into the room shortly after lunch for a c-suite interview. The panelists were interview weary, having seen at least seven candidates before that, none of whom had engendered confidence. She was smartly dressed in a calf length dress and jacket, hair neatly tied back and wearing muted jewelry. She had a quiet disposition to her and sat with her back ramrod straight during the entire interview. Every time a question was put to her, she would write it down and then carefully reflect for a few heartbeats before answering softly yet supremely confidently. She knew her subject matter extremely well and peppered her answers with instances of when she had experienced the item under discussion during her career. Susan knocked the ball out of the park, and when we re-grouped as a panel once she had left the room we all unanimously agreed that we knew she had the job within the first five minutes of the interview. What’s interesting about Susan was that her whole demeanour was counter-intuitive to what panelists look for in a c-suite executive. She didn’t command attention as soon as she walked into the room, neither did she speak loudly and assertively to establish her place.

However, Susan had an unconscious personal mastery of self. Even though she was soft spoken, she looked all the panelists in the eye and took a moment to reflect on her answers before she began to speak. She knew her subject matter very well and established her credentials with the panelists by drawing on actual experiences rather than postulating theorems. By the end of the interview I wanted Susan to be my neurosurgeon if I ever had a cranial surgery or my cardiologist if I ever need acoronary stent.

John was interviewing for a c-suite role a few years ago. He walked into the room sharply dressed, giving all the panelists a firm handshake before he sat down. He said all the right things that we needed to hear and he knew the business very well. We all noted one thing though: John was a little bit too cocky and much too smooth. But he was the best interview candidate on the technical score and so he was awarded the role as the other candidates came nowhere near that score.

When the rubber met the road, it wasn’t long before we realized that John’s suavely delivered technical knowledge was all hat and no cattle when it came to execution. He knew what needed to be done but couldn’t get out of the office to light a fire under the troops even if he was hit with a rocket propelled grenade. This experience, I must admit, has stayed with me and imprinted a negative bias during subsequent interviews which have smooth talking, cocky candidates: will they stand the test of time when they get past the interview post? Hence the benefit of an interview panel, especially one with seasoned panelists including a human resource practitioner who can challenge each other on visibly demonstrated bias.

Some of the best interview candidates I have seen do a lot of research on the organization before attending the interview. They know who the organization’s key stakeholders are be it clients, suppliers, regulators, shareholders and competitors. They’ve googled what are the hot items bothering the organization or its industry in the media and are careful to maintain neutrality of opinion as they discuss the issue. They are quickly willing to admit when they don’t know the answer to a question posted to them but assure the panelists that they could possibly find out the answer if given an opportunity to. They are confident, without necessarily being loud and they are knowledgeable about their subject matter without being condescending. And finally, but most importantly, they are remarkably self-aware.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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How Not To Interview For A Job

I recently started following a prominent politician on Instagram for no other reason than the entertainment value derived when seated for interminable hours in Nairobi traffic. I concluded that if he spends as much time delivering on his mandate to his county constituents as he spends on his personal and highly publicized grooming, he will certainly introduce a much-needed amalgamation of diametrically opposite precepts: Yves St. Laurent please meet Lee Kwan Yew? Over my professional life, I have had the opportunity to sit in on interviews for various roles from junior clerks to c-suite executives. The variety of individual approaches to this grave endeavor runs the whole gamut of human intellectual effort, much like the fashion-meets-county-governance convergence.

Take for example Mary* who was once interviewing for a c-suite role. She walked into the interview room and was greeted by name by the lead interviewer. She very loudly and pointedly corrected the lead interviewer that her name was preceded by the title “Dr.” as she was a PhD holder. Alright then, the interview was off to an intellectually snobbish start. As the interview proceeded, Mary circulated a neat folder with copies of her original academic certificates individually encased in the transparent plastic compartments that made up the folder’s pages. However, the first three pages were full of photographs of the same Mary in various work-related functions, meeting prominent personalities within her industry. The photographs were individually labelled with a blurb noting who was in the picture, which faces were fairly unfamiliar to the interview panelists but clearly of profound import to Mary.

From its intellectually snobbish start, the interview was now galloping at full braggadocio speed. Key lesson to any potential interviewee: humility is not a biblical concept. Interview panelists are more impressed by the interviewee’s grasp of industry knowledge and personal mastery of her craft, rather than who she’s met and what she wants to be referred to. Calling an interviewee by the wrong name or title can in some cases be a deliberate tactic to see how the interviewee will react in the face of social provocation.

One conclusion I can draw from the countless interviews I have participated in as a panelist is that many of us are greatly lacking in the significant personality trait called self- awareness.Executing a breathless monologue for 7 wretched minuteswhile completing ignoring the body language of panelists who are slowly sliding off their seats and under the table in despair is a key pointer to lack of self-awareness. Learning to watch out for verbal and non-verbal cues to stop talking is critical. Verbal cues would include “ok, right” or “that’s fine” and are usually accompanied by a grim expression that should not in any way be misinterpreted as encouragement to prattle on. Non-verbal cues would include the panelists losing eye contact with the interviewee, panelists enviously looking through the window at the guy mowing the hotel lawn outside or the panelist writing long shopping lists on the side of their interview score sheet.

A good trick I’ve learnt along the years is to get a trusted friend or relative to take a video of you as you answer some questions during a pre-interview rehearsal. With even the most basic smartphone today, you can take a few minutes of video that will play back some interesting self-revelations. Videos demonstrate what unconscious idiosyncrasies you have like inserting your left finger into your right nostril when your nervous, your use of verbal anchors like “umm” and “err” before you answer any questions or as you string an answer together which may come off as being unsure or just verbally incoherent, or your habit of speaking to the screen when undertaking a presentation rather than looking at the panelists and building a connection through eye contact. A video also helps you see how you pace yourself as you speak and whether you think before you answer or just rush into giving an answer through a rambling monologue that hopes to arrive at a triumphant result somewhere near minute 6. It will also reveal distracting inclinations to cover your mouth with your hands as you speak, which means that panelists don’t quite hear what you’re saying. Next week I will cover how some of the best (and therefore successful) interviewees have shown up at their interviews.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka