Active Interviewing - A Bold New Sales Approach to Interviewing

​​“Success comes from standing out, not fitting in.” Don Draper, Mad Men

“The interview process is broken,” so says Eric P. Kramer, author of the hot new interview process book “Active Interviewing: Branding Selling and Presenting Yourself to Win Your Next Job.” Hiring managers are not good interviewers and candidates make a lot of interview mistakes even after expert training and lots of practice. The interview needs fixing and using Active Interviewing strategies fixes interviews!
 
When teaching a class on Interviewing Skills or working one on one with a client they would have to be a top level interviewer, with lots of confidence and a strong sense of self to pull off this advanced level of interviewing.
 
A structured sales approach and a well delivered interview presentation fixes job interviews for both the candidate and the hiring manager, says Kramer. If a candidate is comfortable taking bold new approaches to fix broken processes and they aren’t landing their dream job then you might take them to AI. If clients are uncomfortable with change and they are a more traditional candidate then this bold approach probably isn’t what you should work with them on.
 
Fixing a Broken Interview from the Interviewee’s Perspective
 
Tell your clients to adapt these thoughts and behaviors:

1. Stop thinking of yourself as an ex employee.
2. Start thinking of yourself as a business of one, providing services that need to be sold.
3. Quit passive behavior, stop thinking that jobs will find you, and give up the belief that employers are clever enough to figure out your value on their own.
4. Become more assertive and begin to guide the interviewer.
5. Make sure to communicate the information the interviewer needs to know to make an informed hiring decision.
6. Determine your brand and communicate it in your marketing materials and in the interview. (Examples of brand traits include; strong leader, hands on manager, analytical thinker, creative problem solver, a positive person with high energy)
7. Communicate your brand so powerfully in an interview that an interviewer can articulate your brand after the interview without you telling them specifically what it is.
8. Focus on the real problems you are being hired to solve. As Zig Ziglar, a famous sales guru says, “People don’t buy drills, they buy holes.”
9. Don’t talk about what you have done in the past, focus on what you are going to do for the company- sell benefits not features. You are not selling the tool, but what the tool can make.
10. Don’t leave hiring managers to guess at your benefits. Figure out what problems need to be solved, define the benefit(s) derived from solving the problem and then tie your features (skills) to the benefits(results). List your skills, but sell your results!
11. In preparing for the interview, ask yourself, “If I were hiring for this position, what questions would I ask?” Prepare the questions, practice the answers then prepare to sell yourself.
12. Ask good powerful questions throughout- at the end of the interview that will differentiate you from other candidates.
13. Research the company extensively and show what you know in the questions you ask or the answers you give. Eg. I understand that XYZ company gained a 5% market share in the NW region of the country last year, what would you attribute this to?”
14. Develop and perfect presentation and persuasion skills and apply them to answering interview questions.

 
Most interviewees should take more control of the interview than they currently do. Strangely enough, hiring managers are usually happy to share that control if only the interviewee would quit worrying about answering questions so correctly and concentrate more on actively selling themselves.
 
For more on Active Interviewing, go to www.activeinterviewing.com.
 
Colleen Clarke