How did your last job interview go?
Sometimes you have a gut feeling. It went well, it didn’t go so well. You had the answers, you felt unsure.
Since so much of your success has to do with how well you connect with the interviewer, some of the best information you can gather about your interview success comes from observing the interviewer and the way that you interact.
- How long you talk. Interviews are often scheduled for a half hour or hour in length. If your conversation goes beyond the scheduled time slot, they’re really enjoying the conversation.
- How much eye contact you get. This actually speaks to the larger question of body language. Do they look you in the eye? Smile? Lean towards you? Do they seem present in the conversation, or are they more concerned with their Blackberry? If they’re excited about working with you, they’ll be excited to talk to you about how that will work.
- How far off script you go. Some interviewers are given specific interview questions to ask. Others make their own. But as they ask you questions, you can gauge whether the questions are standard interview fare, or if they’re really delving into your background and experience, or asking about your passions, interests and motivation. The more interested that they are, the more in depth the conversation will get.
- How clear your next steps are. At the end of the interview, you should always ask for next steps. The answer may be very clear — they may say they want to bring you back. The level of detail provided with the answer may reflect your potential for advancing to the next round. A “we have several other people to interview, we’ll be in touch,” can be a bit noncommital, while “we have four more interviews scheduled this week, and we anticipate getting back to people to schedule the next round of interviews Monday or Tuesday” gives you a little more to go on. If they go to the effort of walking you through what the process will look like, that can indicate that you’ll be moving through it.
- What they say when you ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask if there are any concerns that you can help address at the end of an interview. The interviewer’s response can be very telling — anything from a specific objection and information about why it’s a problem to a glowing review of your performance.
That’s not to say that interviewers aren’t sometimes busy, distracted, or just poorly trained. But if you have a few of these factors working for you, you can feel pretty good about your chances.
The last time you had a really great interview, how did you know it was a winner?
photo credit: woodleywonderworks
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- Phone interview success secrets
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You make a lot of good points. A lot of this can go under the heading of “rapport development.” While no doubt there are some interviewers who will strive to develop rapport even if they have no intention of moving the person to the next round, most aren’t probably aren’t willing to invest in instances like that. So, if you feel like you’re developing meaningful rapport, you’re probably on the right track!
#4: I think it’s important to end the interview with a closing question. It’s the same as sales, and an interview really is selling yourself, so remember to “ask for the sale”. Not in a pushy way, but no one wants to leave an interview, and wait for weeks before they realize the call isn’t coming.
Haven’t interviewed in years, but I hope I would remember to take my own advice!
Gary: Great summary of the concept! There are lots of other indicators of rapport that can help people gauge their success.
Scott: Excellent tip. People can ask for the job, or ask for next steps and get a commitment of follow up. Both will help move things forward and give a candidate a solid foundation for future conversations with the company.
I think the most important factor here is step # 4.
That will only decide where you go from here. In or out !!
Well I was interviewed exactly 2 weeks ago for a position I’m really interested in. At the end of the interview I followed your advice, Kristi, and it seemed like they were interested. That night they sent me a little questionnaire and asked for my permission to start a background check, to which I promptly responded right after sending my “Thank You” emails to all interviewers. Is it time yet to send a follow-up email to the hiring manager? As I said, it’s been 2 weeks. BUT the HR lady (my last interviewer) told me to “be patient because everything here takes a while” (which I knew because they’re part of a major foreign corporation and they have to go back to the “parent company” for such decisions). I just don’t know what’s “long enough” and I didn’t want to be annoying/pushy and follow her answer with “Well how long is ‘a while’?”….. Help please!
E: I can understand your challenge. Here’s what I would do: try to find an article, event or some other item that would be of interest to the hiring manager. Send them a brief email saying that you ran across it, thought they might find it interesting, and that you’re still very interested in the position and look forward to hearing about next steps. Done right, this comes across more as networking than “nagging.” With luck, they’ll let you know how the process is evolving. Let me know how it goes!