4 job interview differentiators to make you the preferred candidate
Most candidates don't demonstrate these job interview skills
What can differentiate you in an interview from other candidates once you get past job skills (can you do the job) and accomplishments? It turns out there are patterns.
Let’s look at four of them.
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You display energy through high engagement
This isn’t jumping up and down energy. It isn’t nervous energy.
Instead, this is more about being highly engaged. You look at the person or people conducting the interview. You actively listen to what is being asked and said. You appropriately gesture to make your points.
And, to be clear, this isn’t about introverts and extroverts. If you’re an introvert (and, interestingly, I am), highly engaged in a conversation with another person should be in your wheelhouse. And if you’re an extrovert, engagement should also be relatively easy.
But sitting back passively, answering questions in a monotone, and not looking at people will make it harder for the hiring manager to hire you.
You provide organized answers to questions
This means you take a couple of seconds to organize your thoughts before you provide an answer.
Being organized in your answer will force you not to drag out the answer with trivial data or fill-ins. By organizing your answer, you’ll be more likely to directly answer the question (which, honestly, most people do not do).
A subtle thing here as well: organized answers allow your hiring manager to ask pertinent follow-up questions. When you give a too-long answer or a wandering response, the interviewer's reaction is to move on to a different question and chalk it up to you just not getting it.
However, organized answers usually bring out follow-up questions because they are more like conversations than interviews.
Clearly describe what YOU did, not what the assignment was about
When answering an interview question, most people say “we, we, we,” “the team, the team, the team,” and never “here’s what I did” for the particular assignment or project.
An interview is one of the few times in your career where it is imperative you talk about what YOU did to get the accomplishment. Think about it: the hiring manager isn’t hiring “we” or “the team.” No, the hiring manager is hiring YOU to get stuff done.
It’s fine to talk about what you did to get the accomplishment and THEN talk about how the team helped. That approach demonstrates leadership. But most of the time, the importance of the answer is what YOU did to accomplish it.
Trust me on this one: You need to talk about what you did to accomplish something. Very, very few people do this in an interview.
Unless you’re a narcissist, of course. If you are, don’t be one.
Demonstrate curiosity
My “Strengths Finder” results show that “learning” is number one. If I’m not learning, I’m dying. And if I stop learning in a position, I get bored — and that is the first sign it is time to leave.
In an interview, this type of curiosity comes across.
You have to know your shit, of course. You can’t just continually say you want to learn new things — because if you do, no one will believe you can do the job.
This is more about having confidence in your abilities, in that you are also a student of what you do. In a poor sports analogy, I’m curious about how bad teams become good teams and how good teams stay good ones. Yes, I like the wins and (not so much) the losses, but my overall interest is how teams are built.
Whether you're a nurse curious about what motivates people to get better, an accountant curious about what motivates some people to save for retirement, or an engineer who wonders why some buildings stay up in a storm while others are damaged, curiosity comes across in an interview.
It’s rare when it happens, and it is a differentiator from other job candidates.
This is a mindset shift
Most people won’t make this positive mindset shift in their heads. What happens when you don’t during an interview means all fully qualified job candidates look the same. They all passed the HR screen. They all passed the phone interview. That means they all should have the job skills and accomplishments to get the job. And then they all hit the face-to-face interviews and become the same, bland job candidates.
As a person who interviewed job candidates, I can’t tell you how much you want to hire a candidate demonstrating these differentiators. When I interview a candidate who hits on these differentiators, I advocate for that candidate to the hiring manager. Hiring managers will move up timelines, cut off other interviews, and make faster decisions when they see the same thing.
Job interviews using these differentiators is a master Cubicle Warrior skill.
Be a Cubicle Warrior,
Scot
