The interview process can be viewed in the following ways:
- an exchange of ideas
- a conversation
- a sales pitch
- a performance
- an act of communication
Above all else, an interview is an act of communication.
Your ability to communicate your experience and qualifications to the interviewer, and their ability to communicate the responsibilities, functions, and power of the position to you, are the two most important parts of an interview.
Executives are hired for their communication skills, so you absolutely must be able to protect yourself as a good communicator during an interview.
An interview is not an intellectual exercise. Too often, job candidates confuse communicating with showing off. The skills required to do a managerial job are, for the most part, applied rather than intellectual. The person who goes into executive interview intent on showing off his intellect, as opposed to his intelligence, is likely to appear condescending and overbearing.
An interview is an exercise in power. An interview is a rare occasion when you are free to operate on a peer level with the interviewer, who will almost always be your boss once you are hired. You will never have more negotiating power on a job than you will have going into it-that is, during the interviewing process. You negotiate your biggest raises and most meaningful perks when you are in the process of interviewing for a job, or, as one executive who has done a lot of hiring over the years put it: "You get your biggest raises by changing jobs. Once someone has hired you, he will never again have the same incentive to please you that he does on the day when you sit across the desk from him in an interview and he knows that you are the person he really wants to fill this job." It's imperative to understand how the balance of power works during an executive interview.
The Mating Dance: What Interviews Are All About
Understanding the balance of power is the most important key to a successful executive interview. In non-executive interviews, the prospective employer holds most of the power, and the interviewee is clearly a subordinate.
In an executive interview, the power is evenly distributed. Both the candidate and the interviewer bring an equal amount of power to the interview.
Unfortunately, this doesn't always result in the control shifting back and forth the way it should for an interview to be successful. The interviewer may dominate the interview, or, in certain circumstances unique to an executive interview, the candidate may dominate the interview.
When one person dominates an interview, the interview is rarely successful. Neither party accomplishes enough to get an accurate assessment of the other person. Because of this, some experts advise deliberately splitting the control. They say the interviewer should maintain control during the first half of the interview, and the candidate should take it during the second half. Experts argue that the interviewer needs the first half of the interview to describe the functions and responsibilities of the job, and the interviewee needs the second half, once he or she knows what the job is, to ask questions and describe the ways that his or her qualifications mesh with the job requirements. But as natural as this method of splitting control seems, it is all wrong for an executive interview. It is wrong because it misses what an interview is really all about.
Interviews are small-scale exercises in power that reflect the large-scale exercises in power that occur in daily office life. Because of this, an artificial situation is created when control is arbitrarily split between the two parties during the first and second halves of an interview.
A much more natural situation is to let the balance of power swing back and forth often throughout an interview, much as it does in daily office life. This gives both the interviewer and the candidate a more realistic picture of each other. Specifically, it gives each of them an accurate look at how the other spars for power. The only way, then, that the power relationship can operate successfully during an executive interview is for the control to become dynamic, a continuous exchange throughout the interview.
There are several ways to make this happen. If an interviewer is skilled, he or she will make it happen. Sometimes both the interviewer and the candidate have enough skill to make this happen. Sometimes, it happens by accident. More often than not, it doesn't happen at all. Many interviewers are not only unskilled but also downright inept at interviewing. In these all-too-common situations, the candidate must take control to ensure that the power bounces back and forth as it should. This book is devoted to showing you how to create situations in which the balance of power continuously shifts back and forth throughout an interview.
When this dynamic occurs during an interview, it is easy for both parties to see what they want and what they are getting. The interview then becomes a kind of mating dance. Both par-ties court each other to the point where consummation is urgently desired. The interviewer feels that the job candidate is the best person to fill the job and subsequently mounts a rigorous campaign to interest the candidate in the job. The candidate becomes confident that this is the right job for him at this stage of his career and tries equally hard to convince the interviewer of this. Everything about the job, including how well-suited the candidate is to this particular job, is communicated during such an interview.
When this process goes well, a job candidate is hired into a job with far more clout and status than he or she might otherwise be accorded. This is why it is of tantamount importance that you understand how to interview well-that you know how to dance to the unique music of an executive interview.
See the following articles for more information:
- How to Start on the Right Foot in Your New Job
- What Are the Sources to Find the Information You Need
- The Background of Application Process
- How to Network and Take an Information Interview
