Hey everyone, it's Andy with this week's tips for work and life.
This is for all of you in your 40's, 50's, and 60's who email me and call me every day,
frantic that you're part of the over the hill crowd.
Don't worry.
We're going to talk about age discrimination and how to overcome it in a job interview.
Before we roll right into that, as somebody who does this every day of my life and has
consulted to more than 200 companies in my career, ageism or age discrimination or whatever
you want to call it is a lot more rare than you think.
Now, don't get me wrong.
When you get in that job interview, there is a little bit to the fact that you have
to justify those higher wages that you're going to be earning.
But, in the job interview, compensation is really not the issue.
There are three mental hurdles, barriers, biases, whatever you want to call them that
are typically present in those interviewers.
That's what I want to talk about and I want to teach you how to overcome them.
Think about when you get into that job interview and an interviewer is looking at you, he or
she's thinking your skills are stale or you're set in your ways or you don't want to learn
anything new, something of that nature.
Those are the more prevalent biases that you have to overcome.
We can overcome them with your energy and your currency and your attitude and some techniques
that I think will really diffuse those.
Let's talk about that.
Number one, I mentioned your energy.
Vibrancy.
When you walk in that room, you need to be emitting that positive, good energy.
You are a light bulb.
Emit those thousand watts.
Anybody that's sitting in that room with you, when you're done with them, should want to
leave and go conquer the world.
That's what I'm talking about.
I get some of you, some of you more low key types ... If you need to, go do some jumping
jacks or something before you get into that room but get yourself up a little bit.
You want to be emitting that vibrant energy.
That is a really, really good one.
Smile.
Smile for real.
Just make sure that you're bringing it.
Number two, and this is probably even a bigger deal, your responses to their interview questions.
You need to be using examples and responding to them with current techniques.
If your processes or techniques or tactics are outdated, if they are stale, if your examples
are filled with ways of doing things that nobody is doing anymore, that's bad, really
bad.
You need to make sure you're using examples that are current.
Current trends, current techniques, current tactics, whatever it might be.
Where you're going, it needs to be current.
If what you've been doing in your job is not current, I suggest you spend some time making
sure that you're looking at market and industry trends and the latest things and get yourself
somewhat educated on those.
Number three, you want to make sure, just from an attitudinal perspective, that you're
being overt about wanting to learn new things.
I'm interested in growing.
I'm interested in learning those new tactics, those new techniques.
I've always been interested in doing this, but at my current employer, I just don't yet
have the opportunity.
Those kind of things.
You need to be really, really overt.
Let's just recap it really quick.
You got to be energetic.
You got to make sure that your stories, your responses to their job interview questions
are filled with examples that are current, current techniques, current processes.
Number three, you're being overt about expressing your interest in learning new things.
Now, if you want to take this to a deeper level, I've got a couple of great resources
that will really help you tighten up those responses to their questions.
I've got a free e-book called "Ace Your Job Interview: Master the Best Answers to the
14 Most Effective Job Interview Questions."
Those questions will never go away.
My responses that are in the book will never go out of style, I promise you that.
The second thing is, if you want to know everything there is to know about how to answer and ask
job interview questions, attend my free webinar called "Three Keys to Ace Any Job Interview."
It's free.
It's an hour of solid teaching.
You can access both of those goodies in the descriptions.
If you enjoyed this, I always appreciate your likes, your comments, your shares.
If you're watching it anywhere other than my youtube channel or the tips for work and
life blog, hop over to the blog for loads more on job searching, job interviewing, career
advancement and productivity, all kind of goodies and free giveaways and all that good
stuff.
Until next week, have a great one.