Hi everyone it's Andy LaCivita, founder of milewalk and the milewalk Academy, and award-winning
author of The Hiring Prophecies here, with this week's episode of Tips For Working Life.
We're going to talk about the most valuable question to ask in a job interview.
Before we get rolling into that and before I give you the answer, I want to express I
understand that many of you struggle with how to ask questions and which questions to
ask the employer, but it is so vital that you have this part of the interview in order.
Not only is it a great chance to sell yourself, but it's the most important aspect to getting
the information you need to make a good decision about whether the employer is good for you.
Before we get into what that specific question is, I want you to know I think there are a
lot of questions that need to be asked.
You have to investigate a lot of areas.
Number one, is the company a good company?
Is it solid in general?
Number two, is it a good company for you?
Just because it's a great company doesn't necessarily mean it's a great company for
you.
There's a lot of questions that go along with trying to figure that out.
Second thing is, when you ask questions you should keep these three things in mind.
Every question should be designed to sell yourself, number one, sell yourself, number
two, get the information that you need so that you can make a good decision, and number
three, get the information as quickly as possible because the faster you can get what you need,
the more time that frees up for you to ask even more questions.
The more questions you can ask, the more insight you can gather, the more informed your decision
will be, and likely the better your decision will be.
There's a whole lot that goes into those questions.
There's a science behind how to ask them.
A way to organize them.
How to use the information all that good stuff.
I have an entire webinar dedicated to acing your interview.
It's called Three Keys to Ace Any Job Interview and I go into a lot of detail about what questions
to ask and how to ask them.
It's free.
You can check it out in the notes.
One other aspect that I want to add to why I think this is such a valuable question,
and I'll give that to you in a minute, is about a month ago or so I did a video, it
was a blog post about that the number one reason why you don't get hired.
The number one reason you don't get hired is not because of your lack of qualifications,
chances are very, very good that if you're interviewing your qualified and the employer
thinks so, and my guess you do a great job if you got that job offer and accepted it,
but it's the job candidates inability to map how their qualifications align to what it
is the employer needs.
So, keeping that in mind and actually go back and watch that video if you'd like, but keeping
that in mind, and there's a great chance that you can misstep in this part of the process.
The reason I think this question is the valuable one you can ask because it helps you sell
yourself, it gets you information, it gets it quickly, and it also helps you overcome
that greatest obstacle in getting hired.
So, here it is.
It doesn't need to be the first question you ask, but somewhere early on when you're given
the opportunity to ask those questions I would ask this question to the interviewer, "If
you were to give me a job offer, and I was to accept it, after one year on the job what
would you consider to be a raging success?
What would success look like to you?
Specifically, what will I have accomplished that you would consider to be a success?"
What that question does is it gives you real clarity about what the interviewer thinks
success looks like.
Now, what you can do with that insight is you can reply, or weave into your other questions
and responses, how you have the skills to do that, how you have the capabilities to
do that, or how you would actually accomplish those achievements.
Now you're getting to talk about specifically what you would to work toward that success
and that ultimately is what that job interviewer is looking for.
Will this person be successful in the role?
Here's what else it does.
If you ask that question to every single person you interview with you might get a slightly
different answer and at least this way you'll know what that interviewer thinks success
is.
Maybe you're interviewing with different people within the organization and they each have
different goals and each one has different requirements and needs that need to be satisfied
by this person or support person or whatever the person's job is.
Now, what you're doing is your aligning your answers to how it affects that person, his
or her job, his or her interests, whatever it might be and you're talking directly to
that person and you're able to make sure that you are articulating how you're going to be
successful based on what they think success is.
Let's not worry just yet whether or not all their answers are constant.
That's something you can sort out later.
The most important thing while you're in that particular interview is to get that interviewer
to like you.
That's what that question does.
That's why it's so powerful, because it makes sure that you understand what it is they think
success looks like.
Just to recap, what I would ask them is, "If you were to give me a offer, and I was to
accept it, after one year what do you think success would like?
Specifically, what achievements would constitute success?"
Then turn the table back, talk about how you have the skills to do that, or how you go
about doing that, or how you're able to do that.
That will dial you in nicely with the job interviewer.
Now, if you want more on this kind of insight check out the Tips For Working Life blog.
If you're watching this anywhere other than the Tips For Working Life blog or my YouTube
channel, it's you're listening to it on the podcast, or seeing this somewhere else, hop
over to the Tips For Working Life blog.
There's plenty more like this, loads on interviewing.
I've got that free job interviewing webcast called Three Keys to Ace any Job Interview.
I'm doing a live session or two every month now.
So, see if you can jump in on that.
Until next week, have a great one.