It's Your Job. Grab It!

By ALAN JONES

What is a job interview? Typically, and unfortunately, it is a sales meeting between two parties, one with little concept of what they are selling, and the other with only a vague understanding of what they need to buy.

Small wonder, then, that these exercises in communication invariably end in tears -- largely through the inability of both parties to listen, understand, and evaluate.

A person of my acquaintance was interviewed for an administrative position. Apparently, all was well until he was faced with the question, “What is your greatest weakness?” He replied, in effect, “I am not very good at administration.” Naturally enough this show-stopper precluded him from being invited back.

Now, this was a bit of a puzzle as I knew him to be an excellent administrator, so why did he say otherwise? “Well, there were three of them sitting there and I felt a bit outgunned. I hadn’t prepared for the question, the silence was deafening, my brain seized up and I just said the first stupid thing that came into my head.” Through lack of preparedness he admitted to a weakness he didn’t have. He gave up on the question, lost the plot and the job offer. Does it serve him right for telling a lie?

I know one interviewer who begins every interview by saying, “Tell me about yourself,” and reaches for the smelling salts when she gets the response, as she invariably does, “What would you like to know?” Although this is not the best way to start an interview I can understand her anguish.

Sell Well

Imagine that you have a product to sell. After much effort on your part the potential buyer agrees to meet you and says, “I’m very busy and don’t have much time -- so tell me about your product.” Are you really going to say, “What would you like to know?” Many people do, or they mumble a few incoherent words and quickly run out of ideas or, even worse, bore the buyer rigid with an unending diatribe of irrelevant and damaging information, largely based upon how old the product is.

Why do we do ourselves such a disservice at interviews? Because, we’ve only turned up to get a job. Our minds are solely focused on what for us is the big problem -- we don’t have a job. And, boy, do we need one -- bad! The greater our need, the worse our performance.

A Relationship, No Less

In my experience there are fundamentally two types of interviewees. The majority are “job beggars” who, by virtue of what they say and how they say it, quickly give the impression that the only reason they have come to the interview is because they need a job. The minority, and these are the ones who get hired, give the impression that they are pleased to be at the interview, and would have turned up anyway.

To achieve this we must not only ask “what is an interview?” but “what is a job?” A job is no more than a means of fulfilling a need profitably, and the relationship between employer and employee is no more than a buyer/seller relationship.

There was a time when we liked to believe that it was a bit cosier than that, but that was in the days when we thought organisations existed solely for the purpose of employing people. That no one wants to hire us is initially somewhat worrying, but it’s nothing personal -- they don’t want to hire anyone else either. We are, after all, a big overhead.

The changing world of work in the 20th century spawned a new language to describe the ways in which labour was bought and sold. Words such as “job,” “employer,” “employee,” “retirement,” “salary,” and yes, “interview,” all became current coinage, and they were not much used before then. They belong to the 20th century, and that is where we must leave them as they won’t serve us well in the 21st.

You Hold The Edge

We are now moving from a job-based employment culture to a work-based self-employed society. To ease this transition our language must change accordingly. The baggage that went along with the job begging culture must be jettisoned, if we are to adapt to this new world of work.

The “job” is something we will leave behind -- it’s no longer a neat way to parcel up work. While we are at it, let’s be bold and consign the word “interview” to the historical garbage bin.

I, for one, won’t miss it -- it was always too close to “inquisition” and, perhaps, that’s why it made us nervous.

You may still find yourself attending “interviews” for “jobs” in the old-fashioned sense for some time yet, but you must make a resolute endeavour to understand them for what they are -- sales meeting where you, the seller, are seeking to convince the buyer to hire your services.

The buyer is the one with the problem -- you are the solution.