Are You Interview Ready?

This is an article from my business partner C.A.. I found this so relevant to everyone, hope you can learn something from this true story.

I would like share a very interesting perspective of interviews for people who love what their job and have strong commitment and probably would never think about leaving.

I met a candidate for my senior position today. She has over 15 years of experience and strong expertise on the paper. I decided to skip the phone interview and meet her in person.

The first question I asked her was “could you walk though your resume with me?” I was expected she would have a lot of talk about. However, it only took her 2 minutes to summarize her 15 plus years of experience. After several questions, I felt that she might have a lot to talk about, but she had no idea how to organize her thoughts and carefully pick the examples for the questions I asked.

After a little bit of digging, she told me that has not been on the job market for 15 years, she never thought she would need to find a new job. She loves her job, her company values her contribution, she has a very nice boss that would like to develop her skills. Her career started as administrative assistant and now she is in the highest level individual contributor role at her company. Her boss left the company a few months ago and the new supervisor is horrible in many ways, she decided to seek other opportunities. However, after 15 years living in her comfortable zone, she lost the skills to find a new job and have to start all over again to get back on track. I am sure eventually she will be there, but think about the good opportunities she would pass because she is not ready for interviews.

I shared this experience with one of my friends who is in a similar situation and also spent almost his entire career with his current employer. His answer really inspired me and I would like share with you here (not because Heather forced me to write this down, if you know what I mean:-) ). He said even he loves his job, he still interviews with other companies to keep his interview skills sharp when there is a match in the market or a head hunter contacts him, just in case things go south one day.

His answer keeps me thing about what benefits would be to you keep yourself interview ready.

• When a lifetime opportunity comes, you are ready to seize it. Interview has its own language just like dating language. If you don’t practice, it would be like the French you learned at high school slowly fading away from your memory. When you really need it, you already forget how to express yourself. There are a lot hot areas in the interview you don’t want to touch and you need to remember that by practicing. Ask your fiends or go to your career coach from time to time to practice it and keep yourself at the top of the game.
• Keep you updated with how much you worth in the market place. When you talk with the a recruiter, your salary and your expectation is a permanent topic. You can tell immediately after talking with them if you are under market or over market. If you are under market, the recruiter would give you the hiring range to impress you how much your expertise is valued at their company. If your pay is aligned with market, they would concern you would probably not be attracted by their salary. They would say something like it is in the range and start to sell their benefits package. If you are over market and beyond their affordability, they would be very straightforward with you, telling you they only can offer so much, are you still interested?
• Expand you network. Even you reject their offer at the end of the process, your professional relationship with the hiring manager could continue. It’s a small world and your path would come across someday.

Happy Job Hunting!

Originally published http://www.jobhuntingsolution.com/?p=225

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