This eBook is not a common 'how to' guide to interviewing, those have been done a million times over. This is something different. It is based on the experience of Richard Lindsey, an Australian consultant working in London, who leverages his own experience as well as those of the best consultants, managers and agencies he encountered throughout his career along with secrets from the field of sales, marketing and concepts from Neuro Linguistic Programming. Richard is Director of Perform and Change. (PDF file, 10 pages, 424 KB)

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Unformated preview of the document: 'Top 9.5 Interview mistakes and how not to make them' (Part 3):

their problems, and how you might help them get toward what they want. This will show them that you can think of things from their point of view, analyse their needs, and offer solutions. www.PerformandChange.com 2011 Richard Lindesay Page 8 Mistake 7 – Focusing on yourself rather than the interviewer It's easy to get caught up with how important something is to you, get nervous, and focus mostly on that. Using our previous learnings and treating interviews like business meetings helps, especially with being happy about how the situation works out whether or not the relationship fits. Once you have the right frame of mind and approach sorted out, you can then stop focussing on yourself and put your focus on where it should be in any influence situation, the person across the table. And what a wealth of information you can gather if you have a proper focus on the other person! A great deal of it is around language, and how to notice patterns of language that reveals how a person represents things in their mind. And then to use that information to best influence them for the positive. Also there is a wealth of unconscious communication and influence that goes on just beyond the boundaries of most peoples' awareness. Mistake 8 – Answering more than questioning It can be easy for an interview situation to fall into a series of straight questions and answers. If the interviewer takes conscious control and treats the interview as a business meeting, as well as using the other learnings in this document, the interview can be quite different and instead become a workshop of exchange of ideas. Showing real curiosity is key. If someone asks a question, especially around non-­‐technical aspects of work, there is usually much more to what they want to know than what the question presents. For instance, someone asks "Do you work better in a team, or alone?" is a typical question that people ask. It would be easy enough to have some corny prepared answer as so many do such as "I am flexible and conscientious and enjoy participating in teams as well as being self-­‐directed blah blah blah speeeeeeeew". But how about using this as an opportunity to learn more, with an answer followed by a question? Such as "It depends on the situation and what is most appropriate. I'm curious, what is the work like? Is it mostly co-­‐operative or mostly self-­‐driven?" This elicits more information, leading to more questioning, more collaboration, and real experience of everyone getting to know each other. www.PerformandChange.com 2011 Richard Lindesay Page 9 Mistake 9 – Failing to encourage positive responses Most people fail to provoke positive responses from those around them. In an interview situation, they may show interest in the job, present their background, and answer questions as expected. But they seldom really make the person feel positive toward them, or worse, they make the person feel negatively without even knowing it. My number one questions in interviews (and in work in general), are "would that be useful?" and "Was that useful?" What do these questions do? Two things, first they get what they ask on the surface, which is feedback to whether what present is useful (a hint would be to use this mostly when you know the answer will be positive). And secondly these questions shift the focus to how useful you are, and associates you with the benefits. So in an interview you're asked "How do you resolve problems with team members?" The approach would be something like "It depends on the person, I don't think a single approach fits everyone, so I react based on the nuances of the person in front of me– would that be something useful to you?" So you're getting across a key point, and then getting them not only to focus on the point, but also whether it, and you, would be useful to them. Mistake 9.5 – Leaving the interview open ended What happens at the end of an interview? Typically, I'm sure you'd agree, that things wrap up and the interviewer says some standard line such as "well we've got a few more people to see, we will get back to the agent with feedback", something like that. The person interviewing nods, ends the interview politely, and it's over. They then call their agent, give some feedback, and wait for someone to get back to them with where to go from there … if they're lucky. I have found that the ideal time to start wrapping up the interview in a positive way, is when asked "Do you have any questions?" By now it's unlikely that there will be questions, as they'll have been brought up beforehand. This is the time to throw in a closing question, such as "So I'm curious, what's next? Would you like to go ahead with me working here? The response to this is often interesting and useful. If approaching in the right way, the interviewer will either consciously or unconsciously say whether they believe

Unformated preview of the document: 'Top 9.5 Interview mistakes and how not to make them':  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4