How to Stand Out when Interviewing

This is the first video in a new series I'm doing called how to Ace an Interview. So this video is going to be longer. Bookmark it, save it for later if you can't watch it now. But I want to tell you what it takes to wow an interviewer in an initial phone screen so that you get invited back to a second interview. These tips also apply if you are in a second round interview and you want to get invited back to a third round or a final round and get an offer emailed to you. Before I interview with a company, let's. Let's just go over initial phone screen. Before I interview with a company, what I tell all of my job search clients to do is go research them. Now, not everybody's good at research, right? Are you a researcher? I'm not a freaking researcher. Guess who is a researcher? Perplexity AI. This is my absolute new favorite tool. They have a free version. I think the whole thing might be even free. Go to Perplexity AI on on the World Wide Web and it's like a search engine, but it gives you real answers. You know how you search on Google, like what are Apple's company mission and values? I'm about to interview there and Google might give you Apple's website. Perplexity AI will tell you what Apple's core values are. They'll tell you what Apple's mission is as a company. It'll also give you sources so that you can go check, like Apple's website. Like an article about Apple in Bloomberg News. Well, whatever it is, it gives you sources so that you can do the research yourself without having to look around. And it actually answers the question for you. Side note, you can also use Perplexity to look at unemployment data. You can use it for research about what a company builds, makes or sells, what service they provide. You should be doing research like this before you interview at a company. Now, when you are interviewing, usually you start with an initial phone screen. And this advice is for corporate hourly jobs, mostly in the US and Canada. It can apply to some other things, but that's mainly what we're talking about here. You will have a recruiter invite you to an initial phone screen. It probably won't be on Zoom. It'll probably be a phone call. But the first thing they'll do is they'll say, hi, thanks for taking this call. Just wanted to ask you a couple questions. This probably won't take more than 15 minutes, but let's get started. I'll save room for questions that you have at the end. Thanks. First question, tell me about yourself. All right, that's if the recruiter does not make small talk at the beginning, which sometimes they don't. If they do make small talk, that's how you can establish rapport with your interviewer. But you should have done research before you answer the question. Tell me about yourself. You should have done research on Google, on Perplexity, on the company's website, on Glassdoor, about what that company's working on, what they sell, what their latest news scandal was, how much money they grossed last quarter, things like this. I want you to carefully weave elements of your research into the answers you're going to give when this recruiter asks you questions in this phone call. So when they say, tell me about yourself, I want you to give a short answer. We always want to give less than desired and they can ask follow up questions rather than giving more. And then the recruiter's like, okay, we've been on this phone call and you've been rambling for 20 minutes. Don't be a rambler. Don't be a rambler. Have a four sentence answer just written out. Have it right next to you on a piece of paper. You don't need to read off it, but just practice it a couple times. Tell them one sentence about your past experience, Tell them one sentence about what you're currently working on, and tell them one sentence about what you hope to accomplish in the future or a career goal. Here's an example of what that could sound like. Yeah, tell me about yourself. Okay, so I have been a program manager and a mechanical Engineer for over 10 years in the medical device industry, mainly in Silicon Valley. Right now I'm working on building a novel blood test that helps detect liver cancer biomarkers in whole blood. I love what I'm doing right now. It's very, very inspiring and interesting. And then in the future I hope to become a people manager and I'm job searching because I'd love to find a role that I can just really stay at and learn and grow and be mentored and really come into my own in my career. That's it. That's a great example of tell me about yourself. Don't reiterate your resume, don't start in chronological order and tell everybody what you've been up to for the last 10 years. Keep it short, give them some information that you know they want to hear, and then stop talking. This is part two of the series how to ace your next interview. In the last video, part one, we went over how to do some research using AI before a phone screen, and how to answer the question, tell me about yourself. In this video, we're going to be talking about how to talk about salary, how to talk about compensation, how to answer the question, what are your salary expectations? Which is such an awkward question. Who wants to talk about money? When you're first meeting somebody in the first five minutes, how much money do you want from us? All right, before I tell you how to answer this question in the best, most smooth way, I want you to know that you, as a job seeker, will get the job if you can demonstrate properly that you'll be a good roi, a good return on investment for the company that's hiring you. If you're getting jobs that are paying 120,000 a year, a company needs to believe at its core that you will either make them more money than that every year or save them more than more money than that every year. If you can demonstrate that that's you and you have somewhat of a personality, you'll get the job, I promise. A lot of people go through interviews describing, I this for my job, I have these skills. I do this. If you can turn it around and convince the person that you will help the probably the company solve their problems, you are the solution to the company's issues. You will help the company and the department and the team overcome obstacles and challenges. Don't make it about you. Make it about the company and how their problems will become a little bit smaller, bringing you onto the team. Now, that said, when a recruiter in an initial phone screen interview asks you, what are your salary expectations, what I always like to say is, and we're playing a game of tennis here, hitting the ball back over the net. Good question. I'm open to negotiation. It's really important for me that I find the right fit. More important than pay. Do you have a budget you're working with? Now, some people might say that the first rule of negotiation is never to name the first number or he who brings up money first, loses whatever you believe. I want them to say a number first. Because if I'm thinking in my head, all right, I want $100,000 for this job. If they were going to offer 110, they've already gotten me on sale. I've just lost $10,000 a year. That's about $1,000 a month before tax. So I'd rather then say a number first in case my number that I had in my mind was a little bit lower, then I'm going to get paid more. So sometimes get out of your own way, get your foot out of your mouth and. And don't be saying the first number. That's not to say that you should not go to salary.com and glassdoor.com to look at reviews of what people are paying. Like we talked about in the last video, you can also use Perplexity, AI to ask, what is the average salary of a Data Analyst? Level 3 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the medical industry. Right. Such a specific question. But perplexity will tell you, here is the average. Here is the sources that I use to get that information. This is how we can leverage AI in our job search. So let's say you say that phrase to the recruiter and they say, well, we don't have a budget, you know, just tell us a number. All right? Try not to be the first one to name a number. But if you must, if you absolutely must, you've already done your research on salary.com and Glassdoor and perplexity. So you know that this job, in this area, in this industry, with your levels of experience, usually pays from 110 to 130,000 a year. What you can say, and I want you to pay attention to these words very carefully, the word choice matters. What you can say is, I'm currently interviewing at companies that are advertising 110 to 130,000 a year. Then stop talking. Let's talk about the word choices you're using here. I'm currently interviewing at companies. You are subconsciously making the recruiter think that you are a highly sought after hot commodity. You got to go in 20 minutes because you got your next interview. You are top talent. They want you. If somebody else wants you, maybe there will be a bidding war. All right, when you're also saying this, I am interviewing at companies that are offering. Instead of saying, oh, I'm, I'm looking for 110. You don't want to be searching for something. You want to make the recruiter think that these things are coming to you, not that you're going after these things. It's such a subtle difference, but it matters. Word choice matters, especially in psychology, especially in the psychology of interviewing. This is part three. Part one, we went over how to answer the question, tell me about yourself. Part two, we went over how to answer the question, what are your salary expectations? In this part, we are going to be talking about how to answer the question. Tell me how your skills and experience make you a great fit for this role. So this question can come in many different forms, but the answers are all going to be very similar. You need to convince the recruiter or the hiring manager or whoever is interviewing you that you are the best person for the job because you are the one that's going to solve their problems. So how do you know what their problems are? We're going to look at the job description. The job description I think of as a cheat sheet. I think of it as the answers to the test that you are about to take. If the interview is the test the job description is, the answers are hidden in there, and your resume is going to help you link how you can fix their problems. So what I want you to do is scour the job description for like a good hour before an interview. Could be the day before, it could be a couple days before. Try not to do it the hour before. We want you to prepare. So you're going to be looking at the job description. Now, let me show you how to interpret some things. You're going to be reading some bullet points. The candidate must be able to do this. The candidate must be able to help with this. Whatever those things are, think of what troubles they could be having with those, you know, the candidate must be able to help us launch a new product. Hmm. I've launched a product before. What issues did I see? Well, regulatory was an issue, or, oh, documentation was really complicated, or the project manager really dropped the ball. Like, organization and communication are really key. Whatever your experience is with the bullet point on the job description, have a story in your bank, in your back pocket that you can just whip out and tell in the interview what this is going to do. The recruiter is going to be thinking, oh, they've already done this thing that we're doing. They can help us avoid pitfalls that they've seen in the past. So tell them about some of them. Well, I make a great candidate for this role because this is an example of how to answer the question. I'm a great candidate because I've done X, Y, and Z in the past. And I see from the job description you guys have, that's a requirement for this job. So I assume that you're either launching a new product or you're thinking about it. Here's what I've learned in my previous roles. When I have launched a product, I learned this, this, and this are important and not to do this. And I definitely learned a lot. So I definitely think that I could help you in whatever you guys are about to launch. So see how you didn't make it about yourself. You made it about how your past can be the key to their lock. It can be the solution to the challenges they're facing. Now. You don't always know what challenges they're facing, but the job description can give you a pretty good idea. And you can also leverage AI. Here. You can put the chat. Sorry, you can put the job description into ChatGPT and you can say, I'm going to give you a job description. I want you to tell me what sorts of challenges a company might be facing so that they would be putting these things in the job description. Next, I'm going to give you my resume. I want you to help me come up with stories or things from my past experience that are solutions to the problems the company might be having. If you are not leveraging AI in your job search process, whether with resumes or with interviewing or negotiating an offer, whatever it is, I really want you to feel like it is your friend. It is your assistant that you can use, often for free. If you ever need help coming up with a prompt or if you want to know something but you're not how to ask, comment on this video. I'll see if I can help you come up with a prompt. But usually, and I'll go on a tangent here, we'll talk a little bit about AI. Usually what I like to start my prompts with is I like to give ChatGPT a role. You are a career coach and then ask it questions. You are a marketing expert and then ask it about doing a Facebook ad. You, you are a teacher. What lesson plan would you Recommend for a 5 year old? So tell it what its role is. That way it can reference relevant data and answer your question with specific information, not just that general fluff. You know the robotic stuff that ChatGPT gives sometimes. So give it a role. Tell it what its task is. Your task is to write me a newsletter for whatever. Make sure you don't include hashtags. Give it notes. Also, also, if you provided examples, here's an example of what I'm talking about. ChatGPT loves examples. So that's it for this part. We just talked about how to leverage AI and how to answer the question. Tell me how your skills and experience make you a good fit for this role. This is the third part in a series, how to ace your next interview. Make sure you stick around for the fourth part. I'm going to go film it right now. In the last three parts, we talked about how to answer the top three most common interview questions you might get. Tell me about yourself. What Are your salary expectations and why are you a good fit for this role? Those three questions might come in a variety of different flavors, but in this video I want to tell you what you can do after an initial phone screen to really stand out so that you get selected for the next interview. That's where I'm seeing a lot of my clients are having trouble. I'm a job search coach and I help people stand out so that they get jobs in a sea of resumes that look exactly like yours. Resumes are always like a one or two page, two dimensional white sheet of paper with black text on it. Everybody's looks the same. Everybody's pretty much is the same, especially if you get higher and higher in your levels of the roles. Everybody's resume has similar stuff on it. So how can you stand out if you have just had an initial phone screen with a recruiter and you really want to get invited back to the second interview, Maybe it's like a zoom interview or maybe it's an in person interview with the hiring manager. What you can do is send a thank you. Now, maybe some of you have seen my thoughts on thank you notes. I think it makes some people look desperate. But we are not in an employee's market right now. So employees don't have as much leverage as they usually have in an employer's market, which is what we're in right now. So send a thank you note. But don't just send an ordinary thank you note. I want you to use Loom. Oh, you've never heard of Loom? Loom is my new favorite tool besides perplexity from part one. But loom.com. check it out. Out. I think they have a free version. I use Loom probably ten times a day. What it is is you record yourself with making a video and then when you're done, instead of having to download that video as an MP4 file and send it to somebody, it gives you a link that you can send to somebody so they can watch the video. Now you can use this for a variety of different things, but what I love to use it for is thank you videos after an interview. Because guess how many recruiters have received thank you videos? Probably none. Probably only the people that I'm telling this. I just came up with this idea a couple months ago when I heard of Loom for the first time and my job search clients are getting invited back to second and third interviews because they are sending Loom thank you videos and they're giving me feedback saying the recruiter said they've never received a Loom thank you video before. They said it was so awesome and so amazing and creative that they showed it to a bunch of their co workers and I got invited back to another interview. Standing out there's so many ways that you can stand out in an interview or as an applicant or in a room full of people that are similar to you with similar background and experience in education. This is one way. So after your interview, go to loom.com, record yourself a video saying thank you so much. It was so nice meeting with you. Thank you for your time and thank you for telling me about this role. It sounds awesome. Be super enthusiastic and then mention something you talked about. I can't wait to hear more about your scuba diving experience. Hopefully the next time we chat. I look forward to hearing back from you about next steps. Then end the video. Usually I like to trim off the last little bit because it's the last little bit is me finishing speaking and then I'm looking for the stop button. So just Loom gives you the option to trim off the the beginning or the end or pause or it's like the such a cool tool. You gotta go check it out, explore it a little bit and then you click the little link button at the top. And on LinkedIn you're gonna send a DM to the recruiter or in an email, whatever method of communication you've been using and you're gonna say hey, so nice chatting with you. Just now I made a little video showing my my thanks and gratitude and then send them the link. I guarantee you this will make you stand out among all the other applicants. Hopefully you are qualified for the job. At least 70% qualified. Hopefully you have done an excellent job in the phone screen, but this will set you apart from the other 40 people they might be doing phone screens for. So give it a shot. Use Loom. This is not an ad. They do not sponsor me. They probably should because I use their tool all day long, but I love this tool. You can do it another way too. You can film yourself, you can save the MP4 file, you can upload it as a landing page using Squarespace or wix or Kajabi or WordPress. But loom is just so much faster and it's free. So try it for your next interview. Afterwards. Let me know if you get any positive feedback. I'd love to hear. This is part four in my new series how to ace your next interview. And let me know if you guys want a part five and I'll keep going.