Part 1 #interview

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 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. 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. 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, 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. All right, this was the first video in the series how to ace your next interview. Make sure you go to the playlist on my profile so you can see the rest of the videos. And I'm gonna get to making number two right now. See you, number two.