finding career zen

Mastering Job Interviews: Turning Conversations into Offers with Matthew Sorensen

• Pete Newsome • Episode 44

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Struggling with nailing job interviews? Imagine feeling unheard, lost in a sea of applicants, just another resume in the pile. But what if I told you there's a way to flip the script and transform those interviews into powerful conversations? Meet Matthew Sorenson, who turns interviews into your chance to shine. Matthew's been on both sides of the hiring table and has proven expertise in teaching job candidates to leave an unforgettable mark...and he's shares that knowledge with Pete in today's episode.

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Tips for Job Interviews:

  1. Conversations, Not Interviews: Shift the dynamic by making it a conversation. Don't just answer questions, engage and offer insights. This sets you apart.
  2. Understand Their Needs: Companies hire to solve problems. Show how you're the solution. Emphasize what you can bring to address their challenges.
  3. Prepare Stories, Not Just Answers: Share anecdotes showcasing your skills in action. This makes you memorable and demonstrates practicality.
  4. Research and Engagement: Understand the company beyond surface-level facts. Offer suggestions or insights during the interview that display your genuine interest and understanding.
  5. Practice, Practice, Practice: Interviews are a skill. Practice answering common questions and work on turning it into a flowing conversation.
  6. Create a Connection: Strive to build rapport. People hire those they genuinely like and see as a good fit for the team.
  7. Be Solution-Oriented: Frame your responses as solutions to the interviewer's needs. Show you're there to contribute, not just to get a job.
  8. Focus on Unique Value: Highlight how you will stand out. What do you offer that others might not? Make it clear.
  9. Engage Post-Interview: If possible, continue engagement post-interview. Follow up with something relevant and valuable, reinforcing your interest and expertise.

    Additional Resources:
Speaker 1:

You're listening to the Finding Careersend podcast. My guest today is Matthew Sorensen. Matthew is a former executive recruiter search firm owner and director of talent acquisition. Today he's the founder of Candidate Club Interview Prep and host of the Job Interview Experience podcast. Matthew, how are you today?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here, Pete.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much for taking the time. You've done a lot. You've just looking at your background. You've added thousands of resumes. You've interviewed thousands of candidates. You've really broke down in detail right how to hire or not. So thank you for taking the time to join me today. You are an expert in this area, so I am really looking forward to hearing about your history and also what you're doing for Candidates today, because I think you're doing something that's really important out there in the market right now and much, much needed. So let's just start with a little background. If you wouldn't mind, matthew, tell us about your professional history.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting. You never know where your career is going to take you. I studied advertising in college and my first job out of school was selling ad space in a local business journal. It was printed it still is and web, email advertising things like that and a huge part of that job was networking. I was going to multiple networking events every week. One of those networking events I met an executive recruiter who owned her own solo search firm, fast forward. Maybe six months I got a call asking if I'd like to join her firm, turning it into a two-person firm from that point. And she had an amazing reputation and taught me the old school recruiting techniques, so like how to cold call into a firm to find talent before LinkedIn existed. Linkedin was just kind of gearing up for recruiting use at that time. So I learned a lot there and I don't know if you know, like the Peter Lefkowitz School of Recruiting things like that. So a lot of that old way which teaches you, I think, today how to be different and how to take more of that hard work approach to recruiting. So that was a great experience.

Speaker 2:

The firm located and I didn't, so I started my own firm and I had a lot of ideas on how to create an experience for clients and candidates, and for me, this was local to my area, so you know how to build long-term relationships and get a strong relationship built with clients. And what I'm really proud of from there is how many firms were repeat customers. I didn't have that many clients. I just had a lot of clients that were growing and happy with my work and I think almost everyone I placed maybe everyone stayed at their job where I placed them for way longer than the industry average. I mean, I'm talking like more than five years per person. So every fit was a great fit and a lot of that's just great luck on my part, I think.

Speaker 2:

But I placed I ended up placing quite a few leaders with one of my clients that was growing quickly. I think they grew tired of paying my fee. I don't know if they liked me or not, but I think they got tired of that fee and they invited me to come work for them as their director of talent acquisition and I joined their team and really dove deeper into recruiting and interviewing and hiring at a huge scale and that company was acquired at the end of 2019. And I was out of a job, but I've been working on some things for even before I started with them. So in January of 2020, I started candidate club interview prep and in mid 2021, I started the job interview experience.

Speaker 1:

That is a lot to do at the same time, and I want to spend some time exploring each of those areas. But given that you've been on both sides of the table, how would you describe the difference between corporate recruiting and third party recruiting? It sounds like you see value in both, since you've done both, but if you had to really describe the difference, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

An executive recruiter is really trying to serve, I think, two parties at once, versus in-house is typically serving one party at once. So an executive recruiter it's a lot like a matchmaker, where you have to find your clients and so you're a salesperson and you have to impress them or be at the right place at the right time, and then you have to go find talent. And in my experience, you never get the easy ones as an executive recruiter, because if it was easy, they'd just post it online and they would have found someone. So you have to go out there, find the right talent. I would say for me, maybe 15% of that was through networking and knowing the right people. The other 85% was probably LinkedIn or something around that. And so then you have to convince that person who is gainfully employed to talk to you, and then you have to talk about the opportunity and see if that's the right fit, and so that's a lot of conversations, a lot of interviews. I like to calm conversations because when I spoke with people, I didn't want them to feel like they're being interviewed. I wanted them to feel like they're being heard and you have to understand them and, in your own minds, to the best of your knowledge, create a cultural fit. And then you have to find a cultural fit and then you go back to your client and pitch this person and then they have to interview, talk to each other, and so that's where I think the executive recruiter is different in those ways, and probably more In-house you're passively receiving talents.

Speaker 2:

Instead of going out and finding them, they're typically coming to you through the job portal and so from there you're really typically the recruiters trying to find the best match for what the manager has told them they're looking for, and a good hiring manager will not just hand over a job description and say, hey, find this, we need this person in a week. A good manager will say, hey, this is what's worked well, this is what fits well on the team. These are some skills that I really want to focus on. Maybe here's a couple extras that, if they happen to have this new skill, new technology, whatever it is, this will stand out to me. And then that recruiter just has a lot of work, a lot of interviews Before that, looking through a lot of resumes, trying to see if people check these boxes.

Speaker 2:

Some of that's been lost now with resume readers and technology and things like that. But at the end of the day they're still sorting through who they want to speak with and then typically they're going to have goals of time to hire, things like that. So job seekers need to understand that they're motivated, they want to hire someone, they want the right person to come along, and quickly, because that's how typically they're judged on doing their job well or maybe even receiving extra income or commission for making placements. So they're motivated to. They want you to impress them, and so they're talking to folks, but then it's out of their hands because they're typically sending that person on to the manager of that department, maybe someone else in the recruiting department. So I hope that explains the difference in my mind between the two.

Speaker 1:

It does. There's pros and cons to being in each role, and I've only been on the third party side and of course I, being in that position, I would say, well, it's much harder in our world right to be the third party recruiter, but the reality is when you're internal and you're running a talent acquisition organization, like you did, you have to work with the managers that people in my position can choose not to work with, and that's a big thing to overcome. So I don't envy anyone in talent acquisition who has to work with those managers that we would simply just walk away from because they're too difficult to work with. You probably saw your share of that when you were in that role.

Speaker 2:

I think executive recruiting is a bit more lonely. In my experience, my clients were great to work with, but they want you to solve this. They want to pay you to solve this problem and not be in their hair a lot. So I would and I would try not to be so. You know the other finding candidates sorting through things without talking to in my case it was usually the owner or president of a company, maybe the head of the department. Who's my contact. You can't really reach out to them twice a week with questions or how am I doing? How is this type person what? How does this work? How does that work? They really just want you to shut up, go find someone and come back and they'll give you feedback. I'm not saying that that doesn't happen, but internally there's a lot more discourse. There's a lot more maybe a weekly department meetings. They're refining what they want, maybe they're changing their budget and you're more likely to get pretty constant communication on what you're doing and then quick feedback on what they like or don't like.

Speaker 1:

So I'm biased, of course, but I appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to answer those questions, because a lot of candidates on the market are hesitant to work with an executive recruiter. They don't trust the system, they don't trust the organization and there's a lot of trepidation there. It sounds like you see the value in it, even though you've spent more time in talent acquisition. If you were advising a candidate today, what guidance would you give on working with a staffing company?

Speaker 2:

If you can create a pitch for a staffing company and connect the dots for them, if you can clearly state who you are and what you do and how you do it well, I think a staffing firm will enjoy working with you. You're connecting the dots for them. They might not have the position open that you're looking for. It might be a timing issue, a client issue, but a good recruiter not to say most executive recruiters they love their relationships, even if they just keep it on the back burner and wait till the time is right. But instead of being the type of person, an executive recruiter sends a lot of cold emails, a lot of cold LinkedIn messages, and they hope for people to reply. So if you're active and engaging, you say, hey, here's my email address, here's my resume, here's what I've done based on what I know of the type of clients you work with. Here's how I can help them succeed. Here's the implementations I've done. Here's the type of marketing strategies I've done. They've gotten ace in the hole and I've seen this.

Speaker 2:

The timing might be perfect. They might say, hey, we're not doing this, maybe we will next quarter, whatever that is. But you have a warm relationship and you also have an in-house recruiter. Sometimes they get paid commission on performing well for making placements, but typically their salary is gonna be about this, pretty consistently within a small range For an executive recruiter. They're very motivated to get you placed and a lot of times they'll even go out of their way, not to help you but to help themselves by even going to pass clients pitching you to.

Speaker 2:

People say, hey, I have a great person here wondering if you're looking for talent like this, do you have someone who's gonna be working for you and it's in their best interests to get you hired? They'll get paid well if they can do so. And to clear something up that I've seen a little bit of lately when an executive recruiter gets hired 99% of the time maybe hire they are never getting part of your salary. Your salary doesn't go down from going through them. The company is basing the payout for the recruiter based on your salary, but it's outside of the company's pocket, not your paycheck. So I've seen that a little bit. People have that question. If it's ever not that way, I'd run the opposite direction. But executive recruiters get paid for their work from the firm, not from you in any way.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's a great point to make. I'm glad you brought it up because it's the inverse is true in most cases, where the recruiters getting a percentage of the annual salary, they're motivated for that salary to be as high as it can possibly can be and way more importantly than that and I can tell you that any recruiter I've ever met would agree with this if not, they won't be in the industry very long. You want the candidate to be happy because that's what's going to lead to them accepting the job offer and staying right. So it's not about getting an interview scheduled, getting an offer, even getting it accepted. It's about a candidate staying in place to your point Earlier.

Speaker 1:

That's what gets you more business right, that's what gets you paid in the first place, but it leads to a happy client and repeat business, and that's what it's all about. And there's no successful executive recruiter who makes a living on one new client at a time. You make a living, a good one, based on repeat business, and so if you're a place in candidates that don't stay, that's just not going to happen. So it's a great point to make. I haven't heard that sentiment, but you speak with a lot of recruiters or, I'm sorry candidates. So that sounds like it's a concern that's out there, at least to some degree.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad you said that about the motivation and the motivation to present you with a higher salary to negotiate for you. For an in-house recruiter, the big focus is typically time to hire. So fill this quickly, because it costs money to have open seats. It also costs money to pay recruiters to recruit a position, and so that motivation is to fill it quickly, which is good, right, and candidates want to get hired quickly as well. But if someone comes in at a lower salary, that also really eases that transaction for the company.

Speaker 2:

For an executive recruiter, they also want to work quickly, but they're going for quality with the firm. The firm is going to pay for that and when they present you with the best salary, that makes sense for both parties. You win because you're probably going to get offered more. There's also, I think, a little bit more prestige coming through with an executive recruiter. You've been vetted already. Typically, what I did is I would send a PDF along with every candidate, give them some background information, things they've done that stand out, highlights, maybe a photo of them and kind of a pitch for them. So you're getting that person in your back corner and, like you said, they're motivated for the reasons that you are also motivated by which, to say bluntly, is income for both parties.

Speaker 1:

That's right. What a shocker. Compensation matters, right. So what do you see right now? Before we get into what, you're spending your time on the job market. You speak with a lot of candidates. How would you describe it right now? Is it improving? Yet we're recording in the middle of October 2023. It's been a rough year for a lot of folks, even layoffs in the last week. We've seen, with LinkedIn, bullhorn two big names in the job space for sure. How would you describe the market right now?

Speaker 2:

I've recreated in both high unemployment economies and low unemployment economies. As I know you have as well. You've been through those cycles and the feeling or word I'd use for job seekers when an economy is booming which I don't think it is right now, but in the past job seekers are more assertive and they feel that companies are competing for them and that the job seeker can name the terms. And I've seen that and that's been how it is right now, and I get a lot of emails from listeners and they're struggling to find employment. I think the feeling is frustrated. It's not just frustrated because they're not hired. Companies aren't hiring as much, so there's a lot more competition for jobs and so that oversaturates the job market with talent and so each job is getting a ton of applications. So what does that do? That diminishes the candidate experience at the company that they applied to. And then candidates they want to get to know the company. They want to start a relationship, not just to get their foot in the door the right way, but they want to know about the company they're going to work with. And what I'm seeing is recruiters are just running through a bunch of interview questions and then a quick goodbye. And with so many applications that they're receiving and maybe even recruiting departments being short staffed, there's just not as much time to get to know candidates, and so candidates aren't really being heard or seen as people which, when it's, I'd say, a booming economy, when there's a lot of jobs and not enough people, companies are saying tell me about you, laughing at all your jokes and, for a higher level positions, really courting the candidates. And that still happens, of course. But that interaction of, I think, being heard and your time being respected as someone who can help the company and so thus being heard and spoken with, that's hurting people and then they also feel they're not getting noticed at all. And that's just, I think, because there's so many applicants for jobs, so, jobseeker, they know they're a great fit for the role and they know they can help the company. They know, oh, I can fix this, I can do this right, but then they're applying and not getting a response, or they're just getting a rejection email after a couple months and they don't get any interviews.

Speaker 2:

And that's a big part of what I talk about is how to cut through that noise and get noticed and connect the dots for recruiters and create a unique interaction to help them understand why you're the fit for the role. And my take on it now, in kind of this current environment, is that you have to that interaction that you want, you have to create that. That's on you now and you covered it in a podcast the Career Generalist vs a Specialist. Showing them how you're the special candidate not special because of who you are, but how your special skills. Connecting those dots for the recruiter right away that might not even understand the role all that well. Saying here's my skills, here's three things I can do to help your company, here's why I think the manager will. Here's a skill of mine I think the manager will be excited about, so on and so forth. So flipping the script a little bit and making that connection for the recruiter, doing part of their job for them, which is connecting the dots and realizing that you're the person they should keep talking to.

Speaker 1:

I love that, and I think that's something that candidates probably don't realize with enough frequency is that a lot of times the recruiter is working on a role that they don't fully understand, and every situation is unique. Some recruiters are very deep in the specialty area that they're recruiting for. Others it really is just the opposite, where they just know very little about the role that they're recruiting for. So you said, connect the dots it's a perfect way to phrase it. Make it easy for the recruiters to match your skills and background and what you can do to the job description. And it is a frustrating time for candidates. We know that they need help, and I put a post up for an internal recruiter role not too long ago and it received hundreds of applicants within a few hours, and by the time I turned the job off we had received well over 1,000 and close to 2,000 applicants. And just the time to look at those applicants, to glance at them, you do the math on that.

Speaker 1:

It is unfavorable to the candidates, to say the least, and I don't have a good solution to it. I have some, but I'm not going to try to spend time on those today because it involves changing the system that we have in place. So I think the best thing we can do now and you're doing it, so I want to shift our focus to talking about what you're doing to help is to allow the candidates who are on the market right now job seekers to thrive in the situation that we're in, for better or worse and in many ways it is worse than it was and when you started recruiting when I started recruiting right now, the effort to apply is so low. The effort to post a job is so low. It leads to these really big numbers, in my opinion. Now I start to date myself when I go too far down that road, so we won't do that. But you started podcasting because you saw a need to provide better advice than what you were seeing. So talk about that. What made you really get into podcasting in the first place?

Speaker 2:

I never, ever thought I would have a podcast. I knew that I had a fresh, modern take on job interviews and getting hired. A lot of HR professionals aren't especially helpful in sharing their knowledge and they've been taught not to interact with the candidates in that way. Right, you can't give feedback after a job interview. You really shouldn't. Right, it puts the company at risk. Or the other side are social media personalities that are rereading chat, gpt and they don't have any experience of their own. So I thought I could bring in a lot of experience that I have and just share it with job seekers. And I've done quite a bit of interview coaching, pete and, I'll say humbly, with a very high success rate for people I work with. So I started the podcast just to share everything I know on helping people to get hired, and in a format that everyone in the world would have access to at their own pace and for free. So the one-on-one interview coaching is expensive and I share my tips on doing those right how to stand out, how to position yourself and a lot of just what not to do and then what to do from a perspective of someone who's seen so many interviews that there's little things you can do just to break the pattern a little bit, and the feedback has been huge.

Speaker 2:

People listen to the podcast and they do the hard work of applying what they've learned and they write in and say that they've gotten hired. And for me that's the big reward of it. I get emotional every time I read those because I know people struggle and it's an incredibly stressful time in a career to have rent and car payments and childcare and not know when you're going to get a job and right now I think it feels a little gloomy for people, especially in this market. So for me it's being able to share what I know with people, and I don't like the sound of my own voice. I've never had a desire to be kind of a public type speaker or figure, but it has made an impact. I really hope it has and continues to do so. And so I just put out a couple episodes and thought, wow, I have a lot more I could share and this seems to be helping folks. So I just kept doing it and here we are today.

Speaker 1:

It's great that you're doing it, and I would say you're unnatural, because when I first heard you on air before we met, I thought oh man, I'm such, I felt like such a hack because you sound, you have a voice made for it and so, even though you didn't see that yourself doing it, it's a phenomenal podcast. It is helping a lot of people. So talk a little bit more about what those who would listen can get out of it. If you would, matthew, you're helping a lot of folks who should listen to the podcast.

Speaker 2:

So I would. Typically, I think I have two types of listeners. One are they're newer in their careers and they know that this whole thing is a big mystery and they know they're not good at it and so they want to learn about it. They want to get insight. The other type of listener they're further along in their career and maybe they've gotten to really good places in their career, but either they've lost a job or they'd want to pursue something way bigger and better. But they have an interview in five or 10 years and it's just a learned skill and so they're tuning into, freshen up. They've probably experienced a lot of this stuff, but they want. They know that things will click again once they start learning about them.

Speaker 2:

So in each episode I cover topics like, we'll say, phone interviews, the real reason behind interview questions, because a lot of times it's not the question you're being asked. There's something else behind it. So, for example, if you're interviewing with a recruiter and they say what do you know about this company? Well, they work there. They know about the company. So they're not asking you to gain knowledge on the place they work. So it's actually kind of a silly question. Really, what they're asking is do you care enough to invest your time before this conversation to learn what we're doing? Do you understand what we're doing? So questions like that need to be dug into A question like tell me about your last boss. They don't care about your last boss. They're never gonna meet your last boss. How do you react to that? Do you? Does it turn into a therapy session where you start going through the bad experience you've had, which most people have, and they should talk about that, but not during the interview, because it shows, maybe, how you'll act with bad experiences from coworkers at this new workplace.

Speaker 2:

Obviously, I'm starting to go into my own episode here. So, yeah, the strengths and weaknesses question. I talk about how to connect the dots between your job description, your resume and the job description for a job, how to connect those dots and pull that into your interview so you make it easy for the recruiter. Every week I have a career industry expert on the podcast and they come in and share their knowledge, which goes way beyond what I know. I just had a guy from Florida with a recruiting firm come on. It's gonna be one of the best episodes we ever have. So that kind of summarizes what I talk about Try and cover some relevant topics, doing a soft skills course right now. So just empower job interviews with stuff that's just outside of what they think about, because they're busy with their own skillset.

Speaker 1:

Why are we so bad at interviewing? I mean, if you had to sum it up, we know it's a need. Zinnig, as you already know, I founded with my team because we knew that there was so much help needed in different areas from, in particular to me near and dear to my heart as a father of four kids aged 15 to 23, that young people need help right With career advice and guidance. The system is not great for them either on knowing how to choose a career path, and we send kids off to college with no great idea of why. But that's also for a different episode. But collectively we're bad at interviewing. Why is that?

Speaker 2:

I think the biggest thing is not understanding why the company is hiring and not understanding that the company is looking for a solution to a problem, and if you present yourself that way, then you're much more likely to be hired. Unfortunately, the situation job seekers are in they need a job, typically for the income and the stability, and they get focused in on that and during their interview they talk about and it's good to talk about yourself during your interview, but their focus is on the job and how this job will help them and the reasons they wanna work for the company, the reasons they try and impress the company, all actually reflect on what their needs are and not the company's needs. So I think and I could go further into that, but I'll table that but it's misunderstanding that, which completely changes the approach of the conversation. The other side of this job seekers struggle because job interviews themselves are a skill that takes practice and understanding and your job is applying the skill that you have. So, say, software development or marketing, that's your skill set. Your skill set isn't job interviews. My skill set is job interviews but not being in them. So even for me, I haven't been in many job interviews at all as interview-y. So, pete, you and I know a lot about interviews because we've processed so many that have gone well and that have failed, so we can share that knowledge. But job seekers have been focused on their own skills and not this outside experience. That happens once every couple of years and so it's just practice and experience and that helps shake the nerves.

Speaker 2:

The other part is knowing how to represent yourself as a candidate, and most people go into interviews and they feel like interrogations.

Speaker 2:

They answer questions about themselves and move on. Really, they go in and kind of go a little bit deeper than their resume and hope for a call back, and so what I talk about is flipping the script and approaching employers as a solution, like I said earlier, instead of a job candidate. So, instead of here's my resume and background, it's here's what I noticed about your most recent marketing campaign and three ideas on how to improve its efficacy. So things like that. Of course, job seekers don't think about that, because they're not doing this 40 hours a week, they're doing it once or twice a year at most. That's where things like Zengig come in and hope and power folks and, I think, give them a lot more confidence. Is there able to get perspective from people who really can tell you how to do it the right way, or just tell you how to put your best foot forward and represent yourself as you wanna be seen, as opposed to how the nervous version of you goes in and kind of loses focus on what's important to the employer.

Speaker 1:

It's a lot of pressure in an area where you don't have expertise to your, as you just said, a great employee. It's a good thing that an employee, generally speaking, hasn't had to interview a lot, right Longevity at their job or being tapped for new opportunities, like what happened to you. You didn't have to interview for that job, they found you. That happens a lot, but yet it tends to be a negative. When you have to perform on a stage you're not used to performing on, it almost works against you to be successful in a terrible you know, ironic twist. So we have the job interview experience podcast providing a lot of information at a high level. If you need to go deeper, right, talk about your coaching a little bit. What is Candidate Club?

Speaker 2:

So Candidate Club is interactive interview training. So if a job seeker feels out of practice for job interviews, I built out something so it has. You know, phone interview training, video chat, in-person interview training, and so users are presented with an interview question, say in these trainings, and they see multiple responses. And then, after every single interview question, there is a video and text digging into the real reason behind the interview question common mistakes that people make, things to do, right, things to avoid and more than that, just depending on the question, things like the strengths and weaknesses question.

Speaker 2:

I really break down into longer learning kind of sessions, and when I say that I mean maybe it's a five minute video. Some of these are just 30 seconds of a video, just walking through. Here's what to look out for, here's what this question really means and here's how you can formulate your own response. Also, of course, is on how to write a short, effective cover letter, which is one of my favorite topics. How to make it about the employer, not you, and make it really short so it gets noticed. Little things like adding three bullet points one, two, three just to break up your cover letter will make it stand way out and give people three action items, whether they're ideas, unique things to highlight.

Speaker 2:

But back to Candidate Club. Really, the idea is to make it immersive and engaging, and I'll liken it to say you wanna play, learn how to play guitar? You can watch videos online on how to play guitar. Guitar, you can read about how to play guitar, but once you pick it up and interact with it a little bit, that's when things start to click a little bit more, and so that's why I built the training to be the way it is that you're actively having to engage with it instead of passively learning about this stuff, and I think both ways work well. I just think this is a way to dig a little bit deeper.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and in this competitive market, you need to take advantage of resources that exist to give yourself the best opportunity. We I don't say we laugh about it, but I roll my eyes every time someone gets upset, for example, that there's a bad resume. Right, this candidate isn't good because they have a bad resume. Well, people aren't used to writing resumes. It's okay. You're not hiring them because they're going to be a good resume writer. Similarly, you don't hire someone because they interview well, but they have to get through it because it's competitive. They're up against someone else and you want to make that decision as easy as possible for the hiring manager and, as you, you can't see what mistakes you're making.

Speaker 1:

You is a candidate. You can't look at your own actions. I mean, no one intends to have a bad resume, right? No one intends to interview poorly, but you need outside expertise when you're not used to doing it, and I think it's probably something that people take for granted way too much that let me just show up and interview.

Speaker 1:

I know my stuff, but one of the things we have on ZendGig, for example, is a list of quote common interview questions, right? Well, there's over 70 of them that we have that are commonly used, and just think about that. Who's prepared for those? And no one. I won't say no one. Very few people are going to take the time, or even have the time, if they were willing to take it, to do their own research. So you need outside help. Just like I keep using a resume analogy. One of our recruiters can look at a resume, clean it up very quickly, turn it around, as I'm sure you've had to do in your past right, look at a resume and realize what the mistakes are. They jump off the page and I suspect when you coach someone for interviewing, the same thing is true. You see really obvious things that the person who's working with you probably has no idea they're even doing wrong.

Speaker 2:

What's interesting about what you said as far as a bad resume or a bad interview is that I remember over a decade ago I was placing Salesforce engineers for actually two different clients probably a little over a decade ago and these folks could have come in and put their pet bird in a cage on the interview table with these clients and talk to the bird the whole time and they still would have gotten hired because people wanted Salesforce engineers that bad and they would have paid a lot for them. And to kind of get into the philosophical side of interviews, of course you wanna get hired and of course you wanna do a really good job. You wanna make good use of the company's time and answer the questions Well, give the information they need. If a company doesn't like you because you had, you have great skills but you had a bad interview, just because you're nervous, you might not wanna work there. If they can see through your nervousness and maybe some pauses, maybe, whatever, whatever those small things might be. Maybe your resume is black and white and kind of ugly, but if you have great skills and a company appreciates you for that, if you come in and you're nervous at your interview, you get along well with everybody and you have the right skills, I think those are the companies that have the right priorities If they're hiring a PR spokesperson. Of course you have to be super polished and I think you should be as polished as possible.

Speaker 2:

But some of these companies that are so incredibly picky I just heard a story about someone who had a Zoom interview at the beginning of the pandemic and it's so hard to read each other, especially with pauses and things like that and they interrupted the interviewer who had kind of stopped a question and then how you ask two questions in the same question and they interrupted and they were told by the company that they didn't get hired because they interrupted during their interview.

Speaker 2:

And they're like you never interrupt the interviewer and obviously interrupting's bad and it's even probably for you, pete, I know for me when I interview people on the podcast it's really hard to know when the point's been finished and then giving that pause.

Speaker 2:

You don't want the pause to be too long, but in a world where it's changing and we're on Zoom all of a sudden and doing interviews, you don't wanna work for that company that actually even tells you you didn't get hired because you interrupted Like they're so special that you could never do that, and probably if you did that in a meeting as well, you would be in trouble. And so, digging into that and looking into that a little bit more, you want a great resume, you wanna present yourself well, you wanna know how to answer these questions, but at the end of the day, if they don't like you and their take on, that is perfection, which, by the way, they aren't either. Maybe you have a sigh of relief that you didn't get hired there for anyone that's listening, because those companies might not treat you as well as companies who look at you for who you are and like you for the imperfect, nervous interviewer that you are, because you have the skills that can help them move forward, and that's what they're focused on.

Speaker 1:

And there's been so many ridiculous things that I've heard back from post interview comments that the unrealistic expectations that were placed upon the candidate. Just as a quick example, we had a client I shouldn't say this publicly, but what the heck? I'm already down the road who refused to hire any candidate who couldn't say what publications industry publications they regularly read, and it didn't matter how good they were and or anything else. That was there one reason to rule people out and it was a very frustrating thing to contend with as a recruiter and you could imagine we started preparing candidates accordingly, right For that scenario.

Speaker 1:

But I think the point you just alluded to is a really important one for job seekers. Is it the person doing the interview? Conducting the interview more often than not isn't necessarily proficient at it either. They don't have expertise in that. So it's sort of like the blind leading the blind in many cases, and so a candidate can't control that. They have to be able to control their own preparation, just knowing that there's gonna be some unrealistic and goofy things thrown their way on a regular basis.

Speaker 2:

Couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1:

If you had to summarize the top thing that candidates do hurdle to overcome, what would be the top hurdle that candidates need to overcome in interviews? Is there a recurring theme that you see?

Speaker 2:

Having a conversation instead of an interview. Turning your interview into a conversation is really, really difficult to do, but if you can do that, and instead of answering questions about yourself, the best interviews I've ever had with people yeah, I've been sitting in a room, especially when working as a director of talent acquisition. You're talking to someone and they're not always, like I said earlier, they're not always the most polished and perfect, but when they go from answering questions about themselves to, all of a sudden, they're giving their feedback on what worked on a new initiative. They're saying what software saved their company money that you didn't know about. They're telling you a sales strategy that your team hasn't thought of, or maybe you've thought of but you didn't know if it worked and they talk about how it works.

Speaker 2:

I've been in those rooms a number of times where you're in there with maybe the hiring manager, maybe the owner of the company. It's a final interview and you kind of accidentally glance each other. You just know we're gonna make this person an offer and we're gonna make the offer work for them. We're gonna hire this person and, whether you are really early in your career or you are more experienced, being able and trying as much as you can to turn that interview from an interview into a conversation, and there's a lot of things you have to be careful of here and there's more to dig into. I'm sure Zengig talks about this how to? Obviously you wanna position yourself well. You don't wanna criticize what they're doing, you don't wanna throw someone under the bus who's in the room, who maybe came up with an initiative that you're critiquing, but we can come in and start helping them during your interview.

Speaker 2:

The hurdle of going from interviewer to I don't like the word consultant but more solution if you can come in and be a solution even if you're right out of college, and you can come in and say I've been researching this area a lot and I found these two new tools that I think any company should know about and actually print out. I printed off right here on this PDF some options here, some pricing here and the reach that this will get you on your next advertising campaign if you would use this. All of a sudden, you're helping them and if they like what you're saying, they're gonna want you to keep helping them. And you're not an applicant, you're a solution and shifting your mind from that, from being a scared job seeker to someone who can help the company and you can show the company that they need your help. That's a big hurdle and I think that's probably something that a lot of listeners haven't quite thought of that way.

Speaker 2:

But if you can get your mind past that and start maybe looking back to past interviews or you can apply this to your cover letter as well that's someone who really gets noticed by companies and when you do it on your cover letter like I said, those three bullet points I mentioned earlier when you can do that and have three ideas for them, three solutions, three new, if you're a salesperson three new markets you can enter and mentioning hey, I have Rolodex in this area.

Speaker 2:

Here's three things, here's a timeline I think we can have. Instead of making your cover letter about yourself doing that, that cover letter of the thousands that you mentioned that you probably get, that just stands out immediately. It just looks different. And during the interview you're that person that after the interview they're not just talking about you, they're saying, hey, look up that one software product that person talked about. That can save us a bunch of time on our editing or whatever it is. Get over that hurdle and you're gonna impress companies and they're gonna wanna keep talking to you and hopefully they're gonna wanna hire you.

Speaker 1:

That alone is worth its weight in gold. That advice you just gave is the most powerful, impactful thing that I think any candidate who's interviewing could hear. And if that's a sample of what you get for someone working with you, matthew, then case closed whether anyone should consider taking advantage of what you have to offer. Because I can tell you that one of the things that I've focused on so much over the years is, if I'm good at my job as a staffing provider, can I turn the maybes into a yes right? Can I help those candidates who may have not gotten the job get over the finish line? And if a candidate is willing to do even a partial effort of what you just said, the full effort is almost going to be a slam dunk every time.

Speaker 1:

I would be shocked if someone doesn't get hired. Who does that, if they're at all qualified? But that kind of effort will make all the difference in the world. I'm really glad you said that and I appreciate you taking the time to make that important point, because I would say and maybe I'll ask you before I won't say it how many candidates you think put forth that level of effort going in without you telling them it's a good thing to do. What percentage?

Speaker 2:

Maybe one out of a couple hundred, and I think for some people that's their personality trait and I think you'll see that a lot more and happen naturally with salespeople who a good salesperson sell solutions, so they're doing that during their interview.

Speaker 2:

But for most other folks it just you just don't think that way. I never would have thought that way before moving into the recruiting and hiring industry. Very few people do that, and so that's just another way to make it stand out, even if it's just like who was that college kid who was pitching us on this new tool to do this on our computers that said they saved their last company $100,000 a year when they did it and so they pay for themselves? Who was that person? Well, let's talk to them again, if you can do that and again approach it delicately, understand who you're talking to, your audience is and what they've done to have these things in place right, and so I'd say positive solutions, not I wouldn't critique or give negative feedback on anything they've done unless you really wanna put yourself out there. Very few people do that and it gives me it gives me caution.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it gives them a glimpse of your motivation, what you're capable of and, hopefully, how you'll perform as a candidate, what you'll continue to do and not just like you didn't stop at being a job candidate. You became a solution. Once you're employed, you won't stop at just your job title. You'll be a researcher, you'll be innovative, you'll go outside of your own kind of purview to find things that can help this company and you have. As a job seeker, you better commit to continuing to perform that way. And so it is. This isn't an easy trick I'm offering here. You gotta put in the work before you write your cover letter. You have to put in the work before you have your interview. You gotta keep doing that during your job once you're hired. But if you do, your career's gonna go a heck of a lot more places than you ever thought it would if you can incorporate this not just into your job search but into your career in general.

Speaker 1:

Could not agree more, and so, if you're a motivated candidate, this is the kind of advice you need, and you need to follow up on it and actually do what's being recommended. So, matthew, I think that's a great place to end. It's such a valuable piece of information. We're not going to top it right now. I'm sure you probably can, but you're going to have to check out Matthew on your own. If you wanna hear more and I highly recommend that you do so for the podcast, the job interview experience, it's on all major channels. You can find it for sure. We'll link to it in our show notes. And for more hands-on, specific coaching and help from Matthew, go to what's your website that they need to go to for Candidate Club.

Speaker 2:

So CandidateClubcom is just the interview training, if it makes it easier for folks. If you go to JobInterviewExperiencecom you will find the podcasts and links to Candidate Club. To just check out what that looks like.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, and we'll put those links in the show notes. Matthew, thank you so much for being generous with your time and sharing your information today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Love speaking with you, Pete. Thanks for having me All right, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

We'll talk to everyone soon Å‘.