Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on three things that are important to hiring managers. Take time to learn what you can do to ensure you present yourself in the best way possible to a hiring manager.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
Three Things Important to Hiring Managers
So often in the job search and interview process, job seekers focus so much on what’s important to them that they forget about what’s important to the person who can offer them a job.
The hiring manager doesn’t have to be your friend – or your enemy – but what she can’t avoid being is the person who has you under the microscope. Here’s the good news. Everything that you’re being evaluated on falls under three basic categories: hard skills, soft skills, and red flags.
If you can keep these categories in mind, your interview will go better.
Hard skills: These are the technical skills required to do the job. Think about most of what’s on a job description – bookkeeping, machine maintenance, Microsoft Excel, customer service experience, engineering design, C# programming, whatever. The hard skills are what make someone fundamentally qualified or unqualified for the job, and they’re what get you the interview. The reason hard skills are important is pretty obvious: without them, you couldn’t perform the work. This is the first thing on the hiring manager’s mind because it doesn’t matter what else you bring to the table, if you can’t perform the day-to-day duties, you won’t get the job. Period. For example, if you want to be an air traffic controller, but you don’t know how to keep two planes from colliding, you’re going to stay unemployed. It won’t matter that you’re an “enthusiastic” “team player” and “fast learner.”
Remember, though, that the hard skills aren’t about you. It’s not about what’s important to you. It’s about what’s important to the hiring manager. What you may think is great about your background may not be as important to an interviewer. Don’t assume anything. Start from the perspective about what they care about. Think about it this way: what are the relevant skills and experience the manager’s looking for that you have and how can you best communicate that? What makes your experience relevant is the perspective of the hiring manager. If you satisfy the criteria for this category, the hiring manager will start worrying about the second one.
Soft Skills: This is what the hiring manager perceives as the type of person you are or the type of person you’d be to work with. Since fellow employees usually spend more time with each other on a weekly basis than their own families, an interviewer is asking this question to himself, “Is this the type of person. I want to work shoulder to shoulder with every day?” or “Will this person play nice in the sandbox or be a royal pain in the neck?”
Soft skills may be the second consideration to a hiring manager, but they’re often just as important. And, they’ll definitely be the tie-breaker when two candidates run neck and neck on their technical skills. The decision will come down to who fits better into that culture and work environment and who can be counted on more.
I’ve seen so many people screw up this part – people who were technically strong but didn’t have a clue as to how much they turn off a hiring manager by their words, tone, attitude, body language or behavior. I remember an engineer I had interview for a local company. He was highly qualified and after the initial phone screen, the job was really his to lose. When I met him at the interview location to do the introductions with the interviewer, I was shocked. He was dressed down, chewing gum, a couple days of stubble on his face and nothing with him for notes or questions. The message he was sending? “I really don’t take this process seriously. I really don’t care.” And what did the interviewer think? “If he doesn’t take his interview and first impression seriously, why would he take his job seriously?” Did he get the job? Nope. And the funny part is he had absolutely no idea why. Again, technically sound but crashed and burned on the soft skills.
This is why it’s so important to do the small things in the interview process. Dress and speak professionally, be early for the interview, make good eye contact, give a strong handshake, sit upright and stay engaged, don’t fidget, do your homework on the company, don’t bash your old employer, have great questions to ask, send a hand-written personalized thank-you card. Also, have real examples how you’ve shown dedication, honesty, drive, integrity, leadership, professionalism, team spirit, grace under pressure, etc. They want to know that — especially when things hit the fan — you’re the type of person they’re glad they had around.
Red Flags: These would be any reasons that would scare off someone from offering you the job. What do I mean? Here are some examples. The salary in your last position was 25% higher than the job you’re interviewing for. You were fired from your last position. You’ve had 8 jobs in the last 10 years. You’re a career contractor applying for a permanent position. There’s a recent three-year gap in your work history. You’ve been a department director before and are now looking for a lower level role.
Here’s a real example I dealt with once. I was working with a mechanical engineer whose resume summary statement started out this way, “engineer with 40 years of experience.” I winced. So, I got him on the phone. Let’s just call him Sam. I said, “Sam, we need to change your summary statement. In the first four words you’ve told your audience ‘I’m old, I’m expensive and I’m not going to work much longer.’ Is that the message you were trying to send?” His answer was an emphatic ‘no.’ He thought listing 40 years was good, that it showed senior-level expertise. The first thing it showed was his age – which wasn’t relevant. What was relevant was expertise to do a particular job and that’s it. Listing that number just puts thoughts into a hiring manager’s head that are better left untouched.
Deep down, hiring managers harbor fears in the interviewing process. There’s an underlying pressure to hire the right person and they dread making a mistake. Trust me, it’s on their minds – especially if they’ve been burned before by hiring someone they shouldn’t have. They’re projecting into the future about what they’ll have to deal with if the person stinks at their job or no one can stand working with them.
So in the interview, the hiring manager’s radar is on about these things and there may be concerns she has about you that may not even be verbalized. But trust me, they’re most likely simmering just beneath the surface. The hiring manager is thinking, “Okay, how and when will this blow up on me?” It’s your job to realize this and be prepared to deal with it, if necessary. Just don’t take it for granted. If it’s brought up in the interview, be thankful. Now you can address it head-on and more on your terms. But, don’t simply think you’ve dodged a bullet if it’s not brought up, because that may not be the case. Be honest with yourself if you have any possible red flags and have solid answers to these potential objections.
Like I said, it’s fear, and what hiring managers need here is reassurance or peace of mind that this isn’t going to bite them in the backside if they hire you. If you’ve nailed the hard skills and soft skills, don’t let this piece keep you from getting the offer.