Interview Wisdom: A Straightforward Guide for Today's Job Seekers

Arlene is a dedicated talent and people professional with over a decade of experience, supporting a variety of industries. She takes a commonsense approach to supporting organizations scale sustainably and coaches people leaders and job seekers on how to make the recruitment process less painful. Arlene is a former business owner of Harris Writing Services, LLC for over 5 years, Arlene hasn’t completely closed the door on entrepreneurship and just might be cooking up something in the future around consulting, stay tuned!

I hope you have your notepad out because it’s about to get real 😆

Preparing for Job Interviews

When you are applying, ideally try to save the job posting, since you never know when it will be taken offline. This can be a hassle when applying for a lot of roles (that’s another conversation) but think about the feeling of if/when you do get a call to schedule an interview and you don’t even remember that you applied for a role at that company. Then you are annoyed when someone doesn’t provide you with the job description of a role YOU applied for.

If the companies ATS doesn’t keep a record of the posting, good ole copy and paste still works…., so save it somewhere that’s easy to reference later, job title and company name will suffice.  

Assuming you’ve first had a conversation with a recruiter, or someone involved in the pre-screening stage make sure you’ve gotten some basics out of the way.

• What’s the compensation range (if not already posted in the job advertisement) what’s the benefit package and associated costs look like?

• What is the hiring manager/team looking for preference wise (this can help you have an edge over the competition)?

• What’s the screeners overall opinion about the organization?

If you’ve interviewed enough, you can usually tell if someone is all smoke and mirrors or if they seem genuine about their experience (sharing some pros and opportunities based on their own work experience).

Maybe you are interviewing directly with the hiring manager right from the start, my recommendation would still be the same. Ideally the hiring manager could answer the questions above but be ok if they must pass you off to someone else to discuss those things, while they focus only on the role itself, every company has a different process regarding who gets to discuss what.

From a preparation standpoint:

• Look up the person you are meeting with on LinkedIn (if possible)

• Is there anything you have in common with them?

• Something you could speak to during your interview?

Find a way to connect, and or use the information you find about them or the company to form questions that would help you evaluate the opportunity. In full transparency, I use to think it was creepy to do that before an interview, sometimes I didn’t want to potentially have any preconceived notions about the person I was going to be meeting with for the first time. But more often than not, it was always useful for me to know a little something about the person I was meeting with, if someone didn’t prep me before. Even if it was just an ice breaker or seeing that we had a similar career path or common connections on LinkedIn. I mean, they had my resume, so they already know a bit about me why not give myself the same opportunity?

If that still creeps, you out or you can’t find the person on LinkedIn, then reviewing the job description is always a good idea. Refreshing your memory on what they are looking for and getting ahead of any perceived gaps in your knowledge can help you frame your responses better based on questions you might be asked.

Haven’t interviewed in a while?

Use the job ad and throw it into something like ChatGPT and have it create some possible interview questions for you. Even if you don’t get asked those specific things, it’s a good way to practice responding to questions based on what the employer is hoping to find.

Interview Engagement and Asking Meaningful Questions

I can’t tell you have often I get questions about the “company culture”, or a hiring manager following up with me saying it would have been nice if the candidates asked them at least one question. On one hand, I think well maybe they truly didn’t have any questions and you answered all the questions they would have had, but in thinking like most hiring managers sometimes when conversations feel one sided on their end, they may form opinions about your level of interest and overall engagement.

I get it, you’ve applied and interviewed so many times, and this may or may not pan out so why muster up the energy? Well, either route you take is a choice. You can think it might work out, or you can think I’m just wasting my time and I’ll be getting a rejection email next week after this, so it’s up to you how much energy you put into something, after all it’s the first time this company is meeting you, they aren’t going to be aware of the emotional baggage you might be bringing into their process.

Going back to the company culture question, I always find this question as being too vague, ask yourself what do you really want to know?

• Is it, how many meetings can you expect to have on a Monday or Friday?

• Is it, how transparent is executive leadership about the status/state of the company from a financial perspective?

• Or is it, how often are people taking their vacation time and/or using the benefits provided to them?

Those questions, in my mind get you closer to discovering what it’s like to work there, in many cases you never really know what the vibe is like until you are in but it’s up to you to do your due diligence up front and knowing what type of environments you don’t want to be in again. In addition to understanding the core responsibilities of the role, those questions are important because depending on your corporate bs tolerance level it’ll be the environment or the leadership styles that will have you back on the job hunt.

Celebrating Interview Milestones and Being Authentically You

Pat yourself on the back for making it this far, in a competitive labor market the % of someone even getting an opportunity to interview where you are speaking with another human is small, so take this as a win!!!

Always make sure you are giving yourself some grace and celebrating those small wins too and use these situations as practice to refine the way you answer questions, obtain information you need to make an informed decision, and network.

As someone recently told me, it’s not necessarily who YOU know but who knows You! 

If you can muster up the energy, send a thank you email, doesn’t need to be a dissertation just a short and sweet thanks for the time, thanking the person that scheduled the interview, and reconfirm your interest in the role. You know just in case you think the hiring manager and/or recruiter may be questioning if you are still into the role after learning a bit more, don’t give them the opportunity to make up a narrative in their mind.

In general, what I hope job seekers take away from these tips is that being yourself is enough. And if it’s not enough, then that wasn’t the right place for you.

I am a firm believer in aligning yourself with places that celebrate you as a person and not one that simply tolerates you.

Asking strategic questions during an interview helps YOU determine if this is the right fit for You.

Everyone has their own box to check, so once you understand what you are seeking, it makes interview conversations a lot easier and frankly that’s what it should feel like.

A conversation and not an interrogation, employers are seeking information from you, and you are seeking information from them.

Despite the number of interviews you’ve been on, do your best to treat every one like your first interview. And in the words of the late great R&B Princess, Aaliyah, if at first you don’t succeed…..dust yourself off and try again.

Please visit the link for more information about all roles. I am not the recruiter for any of them. 🙂 

• Operations Recruiter - Lakeland, FL - GEICO

• Operations Recruiter - Tucson, AZ - GEICO

• Recruiting Coordinator - Richardson, TX - GEICO

• Recruiting Coordinator - Lakeland, Florida - GEICO

• Myers Home Buyers

• PHIL

• PPG

• Conference Sales Executive - Gartner

• Nationwide Sales

• Talent Acquisition Recruiter - Ochsner Health - New Orleans, LA

• Fortune School - Sacramento/Elk Grove California as well as San Bernardino, California - we are looking for Certificated Teachers (Single Subject/Multiple Subject/ Visual and Performing Art Teachers, Occupational Therapist, Speech Language Pathologist, Speech Language Pathologist Assistants along with support staff i.e Instructional Aides, Paraprofessionals, Special Education Aides, Behavior Technicians

• Sr. Sales Recruiter - BetterUp

• Talent Acquisition Specialist (Recruiter) - Baltimore/Hybrid - Chimes

• Outside Sales Representatives all over Texas for ADT.

• HoneyBook Content Marketing team for SEO pros - Recruiter Adrienne Campbell

• Recruiter (on-site) - ADP

• Town of Holly Springs, Holly Springs, NC - Government roles

• MetroStar - Clearance and None clearance roles

• Johnson and Johnson Military Veteran Leadership and Development Program

• FEMA

• Head of Community-Led Marketing - Notion 

• Paylocity

• Senior Recruiting Manager - Chewy

• Supervisor, Employee Services Center

• Media Workflow Engineer - Chewy

In light of Women’s History Month, we have decided to share roles from companies with women CEOs. Special thanks to Haley ONeill for collecting this list for HR/People roles. Make sure to connect or follow her on LinkedIn for all things recruiting.

💖 Oracle, HR Consultant, Employee Relations (Remote) | ✨ CEO Safra Catz

💖 KOJO,  Director, Talent Acquisition (Remote) | ✨ CEO & Founder Maria Davidson

💖 General Dynamics, Manager, Total Rewards (San Diego, CA) | ✨ CEO Phebe Novakovic

💖 Hershey, Sr HR Analyst, Compensation (Remote) | ✨ CEO Michele Buck

💖 Levi, Sr Manager, Program Ops, Talent, Diversity and Inclusion (SF) | ✨ CEO Michelle Gass 

💖 Rosewood Hotel Group, Director, Talent & Culture, Americas (Dallas or NYC) | ✨ CEO Sonia Cheng

💖 HubSpot, Talent Sourcing Manager (Cambridge, MA) | ✨ CEO Yamini Rangan

💖 Dicks Sporting Good, Sr HR Manager, People & Purpose and Legal (Pittsburgh) | ✨ CEO Lauren Hobart 

💖 Sinch, Head of Talent Acquisition, Americas (Remote) | ✨ CEO Laurinda Pang

💖 Spring Health, Manager, Talent Management (Remote) | CEO & Founder April Koh 

TIP OF THE DAY: You know those Workday applications you despise? I’m about to give you some tea. You don’t have to fill out all the extra boxes after you upload your resume. From a recruiting standpoint, we look to see if you have a resume first and if you don’t when then go to the information that is provide in those boxes. You would think everyone has a resume, but they don’t. The application is meant to be more inclusive.