The Landing Expert Principles

I am a practicing career coach and have noticed that in most cases, I guide my clients through 10 certain deeply held beliefs of mine that have evolved over my years of practice. I decided to call the concepts the Landing Expert Principles—naming them after my Web site, www.landingexpert.com

• Job seekers should have their résumés written by a recommended, professional résumé writer known to produce excellent résumés. In today’s economy, just plain “very good” résumés don’t make the cut.
• Based on the theories of Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, an interviewer judges a candidate 55% on visual appearance, 38% on voice, and 7% on words.
• The interview is a competition. The winner is the one who outshines other candidates, who knows the rules of the game, and who knows how to deploy all the tools.
• The hiring decision is made during the interview, based on the impression the candidate leaves behind, which in turn is based primarily on the interviewer’s gut feelings. Unfortunately, such decision making is certainly not pure science.
• The interviewer knows the candidate is there to sell himself, but the interviewer is not ready to buy everything the candidate wants to sell—except when two conditions occur:

• The candidate recites facts and gives evidence about career background and ability to do the job.
• The candidate uses adjectives or other kinds of self-descriptions in sentences that are in the third person—that is, the otherwise self-descriptions were said by others.

Interviewing is like dancing: it cannot be learned from a book but only from practice. The more one practices, the better one becomes at it.

Interviews are counterintuitive: they’re not about the candidate; they’re about the candidate’s skills and experience as they relate to ability to solve the interviewer’s problems.

The interviewer is listening, but his hearing is selective: that is, when the candidate talks about himself, the interviewer barely hears it; when the candidate talks about how he can solve the company’s problems, the interviewer becomes more interested and attentive and is thinking, “Louder, louder!”

Before you answer each question during an interview, ask yourself in turn the question “So what?” which will force you to recount significant and meaningful examples pertinent to the questions.

To convey the most credibility as a candidate, provide facts via success stories from your professional past. Often use the expression for example and then (1) briefly describe a job situation needing resolution, (2) list the specific actions you took to resolve the situation, and (3) end by pointing out the resulting benefits to your team or employer.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert