Tell me if this sounds familiar
You see a position posted on LinkedIn and it’s in your sweet spot, even the company’s mission checks the box for you.
You decide to throw your hat in the ring because you know you’re ready to make a career move.
You’ve just been waiting, cautious.
You aren’t interested in applying for a ton of jobs, just the ones that really spark your interest.
And, because this isn’t your first time, you do the things you know to do.
You may even remember that the market dictates strategy
So, you don’t buy into the hype about all the things that are wrong, you simply focus on what you can influence,
- You make a few calls
- You write a few introductory emails
- You take a good look at your LinkedIn profile and ask a friend in recruiting what they think (hey👋, if you’re reading this, you can ask me )
Check, check, and check.
Bada Bing, Bada Boom – your interview is scheduled.
Now the real work begins.
You start to research and take notes.
This isn’t your first time, you do the things you know to do
You’ve been the interviewer before so you have a pretty good idea of how this goes.
But what if there was one thing…
One tip that would help you bust out of the candidate pack
One tip that would help you stand out like a red rose in a garden of white daisies.
To be seen and heard in a way that makes you the obvious choice for this oh-so-exciting position.
That one tip is this:
Ask curious questions.
Curious questions are insightful.
They reflect your years of experience.
They are relevant to the company’s mission and the position.
Side note:
Some will tell you to build rapport by asking personal questions.
I’m not one of them.
While there may be an interesting tidbit to share, spending too much time on personal stuff will put you in the same bucket as everyone else who heard this before.
And, it lacks a critical element of building credibility: gaining the trust that you can solve the problem I have (problem = my open position).
If you want more on credibility, you can visit the 3-part series on confident humility.
Back to the main idea…
What I hear from most people is that they take in all the information they can so they can have the right answers
And they forget to bring curious questions
I’m not talking about the obvious questions that any run of the mill article will tell you to bring.
I’m talking about the curious questions
Questions that make the interviewer pause and say, “let me think about that”.
You might even take them off guard and walk together down an information trail that only you have found.
Here’s how you do it:
- Do company research.
You can do company research in lots of places:
- Crunchbase
- G2
- Capterra
- Glassdoor
- Annual Report
- Current/former employees
- AI
- Google alert
- Website/press releases
- Follow employees on LinkedIn,
- Associations or boards that the leaders are on
2. Write down the questions you have based on the information you read
As you do your research, write the questions,
If you find those answers, write new questions.
Don’t write the answers, write the questions.
When you look for questions rather than the answers, you’re going to look places other people haven’t.
And, when you look in the places that other people haven’t, you’ll ask questions that other people haven’t asked.
You can move beyond the typical question and answer or what I call the tennis match exchange and insert smart, insightful and curious questions into the conversation.
Then, send me an email (or message me on LinkedIn) and let me know how it went.
Get out there.
You’ve got this.