It’s not easy to pinpoint what interviewers want. You may be
confronted with as many different approaches as there are interviewers.
However, here are 9 qualities that I look for during an interview:
1. Look for people with a lot of energy. Some people are,
quite simply, born with more energy than others. At an interview, or almost
anywhere, they naturally exude vigor, enthusiasm and drive. They want and need
to be active. You can sense this quality in a person almost as soon as he or
she walks into the room. It is an innate drive that puts a spring in their step
and makes their eyes sparkle. Put your money on just such a person.
2. Look for people who channel energy into their work. Do
not be deceived by people who talk about hard work, and say what a lot of hard
work they do. To the lazy person, everything is hard work, and he or she spends
much or all of their time complaining about it.
One candidate who didn’t get the job said in an interview, “I
met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work, but it was
just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the
time.” Solid evidence of an individual who has a strong work ethic includes:
* Parents, heroes, or mentors who believed in hard work
* Work-oriented spare-time interests
* Willingness to take a second job
* No concern at all with hours worked -- no clock watching
* High career goals
* Completes anything undertaken
* Paid own way through college
3. Look for evidence of role-awareness. Candidates who
present themselves for an interview should be aware that they are onstage. If
the candidate is at all sensitive to the expectations of corporate life, he or
she will have dressed with care and got the rest of their act together.
If a candidate arrives in attire more suitable for a golf outing
than a corporate setting, then you may immediately infer that they lack role
awareness. And if he or she lacks it on this particular day, you may be sure
they will never have it.
4. Look for inner motivation based on family background.
It’s not so much what you have or where you were born that counts, as what you
did with what you had and what you make of your own life. In trying to
determine what you did with what you had, I always subtract what you began with
from what you have now, and look at the difference.
5. Look for emotional maturity. People grow up three
ways: physically, intellectually and emotionally. Most executives mature
physically and intellectually, but emotional maturity can never be taken for
granted. While you can see that a person is fully grown physically, and you can
check his or her educational record for intellectual ability, badges or
certificates of emotional maturity are unavailable.
Spotting immaturity – and, therefore, maturity – is difficult.
However, the immature person inevitably possesses two qualities to mislead you:
childlike charm and, as the result of long experience, the capacity to distract
attention from their shortcomings.
The immature person is not a good employment risk because, like
most children, they are essentially concerned with their own immediate
gratification and also because they tend to see the employer as a sort of Santa
Claus. What they want is to have someone to look after them just like their
parents did until they left home at age thirty.
Conversely, the best index of maturity is consideration and
concern for the well-being of other people. Three excellent clues to an
individual’s emotional maturity are:
* Judgment. Have they handled themselves well in their ongoing business affairs
– or have they embarked upon harebrained, get-rich-quick schemes?
* Finances. Are they living within their means? Is he or she financially secure
enough to suggest that personal, financial money-decisions are being chosen
with a cool, clear, adult head?
* The number of past employers and the manner of their departures from them.
Have they pursued their career in a mature and adult manner? Particularly, have
they job-hopped without realistic consideration for the future of either their
employer or themselves?
6. Look for someone who can channel his or her hostilities
profitability. You want to hire a person with fire in his or her belly,
of course, but at the same time you do not want a rebel without a cause. The
best job-seeking candidates can temper hostilities with tact. And if they can’t
do that, you, as the interviewer, may be in for trouble. So I watch for
evidence of spite unreasonably directed toward previous employers and
associates.
7. Look for the need to finish a task begun. Evidence of
this condition can be discovered by looking for a goal-oriented individual with
a history of completing anything undertaken. Examples include finishing a
college degree, writing an article and getting it published or successfully
putting together a sound and progressive business career.
8. Look for loyalty to your cause. The key to loyalty is
in finding that common ideal, and once again this should stem from an
individual’s deepest underlying values. If these values are not in harmony with
those of yours or the company’s cause, then loyalty may be unattainable.
9. Look for compatibility. Individuals make up teams, but
compatible individuals make the best teams. Any candidate who is unnecessarily
touchy and thin-skinned at an employment interview probably will be abrasive
and disruptive if he or she joins the team. A get-along, go-along person who
also works hard is a jewel, because their shine attracts people like
themselves.
Remember that the opposite is also true: The bad has a strong tendency to drive
out the good.
Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume
and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to
jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit
www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of
www.jmwanes.com
(J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
a copy for personal use. Redistribution without permission is strictly prohibited.
© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.
