A. 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 eight qualities that I look for during an interview.

1. 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’s an innate drive that puts a spring in their step and makes their eyes sparkle. Put your money on just such a person.

2. People who channel energy into their work. Don’t 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 his/her time complaining about it.

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 clockwatching
• High career goals
• Completes anything undertaken
• Paid own way through college

3. Evidence of role awareness. Candidates who present themselves for an interview should be aware that they’re 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 his/her act together too.

If a candidate arrives in attire more suitable for a golf outing than a corporate setting, then hiring managers will immediately infer that this candidate lacks role awareness. And if he or she lacks it on this particular day, you can be sure that this person will never have it.

4. Emotional maturity. People grow up three ways: physically, intellectually, and emotionally. While you can see that a person is fully grown physically and you can check his/her educational record for intellectual ability, badges or certificates of emotional maturity are unavailable.

Spotting immaturity – and also maturity – is difficult. 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.

Conversely, the best index of maturity is consideration and concern for the well-being of other people. Three excellent clues to executives’ emotional maturity are:

a) Judgment – Have the executives handled themselves well in their business affairs? Have they embarked upon harebrained, get-rich-quick schemes?

b) Finances – Are they living within their means? Are they financially secure enough to suggest that personal, financial money decisions are being considered with a cool, clear, adult head?

c) Number of past employers and the manner of departures from them – Have the executives pursued their careers in a mature and adult manner? Particularly, have they job-hopped without realistic consideration for the future of either their employers or themselves?

5. The need to complete a task begun. Evidence of this delightful condition can be discovered by looking for a goal-oriented individual with a history of completing anything undertaken. For example: finishing a college degree, writing an article and getting it published, or successfully putting together a sound and progressive business career.

6. An individual who wants to do a good job. If you hire a mercenary, someone who believes in your cause only as long as the money is good, then the company may be courting trouble. Such a person usually lacks any inner job motivation, and, as a result, often harbors a deep resentment of his dependency upon the employer. Consequently, this person will be ambivalent to a fault, particularly if well-paid.

7. A candidate with loyalty to a company’s cause. Loyalty means not that you agree with everything I say or that you believe I’m always right. Loyalty means that you share a common ideal with me and, regardless of minor differences, we fight for it, shoulder-to-shoulder, confident in one another’s good faith, trust, constancy, and affection.

The key to loyalty, whether recruiting an executive or making a friend, is in finding that common ideal, and once again this should stem from an individual’s deepest underlying values. If these values aren’t in harmony with those of the company, then any level of loyalty may be unattainable.

8. Compatibility to the company’s cause. Individuals create a team, but compatible individuals produce the best team. Any candidate who is unnecessarily touchy and thin-skinned at an employment interview will be abrasive and disruptive if they join 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 also is 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
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© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.