How to make your interviewer want to hire you

By Neil Patrick

Over my career I've hired hundreds and hundreds of people. As a director of three fast growth businesses, it was an essential part of my job. Being able to get great people into these businesses was important for sure, but perhaps even more important was being able to keep the not so good ones out. Why? Because the wrong people would have a negative impact on everyone else.

But the people I turned down were always qualified on paper to do the job. The HR team would see to that. So I only got to see the people who already fitted the job requirements in terms of qualifications and experience.

So why did I turn them down? Quite often this was because I judged that they’d not fit into the team and this would create a whole pile of extra management work for me, because I’d have to handle the friction that this created.

Today I was thinking about what I could share from this experience which might be of value to readers of this blog. And how I’d separate the suitable from the unsuitable candidates during the interview process.

Do your homework

The biggest way an applicant could impress me was simple. It wasn’t their appearance, or their handshake or the confidence with which they delivered their answers. It was that they demonstrated two things – first that they knew lots about the business and our company. They had taken the time to understand the business and what it was about. In detail.

To me this showed that they were serious about wanting the job. A weak candidate was much more interested in telling me about how great they were their previous or current job, which wasn’t really necessary as they’d not have got an interview if that didn’t come up to scratch in that respect.

By contrast, if someone was able to demonstrate to me that they had done their homework, that was a good sign they were really keen to work for us.

Secondly, the best candidates asked great questions. They didn’t ask me about the pay package or the promotion prospects, they asked about the issues that mattered to me. The things that were causing me concern. What were my aspirations for the business and how could they help me achieve them? This is a great trick to pull off at an interview – it uses the simplest and most effective sales technique there is; understanding your customer and showing that you care about satisfying their needs above your own.

How they asked the questions was revealing too. A question like, ‘Do you think the company will be able to promote me quickly?’, gives me a whole different impression , to ‘How do you think I could contribute to the maximum of my ability in this job?’. See the difference? The two questions are broadly similar in purpose, but the first is self-centred, the second is focussed on what I want – the different way of phrasing the same question about prospects creates a completely different impression in my mind.

Asking questions is powerful...

Candidates that asked great questions were able to change the whole nature of the interview. It transformed from me interrogating them about themselves, to the two of us having a flowing discussion about the business.

At a stroke, the interviewee was also on firmer ground because, we were now talking to each other rather than me just firing questions at them and them answering them back. And in the process, the interviewee would soar in my estimation because I could see that they would care as much about the business as themselves. And this meant that I’d be less likely to have to spend time managing the fall out from an ego-centric employee who was upsetting everyone else.

The second point can only be an outcome of the first. If you haven’t done the homework, you cannot ask great questions, simply because you don’t know enough. But if you do your homework AND work out how to pitch good questions in a way that shows you care about the organisation more than yourself, you’re putting yourself in a really strong position.

I cannot tell you that every interviewer will think or act like I do. But I can tell you that every hour you invest in getting to understand the organisation you are being interviewed by will be a sound investment. And even if you are unsuccessful the first time you try this technique, keep at it and make it a habit. I can guarantee that it’s the best way possible to impress at your next interview and if that isn’t enough motivation, it’ll make the interview easier and less stressful too.