Category Archives: Job Interview

Lessons From An End Of The World Marketing Genius

Do You Really Know What You Are Getting Into?

I was hanging out downtown the other day, and ran into this particularly strange character. He was one of those guys that have the big signs warning of the impending end of the world. Sometimes his sign will say “The End is Near,” and or other similar messages. Sometimes though, his signs don’t make any sense whatsoever. Like the other day he had a sign that said “They are aware of all of what you think you don’t know,” which I had to read a couple times before I realized it really didn’t make any sense.

So naturally, being the curious guy that I am, I went and asked him. I was kind of half expecting him to be a complete nutcase, and give me some wild reason that masked his complete and utter detachment from reality. But what I got was something altogether different.

It was kind of like that time when I was a kid back in boy scouts. Our troop would go on these yearly hikes. They were about fifty miles, and took about a week. To make sure we were all up to snuff, we would have to go on three “qualifying” hikes prior to the big one. There would be five successive weekends where we would the troop would leave early Saturday morning, hike for eight or so miles, camp out, and then return on Sunday. You had to go on three of these five in order to go on the long one. The scoutmasters that went along didn’t want to be stuck carrying some kid’s stuff because he couldn’t carry it himself.

That had happened a couple years before. They didn’t have the three-trip rule, and just went straight away into the weeklong hike. There was this one kid that joined up, and his mom assured the scoutmaster that he would be able to handle it. After about two miles in, everybody realized this kid should be anywhere but on a hiking trail with a thirty-pound pack.

The scoutmasters divided up his stuff until his pack was maybe five pounds. Even then he struggled. Hiking up hills in high elevation where the air is thin is not the easiest thing in the world, and this kid was proof. His mom had unloaded this kid on the troop to take care of him for a week, and the adults all had to unload him of his stuff. And the rest of us kids had to pretend to be nice to him while we walked slower than normal so he wouldn’t be left behind. Talk about a burden.

I read this book once that was talking about business success. It said that the most successful people are one’s that are able to carry their own weight, as well as offering something to the organization. There is a certain winning combination. It gave several examples of different job interviews, and some of the answers people gave. Several of the unsuccessful candidates were keen to find out things about the job like vacation time, benefits, how often they can get raises, and so on. Managers naturally weren’t to anxious to hire these people.

Others on the other hand were a little too much in the opposite direction. They were about how good they were, how many massive skills they had, and why they should be hired. Managers didn’t really like these people because they didn’t really take much of an interest in the particular organization. They seemed to have a one size fits all ego that expected the world to bow down in awe of its skills.

The ones that were the most successful were the ones that were confident in their abilities, and were able to elicit certain aspects of the business, and then explain to the interviewer how their particular skills would be of specific benefit to the company.

The conclusion of this book was that if you are ever interviewing for jobs, to first make a list of some skills you have, and keep a mental list of several examples of how you demonstrated those skills in the past. Then when you are in the interview, find out what kind of person they are looking for, and then give examples from your own past that show you are an obvious choice for the organization. Obviously it helps to do a little bit of research before going to the interview, but with the amazing amount of information at your disposal through the Internet, that should be fairly easy.

The bottom line is to not only know your skills, but be able to find several examples from your past, and be able figure out as many creative ways as possible to show how they are applicable to as many situations as you can. This will get you a lot further than showing up with your proverbial hat in your hand asking about benefits and vacation time.

After we finally made it back after what seemed like the longest week in backpacking history, we never saw that kid again. He was quiet all the way back, and after a few polite and subdued goodbye’s that was that. I did see our head scoutmaster having a word with his mom. It didn’t appear to be an angry exchange, but he did seem to be explaining several things to her, and she appeared to be listening as though she had made some kind of a mistake. She kept nodding her head in what looked like sincere appreciation.

Perhaps she didn’t pawn him off to the troop after all. Maybe she just misunderstood what she was getting her son into. Many people don’t have a good idea of what they are getting themselves into. Which is exactly why the troop instituted the three qualifying hike rule to make sure everybody knows what’s coming when we went on the week long fifty mile hike.

I have to admit, thinking back to those fifty-mile hikes, I had some of the best times of my childhood. Fishing in pristine lakes, being in huge beautiful valleys surrounded by snow capped mountains without any other people in sight except for my friends and me. Seeing bears and deer and all kinds of other animals in their natural habitat is something you don’t ever forget.

It turned out this guy was doing marketing experiments for a church. There was a certain church in the area, whose name he made me promise I wouldn’t repeat. They were testing different marketing slogans. It was a rather big church, a non-denominational Christian church, and they were always trying to expand their members. They hired this guy from an advertising company, and would come up with different slogans for his message board, and simply note people’s reactions.

He would measure their reactions by how often they did double takes, if they slowed down when they passed him, or if they came up and talked to him. He told me that so far, the message that had a positive spin had the most effect on people, with messages of imminent world destruction coming in a close second.

So if the marquee messages at your local church alternate between peace and love, and threats of eternal hell bound damnation, now you know why.

Are You Committed To Powerful Persuasion And Influence?

To those of you who have emailed me privately asking for more tips on how to easily persuade others, this article is for you. If this is your first time here, you will find a great and easy to apply tip to use in your persuasive endeavors, be they job interviews, first dates, sales calls or any other instance where you’d like to covertly influence somebody.

The human mind comes pre programmed with various “hot buttons” that were extremely beneficial to humans in the days before agriculture. Decisions had to be made quickly and effectively. Whoever happened to feel a need to sit around and analyze every situation before acting usually didn’t live long enough to pass on that characteristic, so we are left with a predisposition for quick thinking.

If you were a caveman, and took three hours to decide weather or not to throw your spear at a wooly mammoth, you would never eat. If it took you several minutes to contemplate which direction to run if a tiger started chasing you, you wouldn’t last very long.

If you are ever conflicted in a decision, it’s only because today’s society presents us with a multitude of element that push those few “hot buttons” that we have built into our thinking process.

These “hot buttons” have been demonstrated beautifully by Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence – Science and Practice.” It is likely the most referred to book on influence and persuasion.

The topic of today is something called commitment and consistency. Basically, you tend to do things the same way you’ve done them before, or you tend to choose things the same way you’ve chosen them before.

Brand loyalty, staying in relationships or jobs that seem contrary to our best interests, and taking the same route to and from work area all based on this principle. Humans like what is comfortable. And when we do something, and it works, we usually do it over and over again.

Sometimes this can have a negative effect. If you try something, and get a little bit of a benefit, but not quite the benefit you were after, it can be hard to try something new, as we want to hang on, sometimes subconsciously, to that small benefit that we got, whatever it was. It may even be something that we are completely unaware of.

There are a couple of interesting experiments presented in Cialdini’s book. One is that they went through a neighborhood, and asked people to put up a huge sign in their front yard. Most, of course, said not.

Then they went through another similar neighborhood, and asked neighbors to put up a very small sign in their yard. A few said yes. They came back later, and the people that had allowed a small sign in their yard (no big deal) overwhelmingly said yes to a large sign. Because they had already committed to putting a sign up, agreeing to put up a much larger sign was simply behaving in a way that they had behaved in the past.

So how can you use this to influence others? There are two. One is similar to the sign experiment. You simply get the person to do something that seems no big deal, on a small scale. Then later, you ask them to do something much bigger, but seems to be similar to the smaller thing they did.

Salespeople do this all the time. They get small commitments to follow them from prospective customers. (Follow me, sit here, etc) and then slowly build up the level of compliance, until signing a contract is simply the next step in the process.

Seducers use a similar strategy. They meet a girl, buy her a drink, convince her to go to a different area of the bar or club, where they can “talk.” Then they go to another bar in the same neighborhood. Then they go to a small café somewhere closer to the guy’s apartment. Before you know it, they are in bed together. A string of small commitments, slowly growing in size and importance until going home with some guy she just met only three hours ago seems like no big deal.

Another, trickier way to do this is to find things in the persons past that they have already done, and convince them that their previous behavior is very similar to the behavior you want them to perform. This has to be done very carefully, and not blatantly. It takes practice, but once you get this down, you can be powerfully persuasive.

One way to do this (As described beautifully by Cialdini, Goldstein, and Martin in “Yes,” the follow up to “Influence”) is to assigning a positive label to your “target” because of their previous behavior. Then simply imply that if they choose not to comply with your request, they will lose that label.

Again, this can be tricky, and takes some practice to do conversationally, but it can be extremely powerful. Once you convince somebody that they will lose something they like (the positive label you gave them) they will do almost anything to keep it.

One extremely important caveat. Although these techniques are very powerful, if you use them without the other person’s interests in mind, they will backfire horribly. You will be despised more than the most unethical car salesman there is. But when you do this with the utmost sincerity in helping the other person achieve their underlying needs, you can’t go wrong.

Why Deep Rapport is Much Easier Than You Think

Couple of weeks ago, I went to an aquarium. It wasn’t a very large aquarium, it was a “traveling aquarium” if you can believe that. It wasn’t really anything more than an oversized tropical fish store, and it seemed to be set up mostly for kids. I’m not sure if it was something that travels around the country, or if it just a local thing that might have been on loan from the local zoo.

One thing they did have that was surprising was four penguins. On the advertisement it had pictures of all kinds of exotic sea creatures, and it had a picture of a penguin in the middle. I was certain that the penguin was only for advertising, so I was surprised to see actual penguins at the exhibit.

The were in a relatively small room, maybe twenty or thirty square meters at most. In the center was a make shift pool, the surface was maybe four or five square meters. It was only half a meter deep or so. When I arrived, there were many people pushing up against the Plexiglas with their cell phone snapping away. When I got there the penguins were swimming around in a circle in their small pool.

Shortly after I made my way to the Plexiglas, they had climbed out of the pool and were walking around it. They were incredibly cute, I have to admit. Following each other, as if they were afraid to make a decision on their own. Every time one would pause and look at the water, the rest would copy him. When one started walking, they others started as well. When one veered off form their path from around the pool, the rest followed.

Pretty soon you could tell the crowd was hoping for them to dive back into the water, as watching them walking around in circles was getting a little bit boring. Every time they would pause, an almost jump in, but hold back, you feel the small crowd express its disappointment.

Finally, one of them slipped, and fell into the pool. Before he even had broken the surface of the water, his three friends immediatley followed suit, to the immediate pleasure of the crowd.

It reminded me of a sales seminar I went to a few years ago. The speaker was talking about how important it was to develop rapport before trying to persuade anybody of anything. Rapport is that unconscious feeling you get when you feel comfortable with somebody.

For example, if you were in a strange city, and you saw somebody in shopping mall wearing a t-shirt the bore symbol identifying them as part of a small group that you belonged to, like a high school, or a hometown charity group, you would immediately feel a connection to this person. If you went up and introduced yourself, and identified yourself a as member of the same group of them, you would immediately feel a connection.

Another example. Imagine you are taking a long flight home from somewhere. You finally get to your airport; get off the go down to the baggage claim. As you are waiting, you notice somebody the same gender and age as you. And pretty soon you realize that both of your bags have not come out of the shoot yet. You both finally go to the service desk, only to find that both of your bags have been accidentally transferred to Miami. They are safe, and they will be returned within one week. You share a unique experience with this person, and you suddenly feel a certain connection. You have developed rapport.

There are many ways to develop rapport. The easiest is to match body langue, match the rate of speech, the words that they use. Another way that people try is to find as many shared past experiences, or shared likes and dislikes. Like you both played baseball as a kid, or you both hate the Bee Gees, or anything else you can find.

What the guy at this seminar said, was interesting. He said it’s much easier to develop rapport than most people think. The reason behind this is that people, from a biological perspective, are pack animals. We move in herds, or large groups. It’s almost automatic for us to get into rapport with people. It’s as if we are always subconsciously on the lookout for people that are similar to us, to get clues on how to behave.

This guys said that the easiest way to get rapport with anybody, be it a potential boss during a job interview, a client or a potential lover, is to simply relax, and allow the inevitable similarities to come to the surface. We have in us wonderful mechanism given to us by God or Evolution (whichever you believe) which makes this natural if you just relax and allow it to happen. Of course, if you look for differences, you will find them. But when you relax and allow the similarities to surface naturally, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to develop bonds with people that you don’t even know.

How to maintain those bonds is a subject of another article.

Intuition and Congruence – Two Powerful Gifts From Evolution

I was reading this really interesting book the other day, The Red Queen, by Matt Ridley. A fascinating study of human sexuality through the lens of evolution. One of the various topics was the reasons behind the growth of the human brain. When compared to all other mammals, humans have the largest brain. The question is why? What was the driving force behind the massive growth of the human thinking machine?

Many arguments that are usually given can also be used for other primates, and their brains are nowhere near the size of ours. Most scientists believe it is a combination of many factors to say the least. One of the most prominent is sexual selection within a species.

Imagine a group of cave people, fifty girls, and fifty guys. For the guys, they want to have sex with as many girls as possible. (Obviously). For the girls, they need to be extremely selective with who they choose to have sex with, because the consequences could be disastrous if they choose the wrong guy. Their offspring will not only carry his DNA, but his cooperation will have a direct impact on that offspring to survive.

So how do they manage this? The men try their hardest to convince the women that they are upstanding men capable of providing for the family. One way to do this is to simply pretend to be. They only need to pretend long enough and good enough to get into her cave-panties for the couple minutes it will take to get his cave-men rocks off. Then off to the next cave girl.

So an arm’s race of sorts developed over time. In men, the ability to deceive. In women, the ability to detect deception. Of course, men would pass on their skills of deception to their offspring, be they girls or boys. And women would also pass on their skills of deception detection onto their offspring, be they boys or girls.

So as man evolved, there was a contest, in both men and women, between skills of deception, and skills to detect deception. As mankind grew, this required a bigger and bigger brain.

The reason for this is congruity. In order to detect deception, you must be able to detect incongruity. This requires massive attention to subtle clues of body language, facial expression, and voice tone. Too much for the conscious mind to handle. Many believe the unconscious mind was developed to detect deception without having to spend too much conscious bandwidth, so to speak.

So we developed an “intuition” to tell when somebody is lying or not. Our subconscious minds developed the ability to quickly scan somebody’s body language, facial expressions, and voice tone, and then deliver a gut reaction, or a “feeling” to our conscious minds. And those that have learned to pay attention to this “feeling” or “gut reaction” can spot a liar a mile away.

Conversely, those that can present a very congruent image can be some of the best salespeople and manipulators around. Of course, the best way to be a great salesperson is to really believe in what you are selling. There’s a reason that many companies require their salespeople to actually own and use the product they are selling.

Of course, when you are presenting yourself, either to a potential lover or to a potential boss, it is essential that you believe in yourself. If you have any self-doubts, you will be dead before you even open your mouth.

The moral of this essay is twofold. One, take some time to get in tune with your intuition. It can serve you well against making bad decisions. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and is there for a reason. Use it, respect it, and listen to it.

Secondly, in order to present a believable image to the world, you must believe in yourself. Self-confidence and self-esteem stem from a belief that you are a good and worthy person with something of real value to offer the world. Don’t sell yourself short.

Believe in yourself, and trust your intuition, and you will go a long way.

How To Ace a Job Interview Even if There is Tough Competition

If you’ve ever had a job interview, you know now incredibly nerve wracking it can be. Suddenly you are sitting there, feeling completely under the microscope, as the interviewer looks over your resume with a passive look on his or her face. You have no idea what he or she is thinking, but you can’t help but wonder.

The good news is that interviewing is a skill, and like any other skill you can improve with practice. Of course, some people are fortunate enough not to have to go on many interviews, but many others have to go through several to land an even mediocre job.

So what is the secret? A mixture of self-confidence and criteria.

You need to be confident enough to give an honest assessment of your skills and how you can help the company’s bottom line. You do yourself no service whatsoever by being shy or reserved. If you have skills you need to make sure the interviewer knows about them, and believes you. If you don’t have skills, don’t say you do, otherwise you might find yourself in a difficult situation.

I was once in an interview for a technical position that was over my head. The interviewer asked me a question that required a specific knowledge of statistics to answer correctly. He asked the question, and without hesitation, I confidently said “fifteen.”

He paused, looked at me and asked: “Is that based on your knowledge and experience, or did you just make that up?”

Busted.

You’d be surprised how many people go into an interview with a “please hire me I’ll do anything for you” mentality. Employers don’t like this. They are in business to make money, and they need skills, not somebody looking for an opportunity.

That is where criteria come in. This is an almost magical technique that you can apply in areas much wider than job seeking. And the less technical the position, and the more “people skill” oriented it is, the easier you can leverage criteria, even if you don’t have any particular experience in the field.

Here’s how it works. Once you establish some rapport in the interview, and you get past the “tell me about yourself” part. You’ll likely come to a part where the interviewer asks if you have any questions. Most people ask things like “when are the holidays,” or “what are the health benefits,” or “do you have dental,” or other things.

What most people don’t realize is that this part of the interview is a near perfect opportunity to leverage the employers criteria to almost guarantee you the position.

When it’s your turn to ask questions, as the employer to describe exactly what they are looking for in an employee. Make sure to really listen, and pay attention to words and phrases that he or she puts extra emphasis on. Especially vague phrases like “people skills,” or “dedication,” or “focused on the final product.”

Then simply ask follow up questions about those particular words or phrases that they “lean on,” so to speak. The more they talk about their ideal employ, with you sitting there in front of them, they will start to subconsciously imagine you as the ideal employee. Especially when almost every other prospective employee is asking what’s in it for them.

The longer you can draw out that part of the conversation, the better. And any time you feel an opportunity to work in a person story or anecdote about yourself, try and use some of those phrases mentioned above. It will go along way to putting you at the to of the list.