So you are preparing for an interview. You break out your best suit jacket. You know exactly how to respond to prompts like “tell me about yourself” and “what are your strengths and weaknesses”. You have a few questions in your figurative back pocket so they will know you have done your research.
We have a tendency to hype up interviews so much. There is all this pressure to make sure you are the most professional representation of yourself. You feel like you need to have all the answers memorized, like an actor ready to perform. But that’s not how it should be. It is not natural, and sales is often mistaken in the same way.
Can you sell something by memorizing your elevator pitch word for word? Yes. I have done it. Do you come across as professional? Yes. But there is a factor that is missing that custom tailors your speech for your audience.
The truth is, the interview is just as much about finding out if you are right for the company as finding out if the company is right for you. Just as you are being interviewed, you are also interviewing. You want to get a feel for the organization and understand their passions and motivations just as much as that recruiter wants to understand yours. The same goes for selling. Many people assume that it is one way, where you tell all about your product to see if the prospective buyer says yes or no. But true selling is about building a relationship. You are making a friend and want to share with them what you have to offer. Perhaps they aren’t the right customer for your business. We need to understand that when we make our pitch, we also need to evaluate if we want to “buy” relationship with that customer. Both interviews and sales go two ways. That should take some of the pressure off.
BoweryJE22
This is so true. I think we can just look at how sales should be done today to see how an interview should be conducted. You need to know some of the key facts about your product, but you let the customer do the asking and lead the conversation and when the time is right you deliver the facts and say why you fit the bill. Sales for me feels a lot like this and we need to remember that it is the same type of process when we are trying to sell ourselves.
I agree, interviewing and sales are a lot alike in that way. I think an interview goes much better when your relaxed and not nervous about saying exactly what you had rehearsed. It’s much easier if you go with the flow, and same goes for selling. You have to get the feel for what the other person is like and decide from there what your going to say. People are much more relatable when they know your being yourself and not just rehearsing something that you say to all your customers.
I had never drawn this parallel between sales and interviewing before; however, I think it makes a lot of sense. An interview is essentially “selling yourself” and many of the same principles from sales can and should apply. From talking to people on the other end (the interviewers) I have often heard how they are looking for that human element, not a perfect resume or rehearsed pitch. Thanks for this great reminder!