A manager wears many hats during their career and being a sales manager, you must be able to pull more hats out of your closet than normal. Recently I applied for a job at a surgical sales company that mainly deals in selling surplus surgical products from large hospitals to smaller hospitals at a cheaper price. When I found out about this job, I thought that it was a very smart idea and thought that I would like to be apart of the company. So, I applied and realized that I needed to work on selling myself, so that if I did get an interview I would be prepared. I did in fact get a phone interview and was prepared to try to sell myself to the hiring manager.
At the beginning of the interview I was nervous but as I got to know the manager, I became more comfortable and after I thought the interview went well. However, after the interview I looked back and realized some things I didn’t during. The main thing that I realized was that the manager did most of the talking during and would stop occasionally to ask if I had any questions about what he had talked about. He mainly talked about what the company did and how they have been growing over the past few years. I realized that the manager was more trying to sell the company to me than me trying to sell myself to him. He did ask me how I could improve the company and what my strengths were, but I felt like we talked about the company more than myself. I later went for a in person interview and had one of the other interviewers conduct the interview and I thought that it went a lot differently. This interview was all about selling my self to the managers and what I could bring to the table. I do think that this interview went well but if I was giving some advice to others applying for jobs, I would say to try to make the managers laugh and feel comfortable with you. Make it just like a normal conversation and everyone in the room will feel comfortable and the interview will go a lot smoother.
testacr22
Interesting blog post. I completely agree with the points you made about interviewing. Interviews can be stressful, however it’s important to remember to relax and treat it like a normal conversation.
I completely agree with the point of trying to make sure that the interviewers are comfortable around you. Being yourself, albeit still acting professional, is important in interviews because if they don’t like you for you, there’s no reason to work for them because you are just living a lie then.