Your Secret Strategy to Land and Win a Second Interview

Get Inside Your Interviewer’s Mind

The average job opening in 2016 will attract more than one hundred forty applicants, out of which the top five or six percent will be selected for an interview. You got the interview because you were enough of a match for the job that HR and the hiring manager wanted to see you face to face. You have succeeded in going from one of the very many (140+) to one of the many (seven or eight) because you meet all (or almost all) of the basic requirements for the job. The key unspoken question each of your interviewers must answer in that first interview is, “If I hire this candidate, what kind of employee will he or she be?”

In order to make it to a second interview where the competition for the position intensifies, you’ll need a solid strategy to land your spot among the finalists and become one of the few. You’ll need to do something that less than two percent of all applicants will do, which is to prove how you’ll succeed in the new job. To prove you will succeed in the job, you’ll need to provide your 90-day blueprint for success.

Your 90-Day Blueprint for Success

Your 90-Day Blueprint is your specific plan to meet all goals, objectives, and expectations the employer has for the candidate they will hire. In order to develop your blueprint for success in the job, you need to know:

• What are the specific expectations, goals, and objectives for the job?

• What are the principal duties of the job?

• What are the known obstacles to success in the job?

• How does success in this job impact the department, its goals, and its customers (i.e., the big picture)?

This information should be gathered through research, talking to the employer’s insiders such as a current (or former) successful incumbent, the hiring manager, and the department manager. They probably won’t talk to you unless the employer sponsors your research, and facilitates your speaking to the appropriate people.

Once you’ve completed your research and internal interviews, you’ll need to develop your plan and show exactly how you’ll acquire the necessary job-specific knowledge to perform your new duties. Draw from your experience, skills, and talents to explain your plan (or process) for accomplishing each goal and objective. Describe what you understand to be the obstacles to success and how you plan to navigate them. Identify how success in your first 90 days will positively impact the department in reaching its objectives. If possible, outline your plan in bullet point form on a single sheet of paper (two at the most) – you can provide this as a leave-behind at the end of each second interview.

Career coach Peggy McKee does a great job explaining 30-60-90 day plans in this recent article.

Set the Hook During Your First Interview

Your pre-requisite for using this strategy is that you want the job. Before ending your first interview you’ll need to “set the hook” for you to return for a second interview. And you want to have your interviewer agree to sponsor your research to produce your 90-Day Blueprint for Success.

Ask your interviewer something like, “After meeting you and others from {company}, I’m confident I could make a real difference here. Will you give me a chance to prove it? I’d like to chat with {name the functions you think could tell you about the job and what it is like} in order to learn more about the position and its specific goals and expectations. Then I’d like to come back for a second interview, where I’ll present my 90-Day Blueprint for Success. How does that sound to you?”

If your interviewer gives you the go-ahead and agrees to have you speak to the existing incumbent, his or her boss, and other insiders, you are already on the inside track to winning the job. Your interviewer has all but committed that you will be one of the few invited to a second interview.

Bottom Line

This is a positive, assertive way to get a commitment to a second interview, and you will likely be the only candidate they will interview who will request this. While it will take extra effort and time to conduct the necessary research and create your plan, you’ll place yourself on a higher career trajectory in the minds of the decision makers who will congratulate themselves for making an excellent hire.

This article is excerpted from the 7th edition of Boyer Management Group’s Job Search Readiness Assessment Development Guide, which explains more than 2,600 job and career search best practices. This post also appeared as part of Boyer Management Group’s best practices blog, your source for timely advice on careers, leadership, job search, and sales.