Your Formula to Become a Preferred Job Candidate

What wins job offers?  Let’s look at the process to get there:

What Do Employers Want from Candidates?

The very best predictor of what someone will do is what they have already done in the past.  For example, suppose you needed an operation that could save or extend your life.  Which one of these two surgeons would you choose?

Why did you choose Dr. Jones? Likely because you want a surgeon with a track record of success, not someone with vast knowledge who has yet to perform your operation.  The same premise holds when employers want to fill an opening – hiring managers want someone who has skillfully performed in similar roles, versus someone who can tell you how the job should be performed.

The SESRV Interview Strategy Answers What Employers Look for in a Candidate.  Most interview questions are designed to evaluate a candidate in terms of his or her skills, qualities, characteristics, work ethic, experiences, and the like.  Savvy candidates carefully prepare for their interviews by developing an inventory of quantifiable examples which illustrate how they successfully demonstrated the skills, qualities, characteristics, work ethic, and experiences the interviewer wants to learn about.

Whether the interviewer uses a behavioral interview approach or simply asks a candidate about his or her proficiency, the SESRV interview strategy makes a candidate someone the interviewer wants to hire.  It illustrates the candidate’s quantifiable accomplishments related in a compelling story of how the candidate delivered a successful outcome.  Here’s the S-E-S-R-V of the SESRV interview strategy:

Here’s what your SESRV Answer should look like:

Here’s an example of a SESRV response to the interviewer’s question about hard work.

“Good question…let me first define what hard work means to me. It means working well beyond the normal requirements to deliver a great result that exceeds expectations. 

I can give you several recent examples.  The first example happened three weeks ago when my team was asked to complete a three-week program rollout in only two weeks.  It involved providing a half-day training to six different teams located in six different time zones, which meant delivering some of the training during the night hours. We also had to navigate handling our regular duties and the unexpected illness of one of the key team members.

We took the challenge, and together developed the training timetable to meet the needs of each team, then delivered the documentation and workbooks electronically two days before each training session to give adequate time for them to be replicated locally. 

As a result, we completed each of the six sessions on time, and our post-training evaluations were fantastic.  What I learned was how to engage my team in the solution by setting clear expectations of the outcome and let them develop the plan, which has raised the levels of trust in our department.  It’s a strategy I know will help me be effective in the role for which I’m interviewing.” 

This story is believable because it contains specifics, but took less than two minutes to deliver.  It may invite further questions from the interviewer to understand more of what happened, and if similarly answered, will convince an employer that you are a top performer in this area.  Most interviewers never get this complete an answer, which also stands in your favor.

In addition, your answer provided much more than just an answer to the question of whether or not you are a hard worker.  Among the other insights your interviewer discovered about you are:

• How you think through a problem, your judgment and decision-making.
• How you engage the people on your team (“we”), aligning them around a shared objective.
• Your understanding of what it takes to build trust, essential for high-performing teams.
• A sense of your communication skills and how clearly and concisely you articulate ideas.
• Your focus on results, beginning the project with the objective in mind.
• Your ability to work with the needs of others in the organization to create a positive experience.
• How you learn from your work experiences and build skills for future use.
• Your general attitude in positively working through obstacles.

Multiply Your Perceived Strengths with the Association Effect.  What happens when a candidate begins supplying SESRV answers consistently in response to his or her interviewer’s questions?  Based on decades of observation and experience, after a certain number of SESRV responses, the interviewer begins to apply the Association Effect and assume the candidate possesses equally strong competence in other areas not asked about.  Two reasons this happens:

In order to leverage this tendency, job seekers should build a skills, experience, and characteristics inventory of real examples with quantifiable outcomes for use in interviews, on your résumé, and on social profiles.   

Bottom Line. Mastering the SESRV Strategy and then consistently applying it will result in winning more job offers and better job offers, because the candidate become the hunted, not the hunter.

I love working with people and organizations who want to improve their effectiveness! Here are several outstanding resources that can help you and your organization to go to the next level:

• Improving your (or your team s) management and leadership skills: Leading Through People . This acclaimed program equips participants in thousands of current and emerging best practices of leadership, hiring, and talent development.
• Raising your (or your team s) selling and sales management effectiveness: B2B Sales Essentials (among the 30-plus courses we offer are ones on selling with emotional intelligence and storyselling!)
• Conducting a more effective job search: Get a Better Job Faster