How To Land The Interview And Nail It

With such a competitive job market, landing the job offer is getting increasingly harder. Dave Carvajal, author of “Hire Smart From The Start”, explains how to set yourself apart from the competition. Following is a transcript of the video. 

Dave Carvajal: In a world where people are getting increasingly marketed to more and more, it’s important to be
able to make your point succinctly and effectively.

Carvajal: The biggest mistake that people make when it comes to writing a resume is, first of all, writing a resume. Oftentimes they will write a resume like a list of technical achievements, and so the resume will actually look like
a technical manual. Instead, they should be writing their resume like a marketing brochure. A list of benefits to the buyer. Think about the greatest value-creating experiences, the experiences they might have had working on a team and to use, not only action words, but use success-action words; active words. For example, ‘driving,’ ‘growing,’ ‘leading,’ are very positive, affirmative action words.

Carvajal: The best advice on cover letters is have them be short and to the point. Understand what the buyer is looking for. Have your cover letter be specifically targeted to the individual reader, and speak to them in their language. Use their words; use their values.

Carvajal: As an interviewee, it’s very important to make sure that you do research in advance so that you truly understand what are the core values of the organization, what is the culture, what are the things that they celebrate and promote, and really do the best that you can to understand and communicate the overlap between your own personal values, and the values of the organization. One of the best things that you can do in preparing for your interview, is making sure that you not only research the core values of the organization, but also research the growth of the organization and where they’re headed, where the puck is going in the marketplace, in the industry, for that business. Be able to communicate the decisions that you’ve made in your career, the values that you bring to the organization, and how certain experiences might make you uniquely qualified to help the organization grow and move into a direction that it’s looking to go into.

Carvajal:  Oftentimes, we spend too much time in the English language focused on the transactional exchange of words, when, rather, we should be communicating at a deeper level the core values and the beliefs that we have. Technical chops are only responsible for about 20% of the reason why someone will succeed or fail at any given company. More than 60% of the reason why anyone will succeed or fail at any company has everything
to do with whether their personal DNA matches the cultural DNA of the organization.

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