How To Win The Job: Tell Them What They Need To Know…And Nothing Else

Here’s how an employer with a job to fill chooses the winning candidate. He or she weeds out all those who are wrong for the job until only one is left. The right one. If you want the job, you have to resist being weeded out, and that means you must stubbornly keep from coming across in a way the employer sees as negative.

The boss is working with a logic that makes perfect sense to him or her. He takes a group of, say, ten candidates, finds reasons to weed out nine of them, and hires the last one standing. (Unless, of course, he weeds out all ten, in which case he must find a new group of candidates.)

It’s a process that takes valuable time, and is costly to the company. The employer is often more interested in solving the problem quickly than he/she is in being objective and fair. Show even the smallest evidence of a negative in your background or your character, and you could find yourself disqualified.

When the game is over, there’s one new employee, and nine disappointed candidates.

Generally, the person who gets the job, even if there are only two or three candidates to start with, is the one who steadfastly refuses to give the boss a reason to weed him/her out. Bosses tend to play it safe, reasoning that if a candidate has no negatives, chances are he/she can do the job with little risk. You must convince the employer that you have what it takes to do the job, and no negatives that might stand in your way.

You must find out what the boss wants, then show it what you’re offering. It’s risky trying to sell yourself, in a letter or an interview, on the basis of some personal quality or element in your background, until you’re reasonably certain the employer sees it as an asset. If he or she sees it as a negative, you could be weeded out on the spot.

After all, the employer is searching for reasons to disqualify people. Ten candidates – just one job.

If you say you’re an independent thinker, you may have found trouble. Because in this company, staff is expected to follow through on decisions made at the top..They like team players, not independent thinkers. They see you as a maverick, so you’re out.

Volunteer that you’re a staunch Democrat, and you may be setting yourself up for disqualification. Why? Because you’re talking to a fanatic Republican who believes all Democrats are liberals who spend money needlessly.

Certainly there’s truly nothing negative about being an independent thinker or a liberal Democrat. If they chose you, you could do a first-rate job. The point is, keep extraneous information to yourself until you know something about the company and the interviewer. It has no bearing on your ability to do the job, but it can get you weeded out.

Don’t volunteer extraneous information. Stick to those qualities that relate directly to the requirements of the job. Until you know what they want, don’t say too much.

At this point, your are the source of what they know about you. If you don’t reveal something to them, it simply doesn’t exist.

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