Responses that get you recruited

Many job seekers get it wrong in how they respond. PHOTO | FILE 

By SERAPHINE RULIGIRWA-KAMARA

SCENE: Interview conversation — last week at my office.

Seraphine: What would you say are some of your strengths as a professional?

Interviewee: I am a self-motivated individual who works well in teams. I am looking for a challenging environment in which to express my skills and positively contribute to your organisation’s success by continually achieving the set objectives. I am a go-getter.

Seraphine: That is what you say about yourself. As a prospective employee, how does this help me favour you for this position over the other candidates?

Interviewee: Looking at the job description, I know I can do the job. Bearing in mind my past experience, I believe that I have the qualifications, skills and have acquired the relevant experience to be a good match.

Look, no one cares what you believe about yourself. The truth is that even the lousiest of workers believe they are doing the very best of work.

They would be shocked and very offended if anyone even remotely suggested that their performance was in any way wanting.

Yes, I am aware of just how insensitive that may sound but I am not looking to stroke your ego. I am looking to help you rise above it to the point of having your target inflate it for you by noticing, choosing, hiring and remuneration you handsomely.

To put it differently, your belief in your qualification, experience and ability is never going to hire or pay you.

Someone outside of you will. This someone does not know you and your self-proclaimed abilities and certainly does not subscribe to your belief about yourself.

On the contrary, this person is professionally mandated to believe that all candidates could be qualified — he/she must hire the best of the lot.

Your job at this conversation is not to profess your faith in your abilities. It is to demonstrate how you continually add value to your roles and convert an objective interviewer to your personal and professional fanatic. This is when you beat other worthy contenders, get hired, and remunerated well.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not attend an interview to get a job. You engage your interviewers in a way that inevitably attracts the position to you.

I too learned this much later in my life than was profitable for me but I am still glad that I finally did learn it because my suggestion here is that there is a less taxing way to getting what you want.

I am saying that you must be comfortable being the person that you want to be without being a specific way because you want to get something from someone else. I realise how difficult it may be to see how this could actually eventually lead to getting what you want.

Know, understand and accept that everyone without exception is inherently selfish. This means that to get what you want without being a selfish go-getter. Become an intentional giver.

When you in one way or another give others what they want. It means that you need to put your own want aside in order to get it.

Repeat after me — I need to put what I want aside in order to get it. I know firsthand just how ridiculous and uncomfortable it is to roll this off your tongue but when you do this, you intentionally invoke the law of attraction, that is, what you give, you get back. Yes, it is that simple.

So when you attend an interview, presentation or negotiation of any kind, all you need to bear in mind is the result that the other party is selfishly seeking.

Put that at the forefront of your conversation and show less of your belief in your capability and more of how including you in their team conclusively solves their problems.

The more you can clearly demonstrate that you are undeniably the solution to their problem, the more they want you to quickly get to the part where you are actively doing so — in their employ.

Do this and even their budget ceiling stops being a limitation in hiring you. They will bend over backwards to accommodate you rather than box you into their pay-grades, job levels and whatever name they give to pre-determining your income based on their balance sheets rather than the value that you add.

Quit regurgitating all those scripted and rehearsed responses to the general questions at negotiation tables. These questions are not meant to find out whether some human resource agency coached you for the interview because most of the other candidates received the very same coaching.

Be the superior candidate among the rest of your competitors for the job and show the kind of presentation, demeanour, mindset, qualification, experience and track record you have under your belt and be appreciated at this privileged level.

Be the candidate worthy of attracting the job, remuneration and perks that you want.

Ms Seraphine is an expert on attitude and human potential. Email: sera@iuponline.com.Twitter @SRuligirwa.com.