Interview tips from the #architect
Below you will find the tools and techniques I use that; when combined with being myself; do something more than “sell” a person
Signposting
Signposting is absolutely crucial when dealing with a career in IT, or when speaking to a customer in general. It can also be useful in job interviews.
Let’s talk about it.
Signposting means “Here is who I am, This is what we are about to talk about, Then we will discuss this, And then we’ll end here. Does that sound OK to you?” <– that last part is the most important part.
Make sure they understand your motives completely and clearly, leave no room for guesses. Recruiters will not give you the benefit of the doubt.
The Five A’s
The Five As are something that have been developed over time, and I want to share them with you. This system was built from lessons learned during employment ventures and later harnessed into a new technique I call “The Five A’s.”
- Acknowledge + Align + Assure > Automatic Agreement
When you acknowledge a question, you signpost:
“To be clear, you’re asking this, am I right?”
Most people that are looking for their first job in tech are going to end up doing customer service. Even if it’s on the way to cyber.
Bitter pills at first. You are not as important as the customer. You can be replaced.
But–
- If you make yourself invaluable to the customer, then you CANNOT be replaced!
- We NEED YOU!
By using the five As, you can:
- Acknowledge that you understand
- Align with the question and the person asking it
You can Align with things like this:
“Oh, I totally get that. I’m in the same boat, why, for example, recently I….” to show them you do understand their problem.
- Assurance means you are taking the person seriously and have a genuine aspiration to HELP them.
- Or, in a job interview, to JOIN them.
An example of the technique:
Customer:
“Hey Shane, ugh. Thanks for taking the time. I’ve got problems with my hard drive again, 3rd time this week. The last tech I talked to said they had fixed it, but yet here I am again. Can you actually do this?”
Shane:
“Ah, thank you, sir. You said your name was X, am I correct?”
—
“And you said you’re having hard drive issues again, am I correct?”
—
“Ok, excellent, just wanted to clarify that and make sure we’re on the same page.”
—
“My name is Shane, and I’m a Tech for Company X, and what I’d like to do is just ask you some questions, get a good idea of what we’re dealing with here, and make sure we haven’t missed anything, so that we can be sure to fix this for you the right way– because nobody wants to keep calling tech back and wasting their day, am I right?” < BOOM.
- That last part is the automatic agreement
- This combination is what makes it more than the sum of it’s parts
- We walk them into answering the question we want them to answer with a “Yes.”
- We have acknowledged the person
- Aligned with their issue
- Assured them we are going to help them
- They automatically agreed that this is what they want to do
How to use this in an interview
You can use your resumé and the Five A’s in a job interview like this:
“You said you are searching for X position to be filled, yes?”
—
“Excellent, I understand the need for that, and I think I would be perfect for this.”
—
“If you noticed Experience X actually fits this perfectly, and if you look here, you’ll see that this falls directly into that category, right?”
—
“See, that’s perfect, and if you look also here, you’ll see this, and this sounds like it’s also relevant to the kind of thing you’re looking for, yes?”
—
The whole time they’re nodding yes to you, and observing your communication skills, and your ability to tie relevancy to topics.
Final words
It can be very easy to get off-topic in a job interview, so don’t be afraid to get derailed and even laugh with them a bit, because it shows honesty and enthusiasm for the conversation.
Just remember to bring it back quickly and keep them focused on what you’re bringing to the company.