Preparing For The Interview

Ready to meet the queen

In thinking about the reasoning behind preparing well for the interview, I have to pass by part of the tale of Cinderella…

If you remember, Cinderella lived in a household headed by her widowed stepmother and shared the place with two step sisters. The king and queen of the realm where this little family lived had a prince who stubbornly remained unmarried which exasperated his royal parents. Invitations went out to all the eligible ladies in the kingdom to a ball where the prince would find and select a suitable bride (the royal couple hoped!). When the invitations arrived at Cinderella’s house, all the ladies began preparing for the ball.

In another narrative from the Bible, a certain king exiled his queen when she embarrassed him by refusing to appear at a party one day. To cure his equally embarrassing lack of a queen, this king decided to have eligible ladies brought to the palace for a contest to choose from them a new queen. The contestants were prepared to meet the king with beauty treatments given over an entire year.

Again, a prospective bride will starve herself into a smaller size, take up residence in the spa and spend thousands to make sure she looks her best on her wedding day.

One year to prepare for one night

How important is it and how serious a matter is it to consciously prepare for an interview? I am not saying it compares to the extreme conditions of contests to be a king’s bride or a fairy tale princess or even a wedding day, but preparing for the interview is no less a matter of deliberate preparation. Many people miss this point and show up at one of the most important events in life in almost laughable conditions. So, the first rule of the “corporate mating ritual”, or, the interview is, PREPARE.

The Third Page: References Will Be Provided

clear intentions?

In times gone by, “references to be provided upon request” squatted at the end of a resume like an ugly little troll. In even earlier days, the list of references was its last page. I still have a “third page”, but I never send it until it is needed. As we have mentioned before, unless the woo in a resume is very strong, a recruiter will not look past the fold. That means the list of references–page 3– will go unnoticed.

Recruiters and HR hardly spend 15 seconds eyeballing resumes these days–those resumes served up to them cherry picked from key word searches. A resume that is not properly SEO-ed (search engine optimized) with key words is invisible to the search engines. A resume that does not rise in the key word search will simply not be picked up.

If a search spits out 50 resumes that “make the cut” by key word, that number is shaken down through closer examination until 5 candidates’ resumes remain. This is the round where “packaging”–stand-out individuals and presentation really matters. Again, references do not enter into the discussion. Where does the “third page” enter, then?At the interviews. References and a few more rounds of interviews are  used to winnow the number to the final two.

Along with a lot of reading, job seekers attend a lot of seminars. As I listened to panel after panel of HR professionals and recruiters I came to this conclusion:

no ring; no thing.

I checked your references

I forget about showing references until I am sure the intentions are serious. The rejected need not waste resources of time and energy when there is no evidence of a serious woo to win. Unless I am just wild about a company the chase ends when I get the auto responder that says, “we will keep your resume on file for….” That is the signal to move on.