What You Must Find Out in a Job Interview
The first thing you need before the interview is a copy of the company’s mission statement. Get it before you walk into the interview.
First, you want to know if you agree with it. Second, you want to if it is plausible.
When asking questions about the company, refer back to this document. Let it guide your line of questioning. You are just trying to find out how things really work. This frame of reference will reduce the interviewer’s fears that you are a potential troublemaker.
The company that is interviewing you wants to find out whether you will be worth your starting salary. It doesn’t want to make a mistake.
Remember, low-level managers are like bureaucrats in the government. Their number-one goal in life is not to make a mistake that will get them fired. They want to be in low-risk positions. That’s why they are low-level managers. Anybody who is a risk-taker has already moved up in the chain of command.
The interviewer is a low-level employee. Nobody wants to be in his position. It is a dead-end position. Anyone so unfortunate as to be assigned this task is being told that he probably has no significant future in the company. He is not going to be elevated into a senior management position. He is also not going to be paid much money.
Always keep this in mind when you deal with the interviewer. He may be resentful about his obvious dead-end career. Maybe not, but you should assume that he is. I know I would be.
You want a job offer out of the interview. This should be obvious. You have to conceal certain things if you want to get an offer. One thing you have to conceal is your independence. If you have the ability to make a living outside the company, you are a threat to the time-servers in the company. They want obedient people. They don’t want innovators. They don’t want geniuses who will make them look bad. They surely do not want independent people who have the ability to walk away from the job.
You have to present yourself as a team player. If you do this, you will be in a position to ask the questions that really matter from your point of view. You want to know something about the team that is thinking about hiring you. You want to convince the person doing the interview that you will fit in. If you sense that you cannot fit in, you would be wise to turn down the offer politely after the offer is made. You want to find out if you are suitable for getting an offer. The more offers you get, the better your options are for picking a company in which you will be able to survive mentally.
The more that the interviewer thinks you are asking questions about the company so that you will be sure that you fit in, the more he is likely to reveal to you about the inner workings of the company.
You want to know certain facts about the company. First, you want to know where you are likely to be put during your first year. Ask questions with this angle: you want to fit in well. You don’t want to disappoint anybody. You don’t want to look as though you are not suited for the job. So, you need to know more about the company so that you will be able to give an honest assessment about your ability to fit in.
The strategy here is not to come on as a critic looking for ammo against the company. You are being humble. You are also being honest. You don’t want to wind up as a square peg in a round hole. For this you need information, and the company needs information on you. If you position your questions this way, you will not be perceived as a wise guy — a potential troublemaker. You will be perceived as someone who wants to be a team player. Above all, that is what low-level management wants out of newly hired people. They don’t want to hire innovators. Innovators are hired by senior managers and shoved down the throat of a particular department’s senior manager. They all resent this, but they can’t do anything about it. They can do something about making offers to job-seekers who walk in off the street.
Second, you want to find out what will be expected of you in the first year. That’s why you want to find out what the job will require. You want to get some sense of the objective criteria that officially will be used to evaluate your performance. Obviously, subjective criteria play a big part in anybody’s career. The person above you will use objective criteria officially to judge your performance, whether or not you are really productive. He wants you productive in a specific way: making him look good. If you can provide this, you will keep your job.
Third, you want to know how long the head of your department has been at his job. If it is longer than five years, he is not innovative. Basically, it boils down to this: anybody so low on the totem pole that he must deal with someone like you had better be a newcomer. If he is an old timer, he has been relegated into the outer darkness of the company. That’s where you will start your career. He is a dead-ender.
In your first year, you have to be a steady performer. You don’t want to make waves in that first year. You want to get the lay of the land first. Then make your first move upward. Start out performing at an above-average level. Don’t make waves in that first year. Learn how the system works before you try to use the system to advance your career. Perform reliably in that first year. Then figure out what you will have to do in order to double your salary over the next five years. This should be your goal. You should double your salary by the beginning of your sixth year in the company. That’s because you will be starting out as a grunt-level worker.
Don’t ask the interviewer about opportunities for advancement. You’re talking to a person in human relations at a dead-end in his career. He doesn’t know the answer.
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