HOW TO DESIGN AN INTERVIEW PROCESS THAT PREDICTS PERFORMANCE

By Omer Molad

First, let’s get one thing out of the way. Traditional interviews  don't actually predict performance. Rather, the best way to predict performance is to test job-related skills in context. Nevertheless, there is a place for interviews in the hiring process. Interviews are a useful tool to build rapport, and even start a relationship, with candidates after their skills have been validated. They can, and should, also be used to answer unanswered questions from the hiring process. 

Interviewing is often used as a synonym for candidate selection, but it shouldn’t. Interviews should only comprise a small part of the candidate selection process. In fact, if an “interview process”, a.k.a. a selection process, is designed properly then traditional interviews only need to play a minor role.

Rather than dealing with hypotheticals, I’m going to share a real blow-by-blow story about a recent hire we made. The process included a recruitment agency, marketing, online skills assessment using our own platform, interviews and reference checks. I’ll explain how each step worked and why we did things in a very deliberate order.

Role Definition

This is arguably the most important step. If you don’t define the role correctly the entire process will be flawed because nobody will have clarity about the kind of person you’re looking for.

A helpful starting place is thinking about the purpose of the role. Why does it exist? We wanted to hire someone who could help our largest customers get maximum value from their investment in Vervoe. That was our “why” for this role.

We wanted someone who had expertise in assessment and I/O psychology, was a natural with enterprise customers and would thrive in a startup. 

Recruitment Agency Appointment

We don’t usually use agencies and I’m not advocating for, or against, the use of agencies. It depends on the situation. In this case we were looking for a candidate with a very specific skill set and we were almost certain that we needed to attract passive candidates. The people who met our criteria weren’t necessarily looking and, more importantly, they were probably working with a big company and therefore not looking for roles with startups.  

So we wanted an agency to help with candidate sourcing, particularly market mapping ad outreach. In other words, we wanted the agency to find people and convince them it was an exciting opportunity.

First Contact

This fact we were tapping passive candidates on the shoulder influenced the rest of the process. We had to convince candidates to talk to us rather than the other way around. So throwing them into an assessment wasn’t going to work. We had to sell to them. 

So the agency approached them and had an informal conversation. After that the hiring manager met the candidates. Is this the most efficient use of time? No. But it was necessary given the calibre of people we were trying to attract. This wasn’t a high volume situation.  

The purpose of the conversation with the hiring manager wasn’t to determine whether candidates can do the job. It was to sell to the candidate, get a feel for their motivation and give them visibility over the remainder of the process. It was about buy-in. 

Skills Assessment

After speaking to the hiring manager candidates were invited to complete an online skills assessment, known as a Talent Trial. They had to opt into this stage.

We positioned the skills assessment stage as a two-way street. An opportunity for us to see how they perform job-related tasks, and an opportunity for them to get a realistic feel for the role and the product they’ll be working on.

It made sense. Every single candidate we invited to this stage successfully completed their skills assessment.

The Interview

Then came the interview. It was a discussion with me and I only interviewed one person, whom we ultimately hired.

I didn’t focus on skills because I already had evidence the preferred candidate could do the job. She performed very well in the skills assessment, which was carefully crafted to reflect the role.

We discussed how we’d work together, including her preferred working style, how we can invest in her, some of the quirks of our team and what she can expect if she joins. It was lighthearted and fun, at least for me.

Reference Checks

I’m a big believer in reference checking, but not for the reasons you might expect. References are almost always positive. It’s a rigged game. But, if done correctly, reference checks can be very effective in setting candidates up for success. They help understand what it would be like to work with the candidate, how we can support them and how we can get the best out of them. 

They’re an employee onboarding tool of sorts.

We asked the recruitment agency to conduct two reference checks and send us detailed notes.

Meeting the Team

We wanted one more conversation with the hiring manager and the team. At a startup it’s really important to bring existing team members into the process. In fact, I believe it’s important in any company. It increases the chance that existing team members will welcome the new hire, and gives the preferred candidate an opportunity to see who they’ll be working with. It reduces the risk for everybody. 

The Offer

A quick offer is a good offer. We didn’t make the offer after the final discussion with the hiring manager and team. We made it during that discussion. After meeting the team, and after everyone gave the thumbs up, the candidate spoke to the hiring manager privately and got the good news. She accepted.

Source: vervoe.com/blog/how-to-design-an-interview-process-that-predicts-performance/

HIRING: COMPETENCE IS CONTEXT-DEPENDENT

By Omer Molad

The same, but different

Is a graphic designer at a major accounting firm the same job as a graphic designer at an early-stage startup? There is an obvious overlap is functional skills, but that’s where the similarity ends. 

A designer at startup will have limited resources and even less time. They’ll be required to “ship fast” because the clock is ticking and everything is an experiment. Management will have a relatively high tolerance for mistakes, and decisions will be made on the spot. 

Conversely, a large accounting firm will be far less tolerant of risk, decisions are made by committee, perfection will be prioritized over speed and autonomy will likely be low. 

How similar do these roles sound now?

While the fundamental craft is essentially the same, the context is entirely different. Success is measured differently, and the respective operating environments have very little in common.

Context is everything

It follows that the best person to do the job at the accounting firm is probably not the best person to do the job at the startup. In come cases the same person might be able to excel at both roles, but they’ll need to apply themselves and behave quite differently. 

This means that competence is dependent on context, something James Clear emphasizes in his book  Atomic Habits. 

There is no such thing is a “good graphic designer”. Rather, there is a good graphic designer in your particular context. That context might be unique to your company, or it might be broadly applicable to companies in your industry or of a similar size, for example.   

This is a departure from the way many companies, and indeed many talent acquisition professionals, think about competency frameworks. It’s easy to associate competence with job titles in a generic sense. However, given people’s performance will depend on the context in which they operate, all notions of competence should take context into account.

How to Build Context into your Recruitment Process

When filling a role, it’s important to think of what it takes to be successful in that role at your company. It’s helpful to divide the requirements into two components. The first is the skills that are specific to the role itself and would likely be required in any context. In other words, what does the person in the role need to achieve? The second component is the skills that are unique to your context. In other words, how do you expect the person to approach their role? This can include cultural aspects, attitude, behavior and so on.

The next step is to come up with a way to test candidates for those skills. Following this logic, a generic “graphic designer test” doesn’t make much sense because it only addresses the first component. In order to  identify someone who will excel in a role in your context, the test must take into account both components. It must be context-dependent because competence is dependent on context. 

Thinking about candidate selection in this way will help you identify people who are more likely to be successful in your environment. This makes sense because it’s also unlikely that the people who want to work at a startup will also want to work at major accounting firms, and visa versa.

Source: vervoe.com/blog/competence-is-context-dependent/ 

SILAS ADEKUNLE: THE SMARTEST GAMING GURU IN THE WORLD

By Njideka Agbo

At a time when Nigeria is trying to catch up with the technological advancement of developed nations, one of her own, 26-year-old Silas Adekunle, is taking over the robotics world with his ingenuity and innovation.

Adekunle was born and had some of his education in Nigeria before relocating to the UK when he was a teenager. Having completed his secondary school education, he proceeded to the University of the West of England where he graduated with a first class graduate in Robotics.

In 2013, he founded Reach Robotics, a company with an aim to infuse gaming and augmented reality to perform functions. Ever ready to learn, he gained experience on robotics within a space of 4 years and also became a team leader of Robotics In Schools programme, a programme which encourages and pays attention to students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It was during his involvement in the programme that he thought of developing robotics to make education more entertaining for STEM students.

In 2017, Mekamon, the world’s first gaming robot was born. A part of its unique feature is the ability to customise the gaming bot to perform personalised functions. Despite being hit by disbelief when he was seeking funds, his initial launch of Mekamon sold 500 bots, generating $7.5 million.

Owing to this milestone success, Adekunle has received support from various organisations including London Venture Partners $10 million (N360 million). In the same year, Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores.

Not only have his works gained recognition, but he was also listed in the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe: Technology.

He notes that the secrets to his success are balance, shared ideas, time management and being oneself.

Update: Adekunle has now become the highest paid robotics engineer in the world and has also been described as the smartest robotics engineer in the world.

This article was originally published on the 13th of June, 2018.

Sources: guardian.ng/life/silas-adekunle-the-smartest-gaming-guru-in-the-world/

4 HEALTH BENEFITS OF EGG YOLK

By Akinwale Akinyoade

Eggs have three separate sections — the shell, the white and the yolk. Egg yolks used to have a bad reputation because of their high-cholesterol content with doctors and health authorities once recommending that people limit egg yolk consumption. However, research has shown that cholesterol level in the blood is affected by other factors.

While the health benefits of egg whites are widely known, egg yolks have health benefits, too. Like egg whites, egg yolks have a high protein content and contain many essential vitamin, minerals, fats, and healthy calorie. Below are health benefits of egg yolks that you should know before you toss the egg yolk away.

Eye Health

According to research, egg yolk contains carotenoids which help to lower the risk of age-related macular degeneration and cataracts. Carotenoids act as antioxidants in the eye, protecting it from free radicals that can damage different parts of the retina, impacting its ability to correctly focus light.

Benefits of Choline

A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found women with the highest level of choline intake were 24 percent less likely than women who got the least choline in their diets to develop breast cancer. Egg yolks also help promote heart and to regulate cardiovascular function.

More Vitamins

If you are going to toss any part of your egg away, you should toss the egg white and not your egg yolk because egg yolks contain more vitamins (and larger quantities of those vitamins) than egg whites. Each egg yolk contains seven vitamins: B6, folate, a B vitamin, B-12, A, D, E and K. interestingly, egg yolks are one of only a handful of foods in which vitamin D is naturally found.

More Minerals

Egg yolks and egg whites each have 13 varieties of minerals. Although both the egg white and egg yolk contain these minerals, the yolk has larger amounts of most. The egg yolk boasts of 90 percent of an egg’s calcium, 93 percent of its iron content with just 7 percent in the white.

Source: https://guardian.ng/life/four-interesting-health-benefits-of-egg-yolk/

"THE SINGING DOCTOR" WHO SERENADED OVER 8,000 BABIES HONORED AFTER 40-YEAR CAREER

By Caitlin O'Kane

Over his 40-year career, Dr. Carey Andrew-Jaja has delivered 8,000 babies and received the special nickname of "The Singing Doctor." That's because he sang to every single one of the babies he delivered — and then some. 

Dr. Andrew-Jaja, who worked at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, loves to sing "Happy Birthday" and Louis Armstrong's hit, "What A Wonderful World," to the newborns. 

He explained his song choice in a video for UPMC. "To me, it's a wonderful thing in my hand, the miracle of life," he said. "And the rest of is that it's a beautiful world we live in. We forget about all the crisis going on everywhere for a moment when you see that miracle of life in front of you."

The OB/GYN said he took up singing to the babies when he was just starting his career. "I like to sing. But this particular part of singing to babies started when I was a resident," Dr. Andrew-Jaja said in the video.

"There was a gentleman, an older obstetrician-gynecologist on staff and he loved to sing. And later on when he was about to retire, he asked me, 'Andy, do you sing to your babies?' And I said, 'Well, no. It's your stuff,'" Dr. Andrew-Jaja said.

"And he said, 'Go ahead, do it.' So, I took it over. He passed on the baton to me," he continued. "And I took it over and I started to sing to my babies ever since then and I do it every time."

Now, four decades later, Dr. Andrew-Jaja has sung his last lullaby at the hospital. At the end of June he officially retired, UPMC told CBS News.

He actually stopped delivering babies a few years ago, but kept seeing OB patients, UPMC said. It isn't uncommon for doctors to do this and although he wasn't at their deliveries, Dr. Andrew-Jaja would visit patients in the postpartum wing after their babies were born — and he would still sing. 

He'd check on the moms and babies and give them the gift of song. Lindsay Grimes was one of the last moms to receive that gift.

"We're so excited to have a new addition to our family," Grimes told UPMC ahead of Dr. Andrew-Jaja's visit. "So, to have him sing to one of our babies would be awesome." 

The doctor visited Grimes and her newborn, Luella, and sung his signature: "What a Wonderful World." 

Dr. Andrew-Jaya said that the last baby he sang to was just as important as his first. "Each of them is an individual. You know, I've delivered thousands and thousands of babies," he said in the UPMC video. "When I'm singing to those babies, I think I'm singing to a future important person. That's the credit I give to all of them."

While he's officially retired from both delivering babies and visiting patients, Dr. Andrew-Jaja's legacy as "The Singing Doctor" will continue in Pittsburgh. Councilman Corey O'Connor declared May 16 "Dr. Carey Andrew-Jaja Day" this year. 

Source: www.cbsnews.com/news/the-singing-doctor-who-sang-to-over-8000-babies-gets-honor-to-mark-the-end-of-his-40-year-career/

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SKILLS TESTING

BY EMILY HEASLIP

Skill testing can give recruiters a competitive advantage in today’s ultra-competitive job market. Not only that, but candidates who are hired on merit, rather than background, tend to stay longer and perform better over the long term. Here’s how to use skills assessments to fill your open positions and to keep your pipeline full of happy, engaged candidates.

What is a Skill Test?

A skills test is an assessment used to provide an unbiased, validated evaluation of a candidate’s ability to perform the duties listed in the job description.

Typically, a skills test asks a variety of questions in different formats to see how candidates perform on-the-job tasks. A good skills test includes questions that are capable of being answered by someone already doing the job and can accurately measure key performance metrics. Questions should also be specifically tailored to relate to the responsibilities of an open position. Many skills tests include immersive experiences, like coding challenges or job simulations, to mimic how a candidate performs when faced with a real-life scenario.

Other types of job-readiness evaluations deploy validated psychometric assessments to identify those in-demand soft skills: things like motivation, conscientiousness, resilience, and emotional intelligence. A personality assessment varies from a skills test in that it predicts how a person will behave in a specific scenario, rather than their ability to complete a task.

While skills test cover task-related abilities, like coding, copywriting, or sales, some pre-employment assessments integrate the less tangible capabilities – things like teamwork and leadership. These qualities are sought after by executives at more than 900 companies, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of executives. Yet, 89% of those surveyed said they have a “very or somewhat difficult time finding people with the requisite attributes.” Where traditional hiring methods fall short, a skills test can easily clarify a candidate’s true talent.

Overall, skills tests can play a critical role in predicting on-the-job success. More so than resumes or job interviews, a skills test can assess the true potential of a new hire to go the distance with the company. Here’s how skill testing works, and why more companies than ever are starting to integrate skill testing into the recruitment and hiring process.

How Skill Testing Works

Skill testing works best when the questions being asked are specifically crafted to the role and needs of the team hiring the new candidate. In designing a skills test, combine different types of questions to get a 360-degree view of how a candidate will perform in different scenarios.

There are a variety of ways to set up a skills test – and we’ll get into the mechanics of how to actually run the assessment in the next section. But, designing a thoughtful aptitude test takes some initial foresight on behalf of the hiring manager and team. Research by Deloitte suggests this sample process for selecting and implementing skill testing questions:

Define the “human elements” needed to perform the job

Compile questions that will measure and predict these human elements

Use the data gathered by the skills assessments to empower the next round of the screening process

Post-hiring, evaluate the efficacy of the hiring assessment to ensure the questions delivered the best result.

Ultimately, the best use for an aptitude test is to help recruiters move away from the resume and allow candidates to prove they are the real deal. Crafting the right series of questions should be a collaborative process between the recruiting team and the team hiring the new employee. Here’s how these teams can set up and run a skills test.

How to Set Up and Run a Skill Test

In designing a skills test or pre-employment assessment, there are a few specific steps to take in order to thoughtfully structure your questions. Vervoe recommends following these best practices in setting up and running your skills test. These tips can help with candidate engagement and lead to high rates of completion.

Your skills test should include a minimum of six questions; somewhere in the eight to ten range is best.

At least a few questions should require text answers; start with a text-based response in the first question, rather than a video or immersive question.

At least one question should be multiple choice.

Include an “immersive” style question, in which the candidate edits a document, spreadsheet, or presentation.

To retain a candidate over the entire experience, start with easier questions and build up to more difficult ones later in the assessment.

Try to minimize use of timers to account for technical difficulties and give the candidate the best chance of success.

We also suggest that video responses not be timed; there are too many technical issues that can result from a candidate trying to film a one-way video interview. If you do wish to set a time limit, make sure it’s at a minimum of five minutes.

Running a skills test through Vervoe, or any other platform, is relatively straightforward. Vervoe’s Talent Trials let you select questions from a library of assessment tools, or design your own questions based on the specific needs of your company. The Talent Trial library offers questions and trials created by experts in their fields, meaning they have at least 3+ years of experience in their specific area of expertise. You can preview questions from any of the Talent Trial areas and add them seamlessly through the Vervoe platform.

Now that you know how to set up an aptitude test, when should you deploy this tool during the hiring process?

Using Skill Tests During Hiring

Timing is everything when it comes to adding a skill assessment to your hiring process. Research by Harvard Business Review revealed that skills tests should come early in the hiring process. According to their study, “Many service companies, including retailers, call centers, and security firms, can reduce costs and make better hires by using short, web-based psychometric tests as the first screening step. Such tests efficiently weed out the least-suitable applicants, leaving a smaller, better-qualified pool to undergo the more costly personalized aspects of the process.”

Skill tests should be used to screen candidates in, not out. The issue many recruiters face is that the volume of candidates makes it impossible to carefully consider each person’s ability. Smart algorithms and AI tools can turbo-charge candidate assessments by scoring results quickly and removing human bias from the equation. Vervoe’s algorithm scores candidates using a multi-layered approach. Candidates are ranked based on how well they performed, rather than filtered out if they didn’t achieve a certain benchmark. The top candidates easily rise to the top; but no one misses out on being considered for the next round. When used early in the hiring process, Talent Trials can select a more diverse pool of applicants to continue onto the next phase.

Skill Test Examples and Templates

There are many ways to set up a skills test, depending on the position for which you are hiring. Pre-employment skills tests can cover a range of positions: administrative assistant, finance and accounting, and call center reps are just a few roles that companies hire for using Talent Trials.

Excel skill tests, coding skill tests, typing skill tests, and other computer skill tests are the most common forms of pre-employment assessments. Some companies focus on questions that are task-related, e.g. “Create a Powerpoint Slide that has a video embedded in the presentation.” Questions can get hyper specific to test a niche skill, like a coding language, or be posed more broadly to test the general requirements for success at a certain level.

Some companies choose to focus on verifying the skills that will help a candidate succeed beyond the immediate position. This approach skews closer to a pre-employment assessment, with questions designed to reveal if a candidate can climb the corporate ladder, adapt in a challenging work environment, or respond under pressure. For example, one call center rep test included questions such as, “You have an elderly customer on the phone who is having trouble understanding your instructions. A colleague is also trying to transfer a call from a customer you served before, and you have a scheduled follow-up call happening in 5 minutes. How would you handle and prioritize in this situation?”

Multiple choice, open-ended questions, and pre-recorded video responses are all great ways to see if a candidate has what it takes to do the job well. But, do candidates enjoy answering these types of questions?

Do new hires like doing skill tests?

By most accounts, candidates appreciate the opportunity to showcase what makes them great at their job. Orica, the world’s largest provider of commercial explosives, integrated skill testing into their interview process to the delight of their job candidates. In revamping the interview process for graduate students looking to join the Orica team, recruiters consolidated their online evaluation components into one platform, Vervoe. The Talent Trial test combined questions focusing on skills, logic, and values.

An average of 86% of candidates completed the online process, and the reviews were mostly positive. Here’s what the candidates had to say about the skills test:

“The tests required total engagement and thought, and were a clear demonstration of what makes Orica different from any other company.”

“I think the questions were very diverse and it allowed me to showcase myself, my skills and abilities in different ways.”

“It gave me an opportunity to showcase who I am as well as challenge my skills”

This is just one example of how a skill test can change the entire interview process for a potential new hire. In a job market where people spend an average of 11 hours a week looking for a new job, it’s easy to get burned out, fast. Every job description starts to look the same; every interview begins to feel stale.

When given the opportunity to showcase their talent through real-world tasks, job candidates will jump at the chance to be engaged with the job description, rise above their resume, and challenge themselves. Companies that use Vervoe’s Talent Trials experience a 97% candidate completion rate, which is among the highest engagement rates in the industry. Candidates love the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Even if they aren’t hired, skills testing offers a break from the repetition of the stale interview experience.

What are the benefits of a skill test?

The benefits of a skills test aren’t limited to the candidate experience.

Recruiters looking to hire diverse, high-performing teams with better efficiency and consistency can use pre-employment tests to their advantage. Skills tests are a better predictor of performance than resume screenings or traditional interviews alone. Resume screenings are bad for three reasons. First, studies suggest that it’s common for candidates to lie on their CV. The person you think you’re hiring may not actually possess the qualifications you think they do.

Second, resumes only provide a high-level view of a candidate’s credentials and work experience. These items don’t offer qualitative insight into actual on-the-job performance. Coupled with recruiting biases that are built into the process, the third threat is that recruiters are privileging candidates based on background and demographics, rather than talent. Perhaps this is why new hires crash out as often as they do. According to one study, 46% of new hires “fail” within the first 18 months of being hired.

Skill tests can help take some of the bias out of the interview process, give recruiters a new evaluation metric to consider, and lead to happier, long-term hires. There’s ample evidence to suggest they really do work better than many of the other traditional hiring methods recruiters have relied on in the past.

Do skill tests work?

In our experience, skill testing works better than traditional hiring methods – with some caveats.

Without a doubt, aptitude tests can be used to replace resume screening. This style of sorting through candidates increases the chance that the best candidates will be unfairly eliminated. Good people get screened out, rather than screened in. So-called “pedigree proxies” – resumes and cover letters – are not indicative of job performance, yet they are often the quickest way a recruiter or algorithm can think of to cut down on their stack of candidate resumes.

Skills tests improve time to hire while allowing the hiring manager to see how someone will do the job, before they get the offer. This reduces turnover costs, which add up quickly: the cost of making the wrong hire can be up to 2.5x salary, easily over $100,000. Working with Vervoe’s Talent Trials, on the other hand, can help a recruiter identify the best people at under $100 per hire.

The best skills tests, however, need the right formula to help the candidates succeed. Some recruiters focus narrowly on the skills that will help a new hire succeed in the immediate position for which they are hiring. Yet, many CEOs emphasize the importance of soft skills – things like leadership and teamwork. New hires may end up being disappointed and leaving because they lacked the soft skills needed to adapt to their new team, not necessarily the skills to perform the job. Recruiters must integrate questions into their skill assessment that focus on critical soft skills that predict long-term success. These validated psychometric assessments are key to assessing “culture fit” without defaulting to recruiter bias.

Skill tests vs. interviewing

In conclusion, we’ll leave you with few thoughts on skill tests compared to interviews.

First, interviews, in general, need a total overhaul. Recruiters have been asking the same, outdated interview questions for decades. Many candidates get overwhelmed by the performance anxiety inherent in the interview and may make (forgivable) mistakes. Nevertheless, many recruiters like the security of meeting someone before making an offer.

Many recruiters seek the same insight from a group interview or case study that they would get from an individual skill test. Unfortunately, using these methods can’t give you the same valuable information as a straightforward aptitude assessment. Case studies can be too conceptual; rather than seeing how a candidate will approach the work listed in the job description, case studies ask abstract questions. The goal of asking “how many tennis balls can fit on a Boeing 757” is not to see if the candidate can guess the right answer, but to see how they approach the question and reason through their response. But this knowledge doesn’t always serve a recruiter with the best predictor of on-the-job success.

Group interviews provide more insight – into a candidate’s teamwork, leadership, and communication, for example. Yet, in a group scenario, extroverts tend to dominate. It can be difficult to see how each candidate performs as an individual while trying to consider the group at once.

In summary, skill testing is all about understanding whether a candidate can do something or knows something. It’s about verifying their ability to go the distance with your company. Pre-employment assessments differ slightly in that they focus on predicting how a candidate will behave in certain scenarios, not what they can do. By combining questions from skills testing and pre-employment assessments, recruiters can get a more accurate picture of the candidate’s ability.

Source: www.vervoe.com

FIRST JOB INTERVIEW IN 20 YEARS? HERE'S HOW TO NAIL IT!

By John Tarnoff

Many of us in the boomer generation are confronting a situation we never thought we would be dealing with: launching a second-act career in our 50s or 60s. Yet that is exactly what many of us are doing — bravely ripping up our old resumes and rewriting our life stories so that we can sync up with a world that has changed radically since we were last "on the market."

Here are some suggestions to consider if you are heading into what are likely your first job interviews in 10 or more years. I don't think it matters where you're applying — whether it is for a job in your industry or if you're striking out in a new direction, interviews are interviews. They're scary, intimidating, and your professional future hangs in the hands of your interviewer.

Own It 

A wise teacher used to tell me to be 100% engaged and enthusiastic about what I was doing, but to be 100% detached from the outcome. Win or lose, as important and maybe even life-saving as getting this gig may be, it is ultimately out of your control. You can only be the best person you can be. The only way you're going to get this job is if you don't hold back on revealing that great person. That doesn't mean you sell too hard or tell interviewers repeatedly why you're the exact right person for the job; it just means that you're you. If you're having a hard time finding your confidence and your equanimity, think back to a time in your life when things were really humming on all cylinders. Remember that feeling and bring it with you to the interview.

Show What You Stand For

Today, experience, sad to say, is not as valued as it once was. In a world that's changing so fast, with businesses and industries getting disrupted out of existence, experience may not help you overcome a completely out-of-left-field challenge. You have to be curious, adaptable, resourceful and persistent. In short, you need to be driven by values and qualities of character. This is what a recruiter will be looking for. As an older worker, if you can be quietly inspiring, downplaying your own accomplishments while praising your colleagues, and talking about your life and work experience as a gift rather than as a badge, you may just win them over.

Don't Let "Hiring Mom And Dad" Perceptions Define You

Yes, that's a real expression in the back rooms of millennial-heavy businesses and departments. Your interviewer will most likely be younger than you are. When older workers present themselves, there's a good chance that ageism will rear its head. My advice: Ignore it. Not every younger person you meet is going to be dismissive, but be on the lookout for some awkwardness or discomfort. Rather than clam up, shut down or reveal just how infuriating this really is, be smart and strategic. Show (don't tell) that you have no issue with younger people. Remember:

1) You're not there to teach them a lesson.

2) You're not there to tell them war stories about how things were when you were their age.

3) You're not there to impress them with how much you've learned and grown over the years.

4) You're there to be of service and to support their mission and their goals.

Interview Them

You should be interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Don't do this from an arrogant position. Don't sit back in your chair, cross your arms, frown or take out your list of questions so that you can take control of the interview. Be curious. Do your homework. Lean forward. Ask perceptive questions to show that you not only understand the job, but understand the company and the culture. Use your questions as a way to reveal why you could indeed be the right fit for this job. Don't be afraid to get into a real conversation. 

Be Transparent

Be willing to reveal things that you could feel a little uncomfortable about. Don't hedge your way out of questions like: "Why did you leave your last position?" or "How long have you been looking for a job?" Your discomfort is a sure sign that you aren't right for the position. Spend time prepping for these questions, and find answers that are authentic and show that you are willing to overcome challenges and learn from past experiences. This is a great opportunity to inject some self-deprecating humor into the conversation — and to maybe make a joke at your own expense. A little vulnerability can go a long way toward creating empathy and respect for what you've been through.

It's Not The Job, It's The Fit

At the end of the day, your interview has about 10% to do with your resume and about 90% to do with "fit." Does the interviewer think you're someone whom everyone else is going to enjoy coming to work with in the morning? As organizations and hierarchies have flattened out because of technology, there is more power in what used to be thought of as middle management. Hiring and firing is more team-driven than ever, so don't be surprised if it takes a half dozen rounds of interviews to trot you around to all the stakeholders you could be working with. If they don't "get" you, if there's no "click," then do you really want to be working at a company that doesn't understand and appreciate you for who you are?

Follow-Up Never Gets Old

While so much has changed in the hiring process, the fundamentals still apply. Remember to thank your interviewer by email immediately after your interview. And, just like in the old days, send them a handwritten thank you note the same day. I advise clients to actually have the note card in their pocket or bag all ready to go, with a stamp already on the envelope. I don't care how old or how young they are, your interviewer will be impressed with your follow-up. It may not get you the job, but it demonstrates your thoughtfulness and your character.

Remember that if you don't get the job but have still made a strong impression, you've just expanded your network. That young recruiter may turn out to be your biggest new fan and may have just forwarded your resume to a friend of theirs at another company where there's an opening.

Tomorrow is another day.

Sources: https://blog.silvernest.com/first-job-interview-20-years-heres-nail ?