CALENDAR

Articles on the Interview Club

A Place to Sharpen Interviewing Skills
By Patricia Kitchen
March 14, 2002, page A42

The job interview was going great.

Mike Schloff, who's looking for work as a project manager or business analyst, sounded confident and at ease as he answered the perennial hiring manager's request: “Tell me about yourself.”

Schloff, of Brooklyn, was telling how, on his previous job - back before he opted to go full time for his MBA – he had really enjoyed solving bigger, more complex problems.

And then, out of the blue, it came: The interviewer asked, “So, how old are you?”

Shocked, Schloff answered back in a you're-not-supposed-to-ask-me-that tone, “Age doesn't matter.” And, of course, it is an illegal question. Still, his response could have been smoother.

Not to worry, though; this interview wasn't for real. It was role-playing at a new group that has formed to help job hunters in the metropolitan area practice answering just such probing, pesky and, yes, even unlawful questions. Called the Interview Club, it's the brainchild of John Murphy, a laid-off marketing professional, and his friend Martin Vonderheiden, a project manager/trainer/sales consultant, newly moved to New York from Germany.

Based on the thinking behind Toastmasters International, where professionals get together to hone their speaking skills, this group is zeroing in on job search communications. Among them: delivering that short pitch or commercial about yourself; giving brief presentations on job hunt subjects; and answering those zinger questions, like the one that unsettled Schloff one recent evening before the group of about 12 job-hunters in the Zion Lutheran Church basement in Brooklyn Heights.

The idea is – in a supportive environment – to “throw you for a loop, make you sweat a little,” so you'll perform better during the real thing, Murphy said. These are the crucial skills, he said, “that are normally only practiced in front of a mirror.”

The evening started with participants delivering their pitch. Several mentioned having been laid off and Murphy suggested they stick with skills, accomplishments, position being sought – but no layoff reference.

Vonderheiden then tossed each person an interview question to answer, some straightforward, some curve balls: What are your strengths and weaknesses? What would your former boss have to say about you? Why did you choose your career? Why is your salary so low?

And then came the role play. In an informal debriefing afterward, group members agreed the best approach to the question about age is to dodge. Probe a little to get at the underlying question, Murphy said, “Say something like, ‘Are you asking how much experience I have?’”

http://www.careerjournal.com/recruiters/jungle/20030716-jungle.html

Endless Interviews Offer Opportunities to Impress
By Kris Maher

If at first you don't succeed, keep interviewing.

That is what Mike Schloff has been telling himself. Since April 2001, he has been through three series of interviews at a major pharmaceutical company, without getting hired. But he is still hopeful.

“At first I took it really personally,” says Mr. Schloff, a 34-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., resident, who has been consulting for a health-care advertising agency for nearly a year. “But I've come to realize it's not necessarily that I botched the interview. There are these other things external to the dialogue that you're having with the hiring manager. That means keep trying, because you still have a chance.”

Given that job searches are taking longer than they have in a decade, with more job seekers fighting for fewer openings, many hiring managers are in no hurry to make a decision. Tied down by budget constraints or bad corporate news, worried about blundering with a hire yet flooded with candidates, many managers put applicants through layers of interviews and seek greater consensus from their peers and employees than they might have during the economy's boom years.

In the past two years, companies “have lost some of the discipline of the interview process,” says Dan Kaplan, director of recruiting for Fannie Mae in Washington. Mr. Kaplan says Fannie Mae has bucked the extended-interview trend and kept the process streamlined. Most candidates meet with between five and 12 employees, including one or more group interviews and the company's goal is to fill most positions in less than 90 days. “We don't want to abuse our candidates and force them to answer the same questions over and over,” says Mr. Kaplan.

Such drawn-out interviews aren't likely to go away anytime soon. And remember that while they can be frustrating, they can lead you somewhere eventually -- if not to a current position, then down the road when hiring picks up. So take a deep breath, cultivate patience and remember some of these tips the next time you get called in for yet another round of meetings:

Take good notes. As the number of interviews at a company multiplies, it becomes increasingly important to jot down notes during and after each meeting, says Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a Chicago career counseling firm. You need to be able to keep track of what you said to which employee. And detailed notes are also a key to sending a personalized thank-you note after each interview. “You don't want to be reiterating things you've already said,” says Mr. Karsh.

That doesn't mean it is bad to make the same pitch to different staffers. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I can't use the same stories,’ but I don't think that's true,” says John Murphy, co-founder of the Interview Club, a workshop in New York where job seekers meet twice a month to hone their interviewing skills. It is better to polish the same few persuasive anecdotes about yourself with only slight variations than trying to paint a new picture each time. When interviewers compare notes about you, they will be more apt to identify those key themes you want them to remember.

When an interview process takes months, it is crucial to follow up with several people who interviewed you. Meeting more people gives you more avenues to pursue. Keep track of news about the company and the industry. Without asking for a reply, send articles related to a topic you touched on during an interview. “It tells the person without being terribly intrusive that you're thinking about them,” says Taunee Besson, a career coach based in Dallas.

Keeping in touch will also make it easier to call if you get an offer from another company and want to use it as leverage to speed up the process at the first company. Mr. Karsh recommends being creative with follow-up notes, and has even advised clients to send a postcard now and then. He also cautions job seekers not to call and hang up repeatedly if they get someone's voice mail, since many companies have caller-ID phones and it looks “weird” if your number shows up eight times a day on their phone.

Remember that the more interviews you go on, the more opportunities there are to bomb. If that happens once, you can try to correct any negative impressions by sending a polite follow-up letter, detailing any strengths you weren't able to convey face to face. But it may be better to let a bad interview slide, especially if it wasn't with a person with hiring authority.

Networking contacts within a company can often ease your fears in such situations. An inside contact who isn't part of the interviewing process can also tell you how long the process typically takes at the company and who ultimately has the authority to decide who to hire – a key piece of information to help you push the process forward.