The Ultimate Guide to Acing Your Interviews
Tips to Help You Win the War for Talent
In the Salesforce ecosystem, the talent shortage is wreaking havoc on businesses trying to grow. Every hiring manager is under pressure to deliver, and many often feel held over a barrel retaining underperformers.
By making a few simple tweaks to how you hire, you can beat your competition, accurately hire top employees, and improve your company and career. Here are a few best practices and behaviors my top clients incorporate, which have led to their exponential growth during the talent shortage.
Tips to help you win the War for Talent.
- Assume every other company wants the candidate you want, too.
- Act accordingly with speed and strong offers.
- To improve speed, block time on all interviewers’ calendars to prevent meeting delays.
- Get budgetary sign-off before starting the hunt.
- Have benefits and general offer paperwork pre-drafted.
- Strong offers don’t have to mean more money, but they usually do. Unlimited PTO, fully remote work, and bonuses tied to business success and acquiring certifications are becoming commonplace. You’re better off paying for top employees and retaining them than flooding the floor with average employees.
- Act accordingly with speed and strong offers.
- Compare candidates to your top employees first.
- These comparisons matter more than how they compare to other candidates. The days of talking to 3-5 candidates for comparison have practically vanished for certain positions. You don’t need to speak to 5 architects if you already have two good ones on your team and understand how to interview.
- Get great at interviewing.
- You probably don’t have 10,000 interviews under your belt, so here are a few shortcuts to having better discussions and making better decisions.
- Allow candidates to ask all their questions upfront. You’ll not only learn a ton about what is important to them, but they’ll also relax, having had their questions answered. This tip is straight out of Recruit Rockstars by Jeff Hyman.
- Sell before you screen. Candidates should clearly understand what they can expect from you as a manager, the company, growth opportunities, employee investments, clients, projects, culture, and work expectations. Once they understand that, screen them carefully. Leaders often pretend there’s a line out the door to get into their company when there isn’t. Don’t be that person.
- Review a candidate’s work history by starting with their oldest job on the resume within 15 years. A more natural story of their career progression will unfold, and you’ll get more reliable information. After all, an interview shouldn’t feel like you’re watching Memento or Pulp Fiction. Keep the timeline simple.
- Focus on accomplishments and ask clarifying questions.
- What are two accomplishments you are proud of at XYZ company?
- How did you achieve it?
- Who else helped?
- What was the aha moment?
- What did you learn from that experience about your role?
- About yourself?
- Set clear expectations on when they can expect to hear back from you. Always follow up promptly to stay top of mind and show you care.
- You probably don’t have 10,000 interviews under your belt, so here are a few shortcuts to having better discussions and making better decisions.
- Extend an offer to the first great candidate who makes it through your interview process.
- Don’t wait for everyone else to finish. 1/2 of my clients hire the first candidate we present to them. The risk of losing a top candidate to a competitor or their current company is enormous. I estimate a 50% greater chance of a competing offer for top candidates this year than two years ago. Keep up with traffic, or you’ll get stuck in the slow lane.
No Pants – Consulting World Rocked
Are You Wearing The Pants?
“Men’s business fashion has always been slow to change.“, says corporate homebody and Salesforce Headhunter, Josh Matthews. Ties have been on the way out for years, even affecting certain financial and management consulting institutions on the eastern seaboard. But there’s a more unsettling trend. People not wearing pants.
As a possessor of both a dad-bod and a closet of unused suits, he agreed to answer a few questions to shed light on this drafty situation.
When was the last time you saw a client’s pants?
“It’s been a while. That would have been at Dreamforce 19. I don’t know if any of them are wearing pants now. All I can see is their upper body. Sometimes, if they’re older, I can only see from their nose up.”
Do you wear pants?
“I do. I wear pants or shorts every day. It’s part of my commitment to my clients and candidates. As the Salesforce Recruiter, they rely on to help them grow the best teams imaginable. Wearing pants gives them the confidence they need to entrust me with helping promote and accelerate their careers. My 12-month guarantee, the best in the industry, includes complimentary wearing of the pants during all calls, conferences, and meetings. To help them feel comfortable, I never ask if they are wearing pants. It’s something they really appreciate.”
Men’s Warehouse has reported a significant increase in pant-less suit sets. Would you buy a pant-less suit set?
“No. I wouldn’t, and I think you made up pant-less suit set. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Matthews further said the spike in remote working and use of Zoom will reduce once the majority of the Covid lockdown is over, but not to pre-pandemic levels.
Do you wear pants? Let us know in the comments.
I Lost My Job! PART TWO
I Lost My Job! What am I going to do? Steps 4, 5 and 6
If you’ve recently lost your job, spent time grieving and taken care of your immediate mental and physical needs Video PART 1, then it’s time to get back to work. Arming yourself with a compelling, easy to read resume and inviting LinkedIn profile will be covered, but we’ll start with the most important step, how to obtain the information you’ll need for both.
I strongly recommend clicking the video above for a more detailed and entertaining lesson on how to ready yourself for the Salesforce Job market.
STEP 4 – Understand Your Successes and Shortcomings
Most resumes look like a calendar and a bunch of job descriptions had a baby. Not good! Compelling Salesforce resumes and LinkedIn Profiles are accomplishment focused, meaning they state how ones work affected the overall business. They are rife with results and outcomes, are easy to read and highlight your specific successes and characteristics.
There are three ways to understand your successes and shortcomings. Here they are in order of credibility.
– Guess. This is a last resort when all resources and research has failed. Not recommended, but it’s better than wheeling out your dusty old document.
– Review past performance reviews and management coaching sessions, including quarterly, or annual 360 reviews. These can be a great source of information for adjectives that convey your work style, reliability, diligence, efficiency, technical competency and so on.
– Contact your more recent managers and team leads. The absolute best and most credible way to obtain information on what your real value was to the company and a deeper understanding of what you need to work on. Imagine you’re in an interview and you’re asked “What will your references say about you?”. When you pipe up and share “My boss and I just connected last week. I’d reached out so I could understand how I should be applying myself while off of work to become an even more valuable employee. They shared I sometimes stick to a problem before asking for help a little longer than I should. They also said I was one of most reliable and conscientious Salesforce developers they’d ever worked with and I’d be their first call if they need to build a team again.”
Powerful stuff….if it’s true!
Be sure to press them for honest information that you can really use. Managers who simply provide lip service or tell you what they think you want to hear are useless. Hold them accountable to the truth so you can learn, grow and validate your best qualities.
Step 5 – Update your Salesforce Resume
Most people have average resumes. Get yours into A shape by starting with the tips covered in the video.
Step 6 – Update your LinkedIn Profile
Watch the video to learn how a few basic tweaks to your profile can help you in the job hunt.
The Cost of a Smile
People like people who smile. If you don’t smile, you’re less likable. That’s the short version for you busy people.
Some time back, I interviewed a great candidate but I couldn’t submit him to any of my clients. He just didn’t smile enough.
Even when he was talking about something that excited him, he kept a poker face. What does it convey to your potential employer when you don’t back up your words with emotion? Insincerity and insecurity. Not at the top of the list of most desirable qualities in a new employee. My candidate was a solid guy though and he wanted the truth, took the advice well and then told me he didn’t like his teeth. He’s embarrassed by them. Teeth don’t win friends and influence people, smiles most certainly do. One of the most successful salespeople I ever knew was frequently described as having, well, let’s just say “less than desirable teeth” by his peers. He outsold all of them partly because he out-smiled all of them.
For those who don’t smile enough, here is a simple exercise that can and literally has changed lives.
- Find a busy place (mall, airport, downtown sidewalk, etc.).
- Walk around and smile at as many people as you possibly can. Count the smiles returned, they will far outnumber the other faces combined.
- When you get to 20 smiles celebrate your mastering a great technique.
Next time you’re going for an important Salesforce interview, have a big presentation to give or you simply want a pick-me-up, leave the poker face at home. Instead, hit the street for a quick 10 smiles. You’ll be amazed how quickly the world shares with you what has always been there, all for the low cost of a grin.