Best Way to Sell yourself or your Company during an Interview
In addition to exchanging information, both parties want to use the interview to sell—the interviewee selling his qualifications and the interviewer the company and the job. In teaching people how to sell in the context of a job interview, I often encounter resistance. It’s as if selling in this context is somehow dirty, or beneath both parties. Interviewers and interviewees both need to jettison that notion. There’s nothing wrong with selling. Selling properly is not playing a game. Quite the opposite, in fact; selling means communicating in a way the other person understands.
You won’t get the candidate (or job) you’re looking for without selling. So as long as you must sell, you might just as well do it effectively. And honestly.
Some companies conduct a series of interviews with candidates and divide those interviews into evaluative and sell interviews, assuming that you can’t do both in one interview. That’s nonsense. Not only can you do them in one interview, you can be doing them at the same time within that interview. One of the biggest mistakes an interviewer makes in trying to sell candidates is to think he can sell only when he is talking. Think back on the last time you acquired something significant—a car, a house, a job. Did you acquire it because somebody talked at you constantly for a long time, or were other factors at least as important, such as how the person related to you or answered your questions (or whether you wanted the car or house in the first place).
Remember that you want to sell not only the star candidate you wish to hire, but also her roommate who may influence her decision, and other interviewees who will affect your reputation on campuses and in the marketplace and who may turn out to be your future customers, colleagues in the industry, or employees down the road. Of course, you will focus your selling efforts most strongly on candidates you’ve determined you want to hire, but don’t ignore the techniques when interviewing candidates you will not extend offers to.
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