Brevity and the Job Interview

Prior to being in the management recruiting game, I ran a video production company for over a dozen years. We made all kinds of high-end corporate videos for big companies. Our work was generally very successful. We had accumulated a pile of commendation letters from our clients over the years, and I must say that I owed much of our success to a set of rules I followed about how to create content.

I can't mention all the rules right now, but one rule that stands out, now that I think about it, is this: When you interview someone on camera, make sure their sound bites are short and sweet. Don't let anyone ramble on - instead, have them deliver a clear idea quickly and succinctly. Very importantly, don't rely totally on cutting their comments in the edit room - instead, aim for a short, powerful "gem" while you are shooting. If it means doing a few takes, so be it. If it means taking more of an important executive's time, too bad!

As a video producer, my main goal was to maximize audience attention. When I became a management recruiter, I realized that the goal is exactly the same at a job interview! Indeed, in my first few months as a recruiter, I noticed that too many people ramble on for way too long when they answer an interview question. And this is one of the biggest mistakes they can possibly make. Why?

Off the top of my head, there are two main reasons why speaking too long can kill your chances of landing a job. Here is the first.

Blowing Your Time Budget

As you probably know, most job interviews are of a finite length - 30 to 45 minutes. Say you go to a job interview, and you sit down and the interviewer fires his or her first question at you. Usually, they start off with something like, "So, tell me about yourself." Without thinking, you vault into your life story, starting with your early childhood. And a full 15 minutes, and twenty yawns, later, you conclude your little speech.

Well, congratulations! You've just blabbed for a full quarter-hour and you blew a third of your interview time on one little question that should have taken two minutes tops to answer.

So now, you only have 30 minutes left, if that, and the interviewer has 12 other questions he wanted you to answer. Seems your face time has just become a precious commodity. But - if you had knocked off the question in, say, two minutes, you would have had 43 minutes left! And that would have been plenty of time for the interviewer to discover what he or she needed to know about you.

So properly budgeting your answer time is the first very important reason for being brief. Here is the second.

The Snooze Factor

Have you ever gone on a blind date or met a new acquaintance for a drink or lunch or something, and the person starts talking at you and doesn't stop? What was your reaction? I will bet that after just two minutes, your mind started to wander. You began thinking about how hungry you were. You fidgeted - your eyes glazed over - you started looking at your watch - you may have even given a good yawn!

In essence, your level of interest progressively petered out, and after three to four minutes, you just wanted to get up and leave. So, how do you think your interviewer starts to feel after five or six minutes of your own "fascinating" story?

Keeping Things Moving

I am sure you have heard people say that people watch too much television. And you might wonder, why would human beings, who, after all, have such a very short attention span, get into the bad habit of staring at a TV screen for hours and hours every day of their lives?

The answer, of course, is that television keeps people watching by "changing the scene" every two to three minutes - or even two to three seconds! When things move along, humans tend to stay more interested - even fascinated!

Likewise, you can build and sustain interest at a job interview by doing the very same thing as television does. No, you do not have to bring a television set along with you to the interview. Rather, when you answer an interview question, quicken the pace and get to the point almost right away. The less time you waste with parenthetical remarks, or details that no one cares about, the more people will actually pay attention to you. Your goal, after all, is for the interviewer to become progressively more interested in you as a person, and short pithy answers are a superior building block to help accomplish this.

There is a lot more to say on this subject, but in keeping with my own rule about being brief, I will end this segment right now.

Good luck!

More About "Respecting The Headhunter"

I received this anonymous comment regarding my last installment on respecting the recruiter. It reads as follows:

I am guilty of treating some recruiters abruptly - I'll admit it. But that's usually because they have made me feel like just another name on their list - they didn't bother to gain any knowledge of my experience or what I have to offer before they picked up the phone to call me. Some barely looked at my resume. It turns me off completely.

However, Mr. Yurman, I have talked to you on the phone and I was pleasantly surprised. You were personable, you related your own experiences to draw out mine, and you kept me on the phone longer than any recruiter ever has. I was obviously impressed because I've visited your site and now I'm blogging!

Your comments about getting too comfortable with the recruiter have me pondering something. Did you consider it a faux pas on my part (or anyone else's) when I candidly discussed the pros and cons of work, etc.? Seems to me that your relaxed, buddy-type demeanor is very deliberate - to coax information out of job seekers. And it's effective. So why wouldn't you expect us to be relaxed and at ease with you? Wouldn't you consider that a form of respect?

I appreciate your comment, and would like to clarify...

When I referred to "recruiters" I was not necessarily referring to myself. That is, not all recruiters are like me. Some are very distant, and are just looking at words on a resume, or not even that. Some will only speak with candidates who have exactly the right credentials for a particular job assignment. Others are very "professional," and are really judging you from your very first word to them, treating each interaction just like an actual job interview. It all depends on who you meet.

The basic fact is that a management recruiter's first priority is to represent the client (the hiring company) and to establish reasons to either consider - or not to consider - any given candidate. My advice is, if you do want to be considered, do not reveal anything to a "headhunter" that you would not reveal to the actual employer until you are absolutely comfortable with that person.

But I know it's not easy. Job seekers are in a difficult spot. They want and need someone to talk to. They are scared or frustrated or broke or all of the above. It is very tempting to unload all of that on the recruiter, but it is a bad idea because recruiters are not representing you, they are representing the client.

If you have, in fact, been able to establish a more "human" relationship with a recruiter over a period of a few days or weeks, I see nothing wrong with getting more familiar with that person - but it is unwise to completely open up to anyone from the very first contact.

To answer your question, I personally do not try to coax information out of anyone by taking a more familiar tone. I simply like to help people, and I am a more informal, friendly person by nature. I also believe that what goes around, comes around. If I can help you by sparing a few minutes of my day to advise you, perhaps you will help me or want to do business with me someday. For the most part, though, I just want to help. That is why I write this blog!

So in a nutshell, until you can really, really trust a headhunter, keep a lid on it. Why take the chance of blowing your opportunity?

Thanks!