Job search diary: mock interviews
build Brian's confidence
Mock interviews show ex-manager his weaknesses, help him improve
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff, 7/20/03
(Third in a series documenting a laid-off manager's search for employment.)
Seated during a job interview, Brian McGrath has that clean corporate look: fresh haircut, brilliant-white shirt, and stylish tie. He also looks as stiff as his shirt collar. And then his eyes begin to roam and he turns his head as though he were tracking a bird flying behind his interviewer's back.
''It's easy to see something out of the corner of your eye'' and be distracted by it, McGrath says, laughing at this tic. He is watching a videotape of himself during a practice interview conducted at the Burlington offices of his career coach, Keystone Associates. He was not following a bird but someone walking outdoors and past the office window.
McGrath is mastering the art of the interview. A Type A personality, he would never go to an interview without preparing. But, in contrast to most people looking for a job, he has benefited from being drilled on the most effective techniques by Keystone, which was hired by his former employer to help him find a job. He feels far more proficient in interviews today than he did during this mock interview three months ago - at that time, even a Keystone executive, playing the role of interviewer, could make him nervous. Last Tuesday, he easily managed back-to-back interview sessions with two prospective employers, crammed into a single day.
''It went well,'' McGrath said. To impress an interviewer, ''you have to distinguish yourself, especially in a down market,'' he said.
''You really have to know your answers cold and distinguish yourself from everybody else out there who is competing against you.''
Presentation is critical to securing a job offer, according to a July survey of employers' criteria for hiring a candidate. The survey, by the Society for Human Resources Management, found that 95 percent of human resources executives said ''interview performance'' and ''professionalism in interactions'' was ''influential'' or ''very influential'' in their decisions. A candidate's background and qualifications fell lower on the scale.
But for many job hunters, the interview is a mysterious process. Whether novices or midcareer executives, they often approach them with little understanding of what to expect. They may not know that there are basic questions to be answered, basic techniques to be mastered. Learn them, job counselors advise, and a candidate has a much better chance not only of getting through the interview but even of dazzling an employer.
It is the easy questions that can cause a candidate to freeze.
Lou Gaglini, McGrath's personal career coach at Keystone, knows this from his own experience. ''I had an interview years ago for a sales job and the guy asked me, 'Lou, why do you want to sell?' I couldn't answer the question. I'll never forget that - I learned from it,'' he said during a telephone interview recently. How to demystify the interview process? ''You have to prepare,'' he said.
When it appeared that McGrath was close to securing his first job interview, Keystone signed him up to participate in a mock interview. McGrath was laid off last November, after five years as a senior financial analyst at Meditrust Corp., a real estate investment company; prior to that, he was an analyst in the financial planning department at Putnam Investments.
Meditrust opted to close down its healthcare division, where McGrath worked, and focus on hotel properties; he was among a handful of employees selected by top management to remain until the business was liquidated.
Watching the interview video for the first time, he visibly cringes at his mistakes. At the same time, he is honing his answers to questions in preparation for future interviewers: what new questions might he anticipate next time, what curveballs might an interviewer throw him, what additional point should he be sure to make in response to a specific question?
Minutes into the interview, he is asked a simple question: ''So, tell me about yourself.'' McGrath launches into a multipart answer that starts with his family and educational background and then veers into details about why he left Meditrust.
Looking back, McGrath says, ''My answer to that was about 15 seconds too long.''
Giving too much information is a common mistake, Keystone consultants say. ''It's not necessarily a bad idea to talk about why you left. However, it's rarely a positive when you've left a company involuntarily,'' Gaglini said. ''Spend as little time there as you can. You obviously need to be truthful and direct but you don't need to elaborate.''
What tripped up McGrath was one of those boilerplate questions that anyone, heading into an interview, should be ready to answer: tell me about yourself; what are your strengths and weaknesses; where would you like to be in two years, five years; tell me about your management style.
McGrath seemed more ready for tough questions lobbed at him. The mock interview was for an analyst's job in the affordable-housing industry, and his Keystone interviewer wanted to know how his experience in healthcare real estate could help his company.
McGrath enumerated the aspects common to each job. Whether scrutinizing a transaction involving multifamily housing or assisted-living units, he told the interviewer, the tasks require many of the same financial tools.
Keystone's Elaine Varelas, who is watching the tape with McGrath, says her client's answer to a complex question also provided him an opportunity: She suggested he use it to get the interviewer engaged by saying, ''Do you see the similarities?''
Rather than approach an interview as an interrogation, McGrath has learned, it should be conversational - a very focused conversation, about what the organization needs and what the candidate can deliver. ''You try to make it more of an open dialogue, back and forth, than a question and answer,'' he says.
McGrath is prepared when asked another standard question, about his weaknesses. Wisely, the weakness he chooses is one that he has overcome - a trick learned in Keystone's interview class.
Given his state of unemployment, McGrath's particular challenge is making clear that he has not been idle. And he is by no means idle: He helps his wife, Meredyth, with their newborn twins and one toddler; he has a full social life of family and friends; he regularly visits Keystone during the week to work on his job search.
What is important for him to convey to a prospective employer, however, is that he recently earned a real estate-sales license. He works occasionally at a Watertown real estate office owned by a friend.
''Getting a real estate license,'' Varelas advises him, ''shows you're self-motivated, shows you're driven.''
Next Sunday: Brian McGrath's search heats up.
Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.
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