You're not as qualified as you think you are

I got a call yesterday from a very attractive company that they made an offer to another candidate. Here's the feedback, paraphrased and condensed.

• We need someone who can hit the ground running. The candidate we selected had more years hands-on experience doing ... [insert two common training design, project management tasks]
• We think that your skills are best suited to a role called [job title]. I had asked what skills I should practice to be better suited to the job that I'd not won; that answer was, start lower and show us what you've got.
• We can't recommend a better way to establish a relationship with this company when it comes to hiring for that role; keep an eye on the web site. I had asked, what's the best way to uncover new opportunities when there are job openings by that name.
  

To give the company its due, this is more complete and concrete feedback than I've received from any of those I've interviewed with. The sting of not being chosen was softened by the knowledge, implied in the discussion above, that interviewers force ranked candidates' capabilities.

Even if I had been nominally qualified, I lost the horse race at a time when a lot of strong horses are in the recession - oh, did I say "recession?" - I meant "race." And the candidate horse race is the black box of the interview process. It's fast moving, difficult to learn about, and difficult to influence.

Lessons

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..."

• Job experience is limiting. Even CEOs must accept this truism.
• Big companies approach many decisions as an opportunity to mitigate risk, making hiring an exercise in seeking the sure thing. Experience proves, they're right to do so.

"...the courage to change the things I can..."

• Determine whether the message of the stories of your experience fits your job search goals (individual contributor, creative force, expert practitioner, strategic and forward thinker?)
• Review and refine the stories of your accomplishments.
• Identify, and learn enough to speak confidently about, the expertise you anticipate needing for particular roles. If you can't be experienced, you can master the knowledge.
• Pick some area of weakness and invest in your own development.
  

"...and the wisdom to know the difference."

• It's human nature to lean toward those things we want, and when they're pulled out from under us, that pratfall stings.
• Jobs are best seen as serving instrumental goals - learning, acquiring broader scope of responsibility, linking one's actions to business results, doing incremental good.
  
• Jobs are best not seen as serving fundamental goals - making one happy, saving the world, providing social support.
  

Two interviews

Nothing takes the place of interviewing with hiring managers. All the practice pays off. And the sharp and flat notes seem very loud.

In April, I interviewed with a financial services company. What did I learn? Two things:

Ask for clarification about what the interviewer is asking.

Seems so simple. You think you understand the question you're answering, and if you're like me you select the anecdote that makes your germane experience and skills concrete. But if you're off the mark a bit, or if the question only hints at the real issue, you'll spend minutes guessing why you're not connecting.

If you were like me in this interview, you'd reframe the story in the middle of the telling. Your story starts to sound abstract, the flop sweat trickles in the small of your back, and you realize he's not so sure about your sense of judgment anymore, "Does this guy get it?" you think you smell him thinking.

In another recent interview, I asked for clarification about the heart of the issue. Because in the first situation above, I suspect that the question had to do with organizatonal pain that senior manager was suffering that week (or that quarter, granting the benefit of the doubt). I don't think that I was required to have experience doing exactly what she believed she needed. But I missed the opportunity to describe how I could focus on the heart of the issue. Here's what I mean.

The question. "Tell me about a time when you have successfully negotiated with clients."

Connotation is everything. "Negotiation" connotes irreconcilable differences resolved through zero-sum gamesmanship: banging shoes on desks, non-stop meetings, and theatrical psychodrama that ends with reluctant compromise whose success is measured in terms of who was bruised more and gave up the most. I don't do that. I fire clients who do that.

But, too belatedly, I realized that throughout every learning project, I negotiate dozens of compromises over scope, budget, method, schedule - even whether or not to use role plays. The guideline, and the process, runs this way:

• Aim high
• Argue cogently
• Listen and accept new information; seek out new approaches
  
• Take real limitations seriously
• Find an effective method to create engaging learning that accounts for all of those factors.
  

That's negotiation if you like, but I call it good project management with a dose of brainstorming and imagination. Little drama; lots of collaboration.

Coaching: Addressing Unclear Questions

There are a number of good follow-up questions I could have asked.

Clarifying:

• I'd like to speak to that, but what do clients commonly feel a need to negotiate about?
• Happy to answer. Could you give me a recent example of the kind of situation you're thinking of so that I can understand the issue better?

Demonstrating understanding and insight

• When I think of negotiating, I think of situations in which the two sides have hardened positions aren't willing to change, or only very reluctantly? How well does that describe the kind of negotiating you're thinking of?
• Help me understand the situation better. What's at risk if the person doesn't negiatate well?