I can understand completely why you’d want to go on a job interview and blow your hiring manager’s mind with your brilliant ideas. Anybody would feel the same way.
“Wait until this manager hears my ideas for the department. I’ll be a shoo-in for the job!”
It doesn’t work that way.
I went to a networking event about a year ago. At the front of the room a speaker shared about thirty good ideas with the audience. Audience members were scribbling furiously. The speaker shared grassroots marketing ideas and HR ideas and other terrific tips and tidbits.
The speaker wrapped up his list of great ideas and said “I’m going to be publishing these ideas in an eBook format soon. The name of the eBook will be ‘Great Ideas I Got From Job Applicants.’”
The guy had stolen all of his ideas from job applicants. I had to raise my hand.
“How many of the folks who contributed ideas to your eBook project did you hire?” I asked him.
“One of them,” he said. “I hired one person. The ideas come from about forty-five applicants, but only one of them got hired.”
“You interviewed forty-five people for one job opening?” I asked him.
“Sometimes I interview just to get ideas, when I’m not actually hiring,” he said.
That’s what you’re up against in the job market. Most of us are used to garden-variety scumbaggishness, but here’s a guy telling a roomful of people that he hoodwinks job-seekers into giving him eBook fodder when he doesn’t even have a job opening!
That takes business ethics to a whole new level, six levels below the sewer. The speaker was pleased as punch with his cleverness.
Let’s say your manager does have a job opening. I still don’t want you to give away your best ideas. The cooler the idea is, the more likely your manager is to pull out a piece of paper or open a device and start writing. The idea will stick in his or her mind. You might not.
By midnight on the evening of your interview, it’s very likely that your manager may have completely forgotten where s/he got the great idea — but the idea itself will stick. The more awesome your idea, the more likely it is to stick in your manager’s mind — while you fall out of the picture completely!
When you give your best idea away in the job interview, you don’t help your chances at getting the job. You do the opposite. You make the manager think that he or she can implement your idea without you. You know it’s false, but he or she doesn’t. You’ve just shot yourself in the foot.
Your manager will hire a cheaper person and tell that person to put your idea into practice. It happens every day, in every industry.
Use your interview time to probe for the
Business Pain lurking behind the job ad.
Spin the table when you get an open-ended question like “Tell me about yourself!” and then start asking penetrating questions about what’s not working perfectly in the department. That’s how you’ll become memorable to the manager — not because of your great ideas, but because of your thoughtful questions.
Your questions will demonstrate your understanding of your next boss’s problems far more powerfully than your whizbang ideas ever could.
When you ask probing questions to get your arms around the biggest pain point your manager is facing, the manager is likely to ask you “So, how would you solve the problem?” You won’t give up the golden solution. Instead, you’ll lay out your process.
“I’d schedule time with you and the other executives to understand the issue from each of their perspectives and to get an idea of what each of them is looking for in a solution,” you’ll say. “Then I’d get on the phone with a half-dozen customers. I’d ask them about their experiences.”
Explain how you’d break down the problem and go about solving it – what kinds of data you’d want to look at, who you’d involve in the problem-solving process (by title, since you won’t know their names yet) and so on. Let your manager know that you’re an ace problem-solver, but that you don’t have his or her perfect solution yet. How could you? You don’t even have the job yet.
If your manager persists and says “I thought you’d have the solution,” you can say “That would be irresponsible of me, since your team has all the relevant information and I’m still an outsider. You guys are smart people, and you’re looking for an answer. This is a thorny problem. I’d be wary of anyone who says they have the right answer without digging into your situation in more depth.’”
Let your manager sit in his or her minor disappointment that you didn’t bring a shiny, perfect solution wrapped in pretty paper with a bow on top to deposit on the manager’s desk. Real life doesn’t work that way.
If the manager feels you’re credible and capable of relieving his pain, you’ll be back in that interview chair again. If he or she wants a quick fix or wants free consulting from job applicants, you don’t have time for that.
Only the people who get you, deserve you, and only the managers who understand that people get paid for their wisdom deserve your talents.
This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
