Career Expert Reveals The Effective 'Sales Strategy' To Use To Make You A Stronger Applicant During A Job Interview
How can you sell yourself as “the perfect applicant” to any employer?
Fizkes | Shutterstock.com Similar to how companies roll out new sales strategies to sell products to customers, career expert Hanna Goefft advises anyone looking for work to adopt a similar approach to selling yourself during interviews.
“Instead of pushing what you perceive to be the value of the product, aka yourself, you ask … the company that’s interviewing you a series of tailored questions about their biggest challenges and goals.”
You are selling yourself and your skills in that interview, and if you do it correctly, Goefft believes it will make you stand out as the stronger candidate.
A career expert shared her interview ‘sales strategy' that will ensure you stand out as the strongest job applicant.
Instead of prepping ahead of time based on what you think are the most rewarding or important experiences from your prior job history, you should try to align with what the company you are interviewing with is looking for.
Similar to how you rework your resume for every new job, you should tailor your interview answers to best showcase what employers need, want, and find valuable.
“You can tailor your experience into this perfect solution,” Goefft explained in a TikTok video. “It can basically guarantee that you’re always talking about the most relevant parts of your background to that job.”
If there is little information about the company online or the job description is relatively vague, ask specific questions during the interview to guide the conversation.
The career expert said applicants should ask employers specific questions so they have a clear picture of how to sell themselves as the perfect candidate.
“Why is this job open? What are the biggest challenges this role will need to address? What are the biggest challenges faced by this whole team today? Who are the biggest stakeholders for this role?”
Her examples made one thing clear: You want to dive deeper into what they’re truly looking for. Job descriptions and postings can be misleading, and sometimes not even interviewers truly know how to verbalize what they want.
Dorde Krstic | Shutterstock.com
By asking hiring managers these questions, you can get a clearer picture of the skills and personality they are looking for to fill the role. For example, if they’re looking for someone to mitigate conflict or work independently, you’ll be able to figure that out from their answers and better highlight statistics or experience that paints you as that solution.
“Is there anything broken that needs fixing? What will success look like in 30, 60, and 90 days? What qualities do the most successful people at this company exhibit?”
By highlighting role-specific skills and catering your responses to the company's needs, you can increase your odds of a successful interview.
In addition to the questions she provided that are relevant to most industry professionals, Goefft also urged candidates to do some research before their interviews to craft more role-specific questions. Whether it’s diving deeper into the employer’s expectations or industry-wide challenges, with advanced research, you’ll be able to paint yourself as the perfect applicant.
“Use this information… so that the answers you share point directly to the skills and experience that they think they desperately need for the job.” It’s not always going to line up with what you think is impressive or important — and that’s okay.
If the conversation is casual enough to interweave the questions throughout the interview — do that. But if you have to wait until the end to ask them, that’s also okay. Use common sense to figure out what’s most important to share and what’s the best use of your time.
In addition to curating the perfect questions to ask during a job interview, Goefft and other career experts also suggested another tactic: Convince them that you’re willing to walk away. “Human beings psychologically associate scarcity with quality,” she explained. “When we see something in high demand with a high price tag, we assume it’s better quality.”
Obviously, employers and recruiters are looking to hire the “best talent” from their applicants. You should walk in believing that you are.
“Balancing excitement and perception of demand is gold for looking like a top candidate.”
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories