Randy’s Career Tips

Let’s assume for a moment that your job search has finally resulted in the hoped-for outcome. You’ve made it through an extensive, lengthy, and grueling series of interviews. You’ve given your best effort to dazzle and impress your future employer and it has paid off. They’ve decided to make you a job offer. Congratulations! It’s all smooth sailing from here on out. Or, is it?

As a rule, YES, it is a time to celebrate. However, this may also be the point on the road to being employed where you will encounter a signal to “proceed with caution”.

Sometimes the job offer is just right and the new company and position are ideal. You accept immediately, establish a start date, and prepare to resign from your current employer with fortitude and grace, excited to start a great new career path. That most often is what happens. However, what if you have to negotiate the dreaded money issue?

If so, the straight road you’ve traveled on through the process may hit a curve. If it does, a thoughtful approach and knowledge are essential. If you handle salary negotiations without this knowledge, you run the risk of alienating your future boss or the company and having the offer disappear into thin air.

Be assured that if a company wants to discuss money, it is a good sign. They are seriously interested in you. We all know, too, that money is important in any career decision you make and is a definite factor when you evaluate an opportunity.

This is a subject that is multi-faceted and complex, but let me give me some key points that may assist you in the event you need to negotiate.

First, let’s go back to the beginning. It is a standard rule of interviewing that the candidate should not be the party to bring up compensation during the job interview process. There will be plenty of time for that to take place and it’s the employer’s (more…)

The worst thing you can do is give bland, generic answers to the interview questions.

If you do not give unique answers that impart a bit of your personality, the interviewer will simply think you are the kind of person who is not willing to put forth an effort.

First of all, let’s discuss anecdotes. If you are not much of a consulting interviewee, you will fail to provide anecdotes. Here is an example.

What interests you about management consulting?

I like the intellectual challenge of the job. I also like to be able to work with ambitious, clever people solving difficult business problems.

That is a generic response. There is nothing personal about it - no story, no anecdote.

Do you understand the problem with this answer?

If you tell a little story or an anecdote about why you want to be a management consultant, it will stick out in the interviewer’s mind. If you just give a run of the mill, plain answer, it will just blend in with all the other run of the mill plain answers. You won’t get a job offer, and neither will anyone else who answered that way.

Once the consultants are done with interviews, they usually have a group discussion about the applicants. Applicants who leave a strong impression get discussed. Applicants that the interviewer can’t remember don’t. If the interviewer doesn’t remember you, he won’t have anything to say about you.

Here’s how you can add an anecdote or a takeaway.

A takeaway is a conclusion. It is a lesson learned or a 20/20 hindsight. Call it what you may.

In the answer that was given, there was no takeaway. No conclusion was given.

So let’s put in a takeaway, and you will see that just one sentence will make a big difference in the strength of the final response.

What is it about management consulting that interests you the most?

Ev (more…)