Sell Yourself by Doing the Job

The best way to make an impression in an interview is to actually do the job that needs to be done and show that you can do it well. It’s not always possible, but when you can, the payoff is huge.

Phil Morrison tells of an interview where he clearly demonstrated his expertise and landed the job.

The Whiteboard Solution

by Phil Morrison, system administrator, Milton, Florida

Phil Morrison

I’d been approached by a recruiter for a position, and the recruiter came to the interview with me. There were six people in the interview, asking me very specific questions on how I would handle merging another company’s Active Directory. It was obvious that they were about to undergo such a task and did not know where to begin. I had just recently been involved in a massive AD migration and asked them whether they would like for me to draw out a possible design on the whiteboard.

I drew out how I would set up the AD along with child domains, site connectors, and so on. This brought more questions, and I answered and added more detail to the drawing, explaining why this was the best practice, positioning them for future expansion.

They asked whether I had any experience in delivering software via GPO to the desktops. I smiled and outlined the three tiers of software. I explained the concept of “thirty minutes fix or reload,” the motto at my last job. I showed how they could build images that could rebuild a desktop along with all the software, detailed out roaming profiles and redirected document shares so that literally within thirty minutes they could rebuild a desktop with no data loss. I told how it could be automated so no technician would have to go onsite.

I was drawing like mad, mostly with my back to the room, adding things as the questions were asked and explaining each component. When I was done I turned and caught most of the room looking in dazed fascination at the board (all except the recruiter who was grinning like a Cheshire cat).

I asked if they had any additional questions, and they all shook their heads slowly while looking at the whiteboard, then me, and then back at the whiteboard.

They started asking me the HR-type questions, like when I could start if I was chosen. While I explained I could start tomorrow, someone noticed that the recruiter was erasing the drawings from the white board and said, “Hey, we need those!”

The recruiter answered, “No, what you need is Phil’s expertise.”

Afterward, we said our goodbyes, and the recruiter and I headed off to have lunch and discuss the interview. As we are buckling our seatbelts, his phone rang, and it is the client saying that they want me to start the next day.

Note how Phil demonstrated his expertise to the interviewers. He was careful to not overstep his position as a guest but rather asked if he could provide input. He demonstrated that he knew how to solve their problem, the specific problem they were facing. He clearly explained the solution to the problem in a way that everyone in the room could appreciate, if not understand.

You won’t always stumble into a scenario like Phil’s, with a problem begging for a solution. You’ll have to make your own luck. With a little research and understanding of the company and your discussions during the interview, you can create your own scenario that lets the hiring manager see, in a concrete way, that you can do the job.

During the interview, ask about the problems that the company or the department is having, related to the job you’d like to be doing. Here are some examples:

Are their projects behind schedule?

Are daily server operations taking up too much time?

Should traffic to the website be higher?

Then, turn the interview into a working meeting where you discuss the problem and your solutions for it, just like Phil did. If you can tie it back to something you’ve done in the past, even better. You’ll be pointing at a past success.

Find out what’s been tried so far to address the problem. Ask what is keeping it from being dealt with now. Is it staffing? Budget? Just popped up out of nowhere? Work these concerns into your solution.

Describe a plan for addressing the problem the hiring manager has, on a whiteboard or on paper, so that the two of you can discuss it and he can see it. That’s what made Phil’s story so effective. Seeing is more powerful than hearing.

Present the solution as something you are willing to take responsibility for. Make it clear that you would take care of it if given the chance. You want the manager to be able to see that hiring you would get this specific problem handled. You’d be going from someone who could do a job to someone who could fulfill a specific role in the enterprise.

Table of Contents for Sell Yourself by Doing the Job

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Sell Yourself by Doing the Job

Table of Contents for
Sell Yourself by Doing the Job