Interviewing in a Cooling Hiring Climate

The pandemic brought about a never-before-heard-of dynamic in the hiring space where the prospective hire wielded power when coming to the interview table. Employees had discovered a seemingly unspoken rule of the workforce where an employee could establish their own worth, and if their employer didn’t deliver a commensurate package and working experience they were allowed to look for a job that could deliver that.

That new dynamic came to be known as the Great Resignation, and if it sounds too good to be true that’s because in a sense it no longer is. During its peak the Great Resignation saw an almost reckless nature take over the employees who were resigning. Now however, the hiring space has seen a swing back towards the normal dynamic. These days, while an employee can still feel free to take initiative on a possible better position, they have to be careful not to upset the hopefully adequate thing they have going for them.

With layoffs going around like the flu this winter prospective hire should go into an interview with these 4 baseline tips addressed:

1. Know who you’re being interviewed by

2. Know your resume inside and out

3. Know your strengths and weaknesses

4. Know how to up-sell yourself in an honest manner

Know who you’re being interviewed by

This advice will be the first of a few “obvious” ones; however, there are levels to this piece of advice that increase the success to which it is accomplished. It goes a long way to know the name of your interviewer, their position in the company, as well as information about their years and accomplishments with the company.

Know your resume inside and out

This is the most obvious advice given in this blog, but it is the simplicity of the topic that makes it that much more important. Knowing what is on your resume is one of the first ways to impress upon a potential new employer that the experience you are claiming to have can be trusted. This is especially crucial to remember as a conscious effort if you are making any employer-specific tweaks when applying to multiple companies, because while that can be a solid strategy for presenting the most relevant version of yourself it creates a scenario that is just begging to trip you up.

Know your strengths and weaknesses

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses could be considered an implicit tip for interviewing, but with a solid approach and conscious effort it could be considered the most powerful. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses as an employee allows the potential future employer to skip some of the initial personality/work ethic guesswork and become more confident in your abilities before hiring. The best approach to this tip is to have a couple examples of strengths and weaknesses as well as scenarios where those have come into play (i.e., don’t just say you procrastinate, rather explain what that looks like for you). These scenarios are your chance to be honest while putting a productive or positive spin on the traits.

Know how to up-sell yourself in an honest manner

For the last tip an extension of the last tip is necessary. As interviewees it is our prerogative and responsibility to be honest to the potential employer, but to also not give them the chance to fill in the gaps or make assumptions. Letting a person whose job it is to be skeptical and guard the company from fraudulent applicants create their own understanding of you could be the difference between leaving them with a positive impression of you, and them knowing they won’t hire you before you’ve even left.

With large companies taking part in layoffs and the threat of a recession hanging over the year limiting the possibilities for hiring are greatly diminished when compared even just to this time last year.

These tips won’t land you the job automatically, but with proper implementation they just might give you an edge over other applicants who would otherwise be on equal footing.