When you’re trying to find a job, it’s easy to think of the hiring manager as the villain. Or the dragon you have to get past to get a job. But to increase your chances of getting hired, try to understand the hiring process from a hiring manager’s point of view. Some points to ponder:

1. Hiring managers are human beings too

When you go looking for a job, you’re preoccupied, of course, with your own needs and priorities.  Well, a hiring manager is interested, first and foremost, in protecting and promoting her own career. And she’s not going to willingly make a decision or take an action that might jeopardize it.

Your goal is to help them feel secure about hiring you. Managers want employees who are competent in terms of knowledge and skills, yes—but who can also be managed easily. A hiring decision for a manager is about feeling safe, in terms of protecting her department, her goals and her team.

2. Hiring is a risk assessment exercise

Managers know that nobody is perfect. Everyone has shortcomings, weaknesses, faults, biases and prejudices. And everyone has a downside. There’s a lot of truth to the old cliche that people hire who they know. Why? It’s easier to hire somebody you know because it’s easier to assess their downside.

In formal interviews, many questions are designed to uncover weaknesses and shortcomings: What is your greatest weakness? Describe a situation in which you were unsuccessful achieving a goal, and how did you respond? How would you rate your ability to resolve conflict on a scale of 1 to 10, from low to high, then give me an example?

3. Hiring is about pain relief

Consider the priorities of a hiring manager. Managers are responsible for achieving the goals and objectives of their organization. If it were easy to attain those goals, they could do all the work themselves and wouldn’t need employees!

But, of course, various problems, challenges, issues and pressures get in the way of corporate goals and objectives. To a sales professional, these things are known as “pain points.”

Salespeople need to understand their prospects’ pain points in order to make that pain go away. In a job search, you’re selling yourself as the product or service for the hiring manager’s pain relief.

Your job in an interview is to uncover that agenda.  Listen for clues to the hiring manager’s pain points. Respond not with the features of your value proposition (i.e. your education, experience, personal traits) but with benefits (i.e. how you can help them with their pain points).

Establish rapport with a manager by focusing on their needs and priorities.  Flush out concerns. What challenges, issues, problems, pressure points are driving this hiring decision? Reduce risk. Find out what red flags the manager may have about hiring somebody they don’t know. Make it easy for them to hire you!

For more great interview tips, contact Clark Personnel today!

No matter what field you’re in, there are certain skills you need when you’re on the job hunt. In the past, they included how to put together a resume, how to behave in an interview, how to handle followup. These days, there are brand-new must-have job search skills. Here are five of them:

Pain Spotting To really grab en employer’s attention in your cover letter (or cover email), you’ve got to figure out—by reading the job ad and researching the employer—what sort of business pain lurks behind the job opening.

Is it growth-related pain, or consolidation-related pain? Pain associated with customers fleeing, with competitors outsourcing the work and cutting costs, or with a shortage of talent in an industry? When you know or can guess at the pain behind the job ad, you have something of substance to say to a hiring manager.

Storytelling: “I have a strong work ethic and get along with all kinds of people” is about as compelling as “I had coffee this morning.” Nearly everyone claims these traits. To get a hiring manager’s attention, tell a brief and powerful story that demonstrates what you get done when you work. Let a hiring manager know some of the good things that you make happen.

Using a Human Voice: The old “results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation” style of resume is as out of date as VCRs. Using a human ‘voice’ in your resume or in any other communication with employers will separate you from the boilerplate-spouting hordes. Replace tired resume-speak like “Met or exceeded expectations” with a concrete achievement. And forget the old rule about not using the word “I” in your resume.

Showing Relevance: Forget the one-size-fits-all resume that gets sent out for any open position. You need to make your background relevant to the hiring manager by highlighting the accomplishments from each past job that relate to the role you’re pursuing. Update your resume as often as necessary to make sure your most relevant stories come to the fore.

Knowing Your Value: No one will pay you more than you’re worth, so know your value before you begin an active job search. There are several website that will help you calculate your market value and avoid getting lowballed in the hiring process. Arm yourself with information, then get out there and tell your story.

Still feeling unsure about a job search in this economy? Contact Clark Personnel today—we’re happy to share our expertise and help you find that next great opportunity!