Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. This podcast is for anyone who's interested in improving their workplace communication skills. And today I have Carrie-Lynn who is a career coach and she was a senior manager in human resources for a very long time. Before I go any further, help me welcome Carrie-Lynn. Hi. Hi, I'm Carrie-Lynn Hotson. So.
00:24
You were in human resources and earlier we were talking about how tough that job is. Do you want to give us a glimpse? Absolutely. And a huge shout out to any of your listeners who are in the human resources field, because yeah, it's a really complex position to be in and one I certainly didn't appreciate. I had been a senior manager supervisor and you put in and say, I need you to hire somebody and magically it somehow happens, but you don't realize how much work is going on in the background.
00:54
What I do now is I'm a job interview coach. And what I've taken from my HR experience is that we put a lot of effort into that job posting. Every single word we've written in there is there for a purpose. And it's got a ton of hints about what we might ask you about in the interview because it's the skills and the qualifications we need to have, right?
01:16
And then as HR staff, we spend a lot of time marketing the job. And then we get in at times hundreds and hundreds of applications. And depending on how big your HR staff is, they're either screening them by hand, or they might have a system to do it that picks out those keywords. Then we narrow it down to those ideal candidates, you know, could be a pile of 20, could be a pile of 50. And what listeners need to understand is a lot of those resumes and those applications, they're pretty similar.
01:43
People have got similar educations, similar background. You're meeting the qualifications. You've hit those, you've got all those check marks, right? That's why you're getting to the interview. So then we have to write an interview package, which is a ton of work. And then we schedule all these interviews and we meet with the candidates. It can be exhausting. You're trying to stay engaged with the listener or with the speaker, and you're trying to hear everything they're saying. But as the interviewee, I need you to be organized. I need you to be concise.
02:13
I need you to check those boxes for me, answer the things that I need answered because I may have sat through three, four, five interviews. I may have done this for a week. I'm human and I get tired, right? And so the more you can help me, the panelists, learn about you, I wanna learn about your uniqueness. I wanna learn about what you're gonna bring to this job. I wanna learn about your skills and your abilities in a really concise way where you link up all the examples.
02:41
You're making my job easy and you're the type of employee I wanna hire. Speaking of uniqueness, I feel like it's a double-edged sword because one moment you want me to be, like you said, you have all the keywords on my resume to match as best as I can what you put out on the ad to increase my chances of getting the job. But then when I'm practicing before the actual interview, I'm practicing my strengths and my weaknesses and...
03:09
how I handle situations prior to this interview. How then do I practice selling the unique part of me, my unique selling proposition? Because I don't think a lot of people focus on that, because it seems like interview questions usually, there is almost like a template. So how do I then practice the unique part of me to be able to sell to you? That is a great question and exactly the reason that you have to do some interview prep.
03:35
It's a complex question. So what I did was I wrote an ebook for people and they can find it on my website. And I actually listed over 140 questions and I told you why we're asking them and how you can uniquely find examples to answer those questions. So if people are interested and they can go to my website for that. Yes, although I'm asking maybe about teamwork or conflict resolution or leadership, those buzzwords that you're gonna see in a lot of different job descriptions.
04:02
What I'm really wanting you to do as a candidate is A, explain that you actually understand why I'm asking it. So why am I asking about teamwork in this particular job posting? You need to understand what the job was. What kind of teams might you be on in this job? So if you have done that research and you've researched the job, you know why I'm asking and you're going to get that into that answer for me. Then you're going to tell me about examples of where you've done teamwork and
04:31
really show me what's that unique role that you play on a team. Are you the person who helps really ensure everybody is collaborating properly and that you really listen to other teammates? Do you reach out to that person who's struggling and help them out with their piece of the project? What do you do that I can see you doing in my workplace and think, oh, that's fantastic. I love having team players like that. And then if you can further your answer even more by saying,
05:00
I understand that one of the projects that you're working on in this job role is blank. I actually think I can really contribute to that because I volunteered for an organization that did similar work or I studied this in school. So now you're pulling all the examples together and you're not just giving me a generic, I played on a football team and therefore I'm a team player, right? Because I was about to say regarding teamwork, someone's a fresh graduate and this is their first job interview.
05:27
Okay, so they have volunteered or even were in a study group or in a team role, so they can give those examples as well. They can for sure. Actually, in my book, I talk about the fact that you can pull from anything. One of the scariest things to do is to try to apply for a job you've never done, because you can often doubt yourself or have that imposter syndrome feeling like, how am I going to convince these people that I've done a job that I've never done? I'm not even mentally convincing myself that I've done it. So
05:57
you really have to do some work around your own self-confidence because as you know, in communication I can hear it. You can say the words but if you're not sounding confident... The energy is not confident, no. Yeah and as a panelist I'm like, I hear you saying it but your face is telling me something completely different, right? Fair or not fair, I mean your panelists are trained to be unbiased, you know, objective on every answer.
06:24
And if you gave me the words, I'll give you the points, but sometimes it comes down to the end, which one do we feel is like super excited about this job? They said the ideal candidate, but then in the answers, they didn't really look like they even wanted the job or were convinced they could do it. Do you know what I'm saying? So the more you can again, bring that unique self across, show me you want this job, tell me why you're actually interested in the job. Tell me what you're gonna bring to the job. Tell me.
06:54
why my organization and Roberta that is another big one that people need to understand. Think of a teacher. So think of all the teachers you've had and all the different schools you were in. Right? Were all the teachers the same? No. No. Were all the schools the same? Did they have? Right? They don't have the same mission. They don't have the same sports programs. They don't have the same specialties. So if I was applying to be a teacher from one school to the next school,
07:21
I need to fit into that school culture. The culture, the environment, yeah. Right? So every time you apply for a job, even though, because what people will do is they go on Indeed and they pull up security. I want to work in security or workplace investigations or something in that realm. And so they pull up every job and they ace and then the same resume and the same covering letter. That's a mistake. And please don't address your covering letter to the other company when you send it to me. I would hope not. Oh, well it happens. And it's just-
07:51
People are human and they're rushing, right? But take that time. And then look at the job description because just because you've interviewed for three different security positions, they're not the same. The organizations are not the same. Our missions are not the same. So when I asked about roles and responsibilities in the job, and then you tell me about things that you're really looking forward to do, you're really looking forward to transportation and the fact that you will be moving from location to location.
08:18
And that's not in this job description. This one, you have to stay in one place. Oh, which means the copy and paste system somewhere along the way, there was the line that was let loose. And they've got generic interview answers. So they apply their generic interview answers to each interview. And so then as a panelist, what it does, again, that unique piece, I don't know that you actually want a job with my organization, because if you are really excited about moving from location to location, and we don't do that,
08:48
maybe this is not a job you would want to do. I want to be in a place where I travel and you're going to keep me in one place. It's not a match. For sure. And I would really appreciate and I do appreciate people that really do that job fit, like in that work around job fit. Be honest, you know, if this is not a job for you. And I don't know, Roberta, if we can share what we were talking about earlier with engineers. Of course. As an example. So one of the other things that I'm trained in is predictive analytics.
09:16
And this was fascinating as a human resource specialist, because what it does is it gives you a behavioral report. If anybody's interested, go to predictive success, just Google it, predictivesuccess.com and you can do a free profile. What it does is it links what are your interests and the things that drive you. What are the things you love and what are things you don't love? So in your example, as an employee in engineering, very detail oriented, very independent working.
09:46
I want to have the time I have rules and procedures and formality and I like it. And that's what I want to follow. And I want to study and I want to work on these things. Perfect. So now you pick a job in engineering that fits those profiles into that. Yeah. Problem is in organizations, we often ask people to then move up in the ranks. Now we would like this person with this behavioral profile that fit perfectly into engineering to completely go outside of their behavioral profile.
10:14
and become a supervisor who needs to collaborate and be very social and interact with other people and be a risk taker, but I like formality and rules. I'm not a risk taker. You want me- I told you who I am, you should have believed me. And this is one of the struggles. And then I've seen people compete for roles or get into management roles and they're miserable. They are not competing. They're not doing well in it. The employer can be frustrated thinking, well, what happened? You were so great at your job.
10:43
Well, I am great at my job, but I'm not great at this job because there's no job fit. And like we always say, the upper you go in management, the less the actual job that you need to do and more the managing of people and always collaborating and being in teams with people. It's more people skills rather than the expertise. 100%. So that's why before you make the jump, you need to read that job profile because I guarantee HR has put all of those elements into the job profile.
11:11
Don't apply just because of a title. Don't apply just because of the money. Really look at the job profile. Is it something that fits you? Is it a job fit? I believe very strongly in that work-life balance and finding purpose. And I wanna help people find their purpose and find the job that fits them well and then help you succeed in getting it by coaching you through. Because it sounds like a win-win situation for both the employee and the employer. Absolutely. Here's my question.
11:38
When you look at candidates, obviously a lot of resumes go by the wayside and you have your best ones to interview. Do you find that whoever impressed you enough as panel members and you give them the job, do they live up to that expectation and you realize, yeah, we struck gold here? I guess the question would be, I don't know. I know that the people that we've hired do well, but I don't...
12:00
know necessarily if somebody else could have done equally as well or even better because unfortunately they didn't do well in their interview. So that's where everything lies. Yeah. People have asked me that, you know, why is so much put on the interview? Why can't my qualities just sell themselves? And so what I explain to people is that interviews and hiring is a business transaction. I, the panelist, to try to determine my best return on investment. Who's my ideal candidate? Who do I invest in?
12:29
It's extremely offensive to hire people, train people, do professional development. I want you to stay with my organization. I want you to grow in my organization. And so to simply base it on a resume or a test, I can't, it's too much of a risk. I'm doing risk management. So I meet with you either virtually or in person or on a phone. That's a whole nother thing, Roberta, on how to prepare for each of those things because it's different, how I'm going to physically interview you.
12:55
Right. Right. And so I have videos actually for people on my YouTube channel. I've made them specifically for that. If you have a virtual interview, please watch it because I'm giving you a ton of tips on how to get prepared for that type of interview. I have to interview you. I need you to tell me. And really, what you're doing now is you're proving it. You've given me a piece of paper, a resume and an application that says you can do the job. Now prove it. Tell me how. Give me those examples.
13:20
So another hint I give candidates is if you are not a person who loves to talk about themselves, which unfortunately is basically what an interview is. If you are someone who always says we and not I, which is fine, because you're a collaborator. What you do truly is teamwork and you don't like to take credit for things. This is the time you have to, this is the time to shine. This is a time to tell me about what you did. What are you going to do for my business? How are you going to contribute? Why should I invest in you? And so.
13:49
Practice, practice, practice, practice. Get comfortable with it. Get confident with it so that you can bring it across to me. This is why my earlier question was, do you feel like you've got the best one? Because some people are really good at talking and they may not necessarily deliver. That's why I was just wondering, you know, have you missed someone who could have really been great at the job and fit into the work culture, but it's just that they're not good at selling themselves, which is a skill they have to develop. And that's why.
14:17
We always emphasize this on the podcast. I would not say that any of my candidates that I've hired in the past were poor candidates. I wouldn't be comfortable saying that, but do I think I potentially missed on some good candidates? Absolutely. And you will hear that from people who say, oh, I've met that person. They're fantastic. They're so great, right? And I know that they're great. I can see their resume. I met them as a person, love them as a person, but you can't leave marks on the table.
14:42
I must remain objective as a human resource specialist. I can't give you points for things you didn't tell me. In fact, I always try to offer people the ability to do a debrief with me afterwards. I have to remain objective. There's a lot of things, you know, I can't get into personal coaching, but I believe very strongly in professional development. So if I can help you a bit, I will. And so often candidates in debrief, now that they're comfortable and relaxed and not so stressed, they would give me examples. And I think, oh no, that was...
15:11
Excellent. Yeah, you didn't tell me that. I can't give you marks. You never told me. And they were so nervous. They thought they did tell me. I'm like, no, you never. I know it's heartbreaking, honestly. And that's why I'm doing this work. It's truly a passion. I want to help people. Interviewing is a skill. And what I'm really trying to help people understand is you have invested so much time, effort and money into getting your education.
15:38
into getting that work experience, into doing those free internships and that volunteer work and working in jobs where you didn't get paid very much because you knew it was gonna look good on the resume. You've invested so much in that, invest the time and money if you have it to really learn interviewing skills because you'll never forget it.
15:55
I've met candidates who literally learn these skills early on and they apply them every time they go for another interview. They understand the fundamentals and you have to. Right. Yeah. Once you've learned these, I don't think anybody can take them away from you. No. Well, and you made a great example when you said things like leadership or management, it's about selling yourself, it's about strong communication skills. Well, if you learn interview skills, I mean, you're interviewing me right now, right? There you go.
16:23
We use it all the time. So they're great skills to have. And obviously they do feed into developing your interpersonal skills, being able to understand other people, see things from their perspective before you always selling them your idea of whatever you think it is supposed to be. Good point. Because the other part of communication is listening skills. Exactly. So if I haven't practiced for my interview and I just have scripted answers and you ask me a question, they don't listen.
16:52
the question, listen to what I'm asking. Unfortunately, people will give me an example or an answer. You're not answering the right question. I mean, obviously you had an example and you're just trying to shove it into the interview somewhere, but you didn't listen. You didn't hear me. And if you do that over and over again in an interview, that's one of the things that your panelists are picking up on. Would I feel comfortable managing somebody that they're not listening? I mean, I know they're nervous, but they did not hear what we asked.
17:21
They went off on a complete tangent. Is this what they're gonna do at work? I mean, those are the kinds of things that your panelists are wondering. That becomes a huge red flag. Yeah, it could, it could. But like you said, it's combination of the nerves and too much practice and being scripted. Sometimes it's too much practice, but I would almost suggest it's not enough practice because what people do is they have these set answers that they wanna present in every interview. But true practicing is going back to that job description.
17:48
What do they want me to do in this job? What is their organization about for this job? And it's tough, I get it. I've worked with clients, I'm working with one right now, got about 10 different applications out there. And the reality is we're gonna spend an hour and a half. They've got a ton of experience, they've got a ton of examples, but we are going to work one-on-one together. And that's my favorite part, working with clients one-on-one, love it. We will make sure that the examples they're presenting
18:16
fit this particular job, not just any job in the field. So it's not a template standard thing that people just keep rehearsing. No, it's not. And then one last thing I'll tell people is that if you don't get a job, please don't look at it as a failure. It's a learning opportunity. It's not a failure. Write down what they asked you. Write down the questions you were able to answer really well and the ones you struggled with and figure out why. Was it that you didn't practice well enough? Was it that you didn't understand the organization?
18:45
was that you don't have that experience. Okay, then go get it, figure out a way to find it. It's never a failure, you can always move forward. And I often work with clients, they will turn to a coach because they have that frustration and they have that self doubt. You actually just had a podcast on doubt and I thought that was really interesting. Yes, thank you, Taylor. That's right. Speaking of that, here's the problem. We were talking about how universities don't teach this obviously.
19:10
job interview skills. Do you know how when you apply at universities, especially in North America, there's a lot of essays and selling yourself and saying I volunteered here, I did this in high school, I was in the debate team. Is that sort of like an initial prep of what's to come? Great question. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, sometimes interview questions are done written. There's written format questions. And that's exactly what they're doing. They're saying, it's an interview question. How do you best fit?
19:39
this program, our university, tell us what you're bringing to the table. You know what qualifications we were looking for, but you have to sell yourself. Why are you unique? There's a thousand other students that want the same position. So why am I investing in you? A university is investing in you. They want you to do well. They're hoping that you'll do your whole schooling there. They're gonna get all your money. It's a business transaction. So you need to be able to sell yourself and you need to make it. Don't write the same essay for every university.
20:08
It's an interview question. Because I think that's what happens if you apply to 10 different schools, do you think people have time to read 10 different essays for each university? Like I said, I understand people are human. We don't have much time. And that's why I usually would do a copy and paste job. But like you say, that you just have to look at the job description, make sure that whatever interview practicing you're doing fits exactly into what is in the job description. Yeah, invest in yourself. You have to do it.
20:36
Right. Yes, it's going to take time. Yes, it's going to take effort, but in the end, I mean, you're shooting for a job or in this case, a school that you really want to get into. So it's worth it. You're investing. You're worth it. Carrie-Lynn, where can people find your YouTube videos so that you can practice and more of your information if they need one-on-one coaching, you got so excited when you mentioned it. Oh, I love one of my coaching. Sure. Yeah. I would love if listeners would go to my website. It's jobinterviewcoach.ca.
21:05
Or you can find me at hashtag Carrie-Lynn Hotson, all one word. That'll take you to my YouTube and my website. I have free resources I've created for people because you need to get organized when you're trying to figure out what do I need to say? Why do I need to say it? Download that PDF, use it every job that you're applying for. I promise it's going to help. I've created an online course because as we know, some people want to study, right? They want to read. There's an ebook. So I'm really trying to hit those learning styles as well. How do you best learn?
21:33
Are you listening to this podcast? Do you want to watch me on a YouTube video? Do you want to work one-on-one? Do you want to take a course? Do you want to read a book? What would you like to do? And then figure out what fits you best. Go to the website and select that option. Cause I've done a lot of work to put them together to really help people. Awesome. You've done all this work of getting to your favorite school. You've graduated. You've done all this work. You've come this far. You don't want to lose just because you did not develop your interview skills.
22:03
Now, if you need help with this, please contact Carrie-Lynn Hotson. Find all the websites, the YouTube channel, all the resources. Please don't miss this one chance for you to land your dream job. Thank you very much, Carrie-Lynn, for being with us today. Thank you so much.