Friday, December 2, 2016

If only I had 5 more minutes...

You've done this enough times to know that you're interviewing them as much as they are you, I thought to myself.

"Write down the questions you have for them, be prepared. Ask them what you need to know," all of the wonderful advice-givers in my life said. And I did. I made some little notes. I brought a notepad into the interview with me.

And when they said, "Do you have any questions for us?" I couldn't come up with much. I asked one nagging question about whether I would have to give up a side gig if I took the position. But most of the other questions I had got answered throughout the process. So I was done.

You see, the interview process is actually a bit one-sided. As the individual you can prepare, you can write things down, you can expect an opportunity to ask questions. But the people on the other side of the table already know what they need to know from you. Most of the time, you don't realize what you need to know from them, until you've gotten home and processed what happened for a couple of days.

The last question posed to me was, "Why should I hire you for this position?" I really didn't have a difficult time answering that. I'm a pretty good impromptu speaker. And I'm confident about what I bring to the table. But what I realized after two days of thinking about it and my opportunity to ask having passed is, I know the question I want to ask them now.

"Why should I take this job?"

If only I had five more minutes.

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