Why do you want the Job?

As an interviewer I often ask candidates the question why do you want this job? I ask that question because however it is answered it gives me a great deal of information about the candidate. Let’s go through the pit falls and then we can look at how this interview question is a golden opportunity for you to get the job.

Attitude Makes a Difference

Many people going into job interviews just begging for a job. They think the balance of power is with the employers. They have low self-esteem and think there are other people out there that can do the job as well if not better than they can. They have a mistaken belief that the interview is about them.

Look at this from the employer’s view. Imagine a candidate is walking in with an attitude based round things like “Please employ me…I’ll do my best…I’ll try my hardest…” Would you employ them? I wouldn’t.

Imagine how someone with this attitude is going to answer a question like “Why do you want this job?” Even if they are desperately trying to hide their attitude what sort of answers would they give? Have a think about it and compare your answers to those from a different mindset below.

What do employers want?

Now here is something people need to recognise. The “best” person for the job revolves around two things:

• Can you do the job i.e. skills, qualifications and experience
• Does your face fit i.e. do you hold the company values, do you have the right attitude, ambitions or more succinctly, will you do a good job.

The things is companies hire based on the first and they fire due to deficiencies on the second. Your job in the interview is not about demonstrating the first, it is demonstrating incontrovertibly that you fit the second.

How does this help?

I could tell you about a particular situation when I was researching job hunting techniques where I got offered a £60 000 (almost $100k) a year job after I told the recruiters that I had lied on my CV (never do this to get a job – I was researching job hunting techniques so I had to fake credentials to get to different types of interviews – lying on a CV can be classed as a criminal offence), that I didn’t have any of the qualifications or experience that they were looking for. But here is an email I received a while ago instead:

What is the Difference that Makes the Difference?

What Drew did in preparation for his interview was to look at what he would bring to the new role. He looked at what would make him the ideal candidate and how he could drive the role forward, what he would enjoy about the job and how the company would benefit from it.

He then looked through his professional life looking for examples of where he had demonstrated the exact qualities that made him the perfect candidate. Imagine how different Drew must have looked when he walked in to that interview.

I don’t know if he was asked that question but imagine he was. The sort of answer I think he would give would be something like, “I want the role because I am a great candidate, here are a couple of examples of how I have demonstrated the key qualities that you are looking for in the role and here are some specific results you can expect from me when I am working with you.”

How different does that look as an answer compared to someone that has a “Poor Me. Please give me a job because I’ll try my best,” attitude?

And if you have a system for doing this you can generate these answers like Drew did, in a couple of hours the night before the interview.

As a recruiter I was desperate to just hear someone say, “I want the job because I would be great at it and here is my evidence to say so. If you employ me I will make you money / save you money / save you time and effort. Here is specifically how I would do that. I will enjoy doing it and that is why I want the job.” It didn’t happen often enough and in almost every case where it did they got the job.

But what if it is just a job to me?

Imagine if you were confident enough and with enough tools and techniques to get any job you wanted. Would you have a different attitude to job hunting? My guess would be that you would go for jobs that you would enjoy or jobs that gave you the experience that you need to further your career or has some personal meaning to you. And then you would simply move on when your criteria had been met.

To me this makes more sense than doing a job that does not fulfil any of your needs. Think about this, most people spend at least forty hours a week at work and many people spend a lot more, especially if they have to commute. Once you have finished with sleeping and chores this is longer than you spend with friends and family, hobbies and interests or doing the things that bring meaning to your life.

I think you owe it to yourself, your loved ones and any employers you choose to work with that you only apply and do the work that has some sort of personal meaning to you. If you want to know exactly how to do that then have a look at the NLP CV Writing and Interview Skills Course.

So Far Removed from Conscious Experience

My mother is fluent in English and Bengali. So much so that she can switch from one language to the other and back again without realising that she is doing it. Everyone that knows her ends up knowing enough of both languages to keep up with her. But in my younger days I loved watching her meet new people.

My mother would try very hard to stay speaking English but usually as she got in to a conversation she would forget and would switch to Bengali and then switch back without realising. From the other person’s perspective it would sound like they were in a normal conversation and then, just for a few seconds there would be a series of words that they just could not understand, and then the conversation would go back to normal.

Of course, being a little mischievous in my youth I would stand next to them getting in to the conversation, nodding along and pretending nothing had happened. Often I would see people glaze over and sometimes drop in to the deepest trances. Just like one or two people did in the video from my last article.

But in That Video it didn’t Work with Everyone

I once stood on Paddington Train Station practising instant trance inductions. I would approach people, smile, hold out my hand as if to shake hands (but it would be my left hand) and I would say something like, “Good Bye, I’m UpChuck and I need to know. What colour does your favourite TV Show smell of?”

Most of the time people looked at me like I was a loon and walked round me. Sometimes people would get confused about hands or the question and would then either avoid me, ask me questions / start a conversation or do something that was quite conscious. A few times people would just drop into trance for a few seconds, literally freeze or go inside to process what was happening and then pop back out again. These people I shovelled some positive suggestions at, wheeled round and set in different directions, got them to buy me coffees and generally had fun with.

Consider the situation where, like in the video a total stranger comes up and starts talking word salad at you. For some people this is completely outside their normal experience and it might drop them in to trance. Others might be a little more wary, or have encountered something similar, or are just less susceptible. And these people might not drop in to trance with this situation as easily.

The Structure of a Pattern Interrupt

The reason it worked so well for my mother was simply because the other person already had some idea of what was supposed to happen. And then something so strange and outside their normal range of experience occurs. That is what was creating the pause between thoughts.

The same was true of the Paddington Station scenario. The more I could pace their normal situation and then suddenly turn it bizarre the more likely I could drop them into a trance.

How is this useful for me?

In any sort of problem solving or change work there is usually some work that needs to be done to break the old patterns of behaviours, beliefs or thoughts before building new ones. A reason why a lot of personal development, coaching and training doesn’t work is because people build on their old thoughts, beliefs and behaviours. It is like pouring a cup of coffee in to an unwashed mug. Especially if you had soup or tea in the mug before you poured in the coffee you can be sure that the taste will show through. Pattern interrupts are a great way of breaking out of the old patterns so you can develop new and more useful ones.

Train Honestly in the Real World

The short answer to the training question is simply the more you practice using the skills, the more you will find that you don’t need to practice using the skills. It will happen naturally.

The trick to getting this right is to break patterns down into little chunks and just start using them. If you make a commitment to using a pattern several times in a conversation you will, all of a sudden find yourself:

• Understanding the impact the pattern has
• How to steer the conversation to get the pattern into the conversation
• Getting comfortable thinking on a different level
• And often finding “outs” for when someone queries why you are talking the way that you are talking

But most importantly you will build the attitude that makes the difference.

Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Take it the right way, imagining yourself using the patterns is better than nothing. Saying the patterns out loud in front of a mirror is even better. Practising with a study buddy is really useful. Logging on to chat rooms, forums and eGroups to practice your patterns in real time is good as well. But if you really want to get good at hypnotic language you just have to get out there and flap your gums at some unsuspecting innocent member of the public.

If this is an issue for you perhaps a good place to start is Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed. As part of this course you will see me work with a student to develop and install their hypnotic persuasive PERSONALITY. You can then build and develop your own. But what is even better is that you can then read the notes that show you all the sneaky persuasion tricks I use with the audience. You will get to see the effects being used with the audience with written notes to explain how they work and explanations about how you can practice, develop and use the same tools for your particular circumstances.

With this course you learn to develop a persuasive personality as well as see active demonstrations of a huge amount of hypnotic persuasion skills with a live audience and how you can use them for yourself.

Here is the email:

What’s In It For Me?

There is one thing that these guys can do that will dramatically increase their results. If they would just look at this from the prospect’s perspective and write the email from that standpoint they would get a much better response.

Read the email and notice that it is just about the company, what they do, what they are seeking and how I can get in contact with them. None of this is speaking to me about my needs and how these guys can fix it for me.

If you are serious about persuasion then you are serious about seeing things from the other person’s perspective and willing to engage with them about that.

A Foundation Persuasion Process

What if you were to step into the head of the person you are trying to persuade and give them the message based on the befits to them? Here is my version of the email these guys were actually trying to send me:

To be fair I don’t like this method of selling and I personally would not respond to this version of the email either. But I am hoping that you see the world of difference between the two emails.

The real key to persuasive ability is to be able to get into the heads of your prospects and communicate with them from that standpoint. Persuasion Skills on Steroids is the course that will give you the tool to do that effectively. Click through and find out more here: 

So here four of the most common problems using hypnotic persuasion skills in sales.

1. Only Building Rapport

In general there is no problem with building rapport except that some sales professionals do nothing else. They then have a nice conversation with the prospect and they might bring the product up for conversation if you are lucky. Also consider what type of rapport you want with your prospect. Do you want to be seen as an authority or leader and is this a different type of rapport to friends and peers? A true sales professional will use rapport to lead the conversation through their sales process.

2. Shotgun Language Patterns

I see many sales staff just randomly firing out language patterns throughout their conversation. Without intent, direction and focus you are in danger of turning your conversation into a word salad. Would you buy from someone that appears to be rambling incoherent word salad at you? Hypnotic language patterns are really useful in sales when you have a specific process so they come out as a coherent part of your conversation.

3. Manic Metaphors

On an NLP Practitioner Course you will learn how to construct hypnotic metaphors. On a good course they will also show you how, when and where to use them. Unfortunately good courses are in the exception. As a result some people are using inappropriate three loop trance metaphors. If you have not been trained this probably doesn’t make any sense so let me give you a personal example of the problem.

A few years ago I was lucky to observe one of the funniest missed placed sales pitches from an NLP Practitioner ever. This woman had ten minutes in front of a board of directors to make a pitch for her training services. She opened with a story about Rommel and Montgomery in the second world war, transitioned into a story about St George slaying dragons and moved into a third story that was some variation of the woodcutter story. You know the one I mean about taking the time to sharpen your blade. This took her well over half her allotted time.

The Operations Director, who I think was the most frustrated just cut across her and asked a bunch of questions like price, duration and type of course. She was a little shocked and said something about finishing her stories and they just asked her for the answers and then asked her to leave. Over the years I have seen many NLP Practitioners launch into the strangest stories when all I want them to do is get to the point.

4. Questions without a Process

Asking good questions is never enough in a sales environment. A true sales professional will use questions in a specific way to lead a prospect through a sequence of thoughts. When questioned well a prospect will often sell the product to themselves. But the right questions need to be asked in the right order. Many NLP Practitioners understand what they call meta model questions but don’t understand questioning technique or even the difference between the two.

The Key to using Hypnotic Persuasion Skills in Sales is having a Good Process

All of these problems can be resolved easily by developing a flexible sales process. You can build everything into the process to the point where so long as you follow the process you get the result.

For example your process for meeting and selling to a new prospect might be something like:

• Introductions, create authority and credibility, take covert control of the conversation and build rapport as a leader.
• Use customer testimonials / stories that blow out the major objections to the product and seal commitment from the prospect to ensure key objection are dealt with before they can come up.
• Establish prospect’s specific needs, values and beliefs.
• Attach their needs and values to you product.
• Ask for the business and hypnotically future pace them into receiving great benefit from the use of the product.

Obviously this is just a simple example and there are lots of different steps you could use instead or as well as. Each of these steps might have a lot more detail. As you can see once you start to become familiar with the process the component parts become more automatic and your sales skills improve.

All of the problems above when fitted into a good sales process become key strengths and can make the difference between a sale career and a great sales career.

Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed

If you want to see hypnotic persuasion used on a live audience and deconstructed so you know what is going on then click through and find out more right here.