Steve: Okay. Let’s turn to Chapter 7, “Excelling at your job interview.” You really need to take your interview and do a great job. So let’s go over some of the issues that you may be dealing with. First of all, many of you may have not interviewed for a job in a very long time, okay? First of all, it’s not easy to get these interviews. When you get the interview, you wanna make sure that you wanna hit it out of the park. You need to prepare, and we’ll talk about preparation for your interview a little later. The bottom line is that when you get your interview, you wanna make them love you and want to hire you. And then all the budgetary constraints and all the other missing credentials and so on and so forth are less important.
Okay. So, the first question that you’re going to be asked, you probably expect to be asked in one form or another, maybe not in these exact words is, what do you bring to the table? So you wanna listen carefully to the question. First of all, it’s about the employer and not you. You want to know as much as possible about the employer, their goals and their mission statement, and what they’re trying to achieve. You also wanna know about the job requirements. And you want to, in a succinct articulate fashion, answer how your experience, your knowledge, your contacts can help the employer. So, let’s look at how some of our doctors handle this question.
Doctor, what do you bring to the table?
Interviewee 1: Well, I’m double board-certified in psychiatry and neurology, and I’ve had 32 articles published in medical journals. In addition, I have lectured extensively.
Steve: Let me stop you right there, doctor. I don’t mean to be rude. Let’s try to listen to the question. What do you bring to the table? First, you used the word I three times already. Second, how do your publications and lectures help the financial investment firm? Please try this again. Remember, it’s all about the employer. It’s not about you and how smart you are. You’re applying for a non-clinical position. Let’s have somebody else try this. Doctor.
Interviewee 2: Yeah. Thanks, Steve. So I’m a board-certified neurosurgeon, and I have a special interest in investing in how physician portfolios typically do very, very poorly. So because I have this interest, I actually started a blog. It’s called “Physician Financial Independence” and it’s read extensively. I currently have over 40,000 followers, and I have developed a reputation as somebody that physicians, my colleagues, trust when it comes to investment decisions. And I have a proven record of being able to connect with and help physicians interested in getting better and safer investment returns.
Steve: So here we see a physician who emphasizes experience and interests, and demonstrates a nuanced knowledge of how many physicians think about financial advisors and how he can help overcome their suspicions. Excellent. Okay. So a question that you’re going to be asked in one form or another is, how can you help our company? And this is a question where you can expound and put it all together. What are they trying to achieve, okay? How can your skills and experience and your nuanced knowledge of the industry help them? And you want to, if you can, talk in sort of short bullet point sentences so that you can… Sometimes we suggest that you make a list of four or five different bullet points and have them ready for this kind of a question. And for all these questions, I think you really need to get them down on paper and practice them so that when you are faced with this question, you really don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to depend on what we call divine inspiration or anything like that. You can go back to what you practiced and can hit it out of the park. So let’s take a look at how our physicians answered this question.
How can you help our company? How can you help our company achieve our goals? Doctor.
Interviewee 1: Well, my career as a physician gives me a leg up in joining your company. I’m already an accomplished professional who can hit the ground running.
Steve: Let’s try somebody else. Doctor, how can you help our company achieve our goals?
Interviewee 2: Well, thank you very much, Steve. So, in preparation for this interview, I did some research online and I actually spoke to some of the industry leaders in this field. And it’s my understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you guys are really trying to tackle one of the great women’s health crisis that we have in this country of ovarian cancer, is that right?
Steve: It is.
Interviewee 2: All right. Well, as you know from my resume, I’ve had the privilege of treating women with ovarian cancer for many, many years. And unfortunately, as I’m sure you know, a lot of times our treatment options are limited and they’re just not what they should be. So it has been my passion to really try to help these women, these patients better. And my background is perfect for this job. For the last 15 years, I have been leading the National Ovarian Cancer National Conference, and as part of leading that conference, I have had to interact, collaborate, learn from, and work with the leading figures, the leading thought leaders in the field of ovarian cancer. So if I were to be lucky enough to be hired by you, I would hit the ground running and be able to tap into my network of thought leaders in this field and use all my passion, all my experience in treating women with ovarian cancer to try to fix this problem and help these women.
Steve: Excellent. Here, the physician prepared well for the interview, which is crucial. And we’ll talk about that in other parts the course. You need to prepare for the interview. He understands the company’s goals and expresses specifically how his hiring can help the company reach their goals. Good work, doctors. Why should I hire you is just a different way of asking some of these questions, and that’s a very direct question. And if you’re not prepared for that question, that could be somewhat intimidating, especially if you haven’t interviewed for 5 or 10 or 20 years. So again, what are we doing? We’re looking at the job requirements. And very often when you’re applying for non-clinical career positions, especially at your level, there’s gonna be a long list of job requirements. And don’t be intimidated if you don’t have exactly each job requirement, sometimes it’s a wishlist by the employer. Yes, they like to have somebody that speaks seven languages, but are they going to find a physician moving into a non-clinical position that speaks seven languages? It’s highly unlikely.
Again, you’re answering in short bullet point fashion, and you wanna give specific examples of something. So if you say that you’re good in communication skills, give specific examples of how often you spoke and where you spoke, and so on and so forth. If you’re talking about your negotiation skills, give specific examples of how you negotiated for your employer. Again, the key really is here is to make them love you and want to hire you. So they’ll have budgetary constraints. They’ll have parameters that they need. They want to have all these job requirements. But the bottom line is if that person at the end of you connects with you and wants to hire you, they will then become your advocate. They’re not going to be your opposition, they’re not going to be your enemy. And what happens then is you and them can work together to try to find a way to get you hired. And that’s what you really wanna do. You want to turn that interviewer into your advocate so that person can advocate for you with their superiors to make sure they hire you.