Video: Company Seeker

One Of The Most Important Job Interview Tips You’ll Ever Get

Here’s one of the most important job interview tips you’ll ever get. This will seem a weird bit of career advice, and it may not immediately sound like it belongs to job interview tips, but don't be a job seeker. What do I mean by that? The best companies hire people that fit their culture, they are Hiring for Attitude; they want people that share their values, that share their mindsets, that share their attitudes.

When you go into an organization to interview, and this is where you’ll start to see why this is top amongst job interview tips, what you're trying to impress upon them is that you're one of them, that you've done some research, you understand their culture, you understand their attitude, you understand their values, you understand how the people operate, and that's you want to join up with them.

Most job interview tips tell you how to be a job seeker. When you are a job seeker however, the mindset is, I’m a programmer, or I'm an accountant, or I'm a nurse, and I'll take any job where they need these skills. Unfortunately, a lot of the best companies take a step back and say, “You know, that's great, you can technically do the job, that's fine, but I need something more.” That why job seeker advice is amongst the worst of job interview tips. It won’t get you the job.

At Southwest, the late CEO would say, Kelleher said, “If you don't have a great attitude, and the right attitude, we don't want you no matter how skilled you are, for us it's all about attitude.” Southwest is not alone in this regard, you can't just have the skills, you have to have the attitude as well. So forget about all those other job interview tips for right now and rather than being a job seeker, be a company seeker.

Start by talking to the people who work at that organization. You might say, “Well, I don't know anybody.” The companies you're likely to want to go after, they do have people on message boards, and chat rooms, there are people on Facebook and there are people on social media. It's pretty easy these days to actually connect with people who are participants in, and work at the company you want to be a part of.

When you evidence that you're seeking a company, the company itself starts to look at you a lot differently and they say, “You know what, this person seems to understand a lot more about who we are.” And that means you go to the top of the list rather than just any old programmer who can, yeah, they can code, but can they really be one of us?

So when considering all the job interview tips out there, and there are millions of them, the best place to start is: don’t be a job seeker, instead, be a company seeker. Because remember, the best companies are Hiring for Attitude, that's why they're the best companies. You can have all the skills in the world, but if you don't pass the attitude hurdle, the cultural hurdle, you won't get in.