Tag: interview

I Almost Cried in an Interview

“What is your greatest career accomplishment? What are you most proud of?”

Before I even knew it, the words came out, “I brought all my guys home from Afghanistan.”

In an instant my brain flooded me with memories.  Memories of the deployments, memories of the firefights, memories of the years in preparation.  I remembered how seriously I took every event, every run, every class as though my life and the lives of my men depended on it; because they did.  I remembered clawing my way through ranger school, never quitting even though my body begged me to.  I remembered the phone call with Robert Kislow, when he cried that he had lost his leg, when he felt as though he had failed us.  I remembered how I felt that I didn’t do enough for him and years later he took his life.  I remembered all the phone calls I’ve gotten since I left the military and all the friends I’ve buried in the last 14 years.

A knot formed in my throat. My eyes got glassy.  I tried to push that emotion out.  I opened my mouth to speak.  My voice cracked again.  I stopped.

I looked at the perplexed faces of the people interviewing me. They simply didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand.

It was the first time this ever happened to me. I’ve had many interviews since I left the military, and I’ve always been able to talk about my years as an infantry officer with objective detachment.  A surgical approach to my military career, Situation, Task, Action, Result.  For some reason, this question was different.

“What are you most proud of?”

Well, I didn’t get the job.

Nowadays I answer that question very differently and I avoid answers that will stir up all those emotions. I focus on tasks, actions, and results.  I give the interviewer the answer that I know they are looking for.

I prepare.

I know I’m far enough removed from combat now that I can give plenty of examples while avoiding discussions about my 24 months in the desert. While those stories make for great content in a book, they haven’t really helped me stand out in a positive way in interviews.  Honestly, civilians don’t relate well to those experiences (no matter how much they try and say otherwise), and if I’m at risk of another emotional spat by talking about it, then it isn’t elevating my interview either.

If you’ve had a similar experience, or a polar opposite reaction, tell me about it. Send me an email, comment, like, share, whatever.  I want to know what you are going through and what your experiences are.

I never again want to feel like I could have done more.

-LJF

 

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Interviewer: “Do you have any questions for us?”

Recently I’ve been applying for new jobs internally and I was talking with one of my mentors about an interview I had coming up.  He’s a former First Sergeant who I can count on being brutally honest with me yet always gives some sage advice.  Because of this, I value his opinion greatly.  He asked me what questions I had for the end of the interview and I told him I didn’t really have any because I already spent 40 minutes on the phone with the hiring manager and he answered all my questions.  “Well, when I interview a candidate and they don’t have any questions, I think they’re an idiot.”  We laughed together and after a bit of ribbing, he dropped some easy yet insightful options that I’m now going to share with you.  So, here are 6 potential questions that you can ask at the end of an interview that will make you stand out as a candidate:

1. What is the first project/effort that you want me to tackle?

Not only does this question make you look like a forward thinking badass, but it also gives you an idea if the job is something you want to do.  It might have some sexy job title, but you find out that for the first 6 months they have a floor full of records that they want you to help digitize.

2. What are some of the Challenges that I might face?

Here you get some insight into the position, and it may open up an opportunity for you to talk about how you might tackle said challenges, further setting you apart in the candidate pool.  Again, the interview is also for you to get more information about the job to determine if it’s something you want to do.

3. Besides the manager, who should I look to for guidance in the role?

You really don’t want to be going to your boss for every question, you also don’t want to ask advice from the wrong person.  This will also help you identify the people who your future boss thinks are doing a good job and surrounding yourself with them.

4. What are you looking for in a candidate?

This is great if you still have some time in the interview.  Listen carefully, then find ways to show how you fit that description.  This is a way of getting the answer to the test, then having an opportunity to reword and present as your own.

5. What are the keys to success in this job?

This is an opportunity to get a candid answer from your next boss on what he/she is looking for, and it will help you understand what you need to focus on as soon as you start the job.  You’re probably going to have a lot to learn, many questions, and maybe little direction about where to start.  With this question, you will know exactly what you need to focus on and if you need training somewhere, what training you need to ensure your success rapidly.

6.  What does a typical day look like?

This last one is just for you.  Don’t let them get away with something like “every day is different”, hit them with a follow up like “well, what are some of the tasks that you have to do every day?”  You might find out right there that this is NOT something you want to be doing for the next several years.

There you go, you’ve now got 6 different questions that you can use at the end of an interview to get a better understanding of the job and make yourself stand out as a candidate, or as my mentor puts it, “Don’t look like an idiot.”

-LJF

 

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Why the headhunter won’t work with you

I can’t stress enough the importance of having a headhunter in order to get a job.  Unless you already know someone in the company you’re applying with, as much as they like to tell you otherwise, monster.com isn’t going to get you the job.  You have to get a headhunter, more on that here.

I spoke to a friend of mine, Eddie, that works as a headhunter for Lucas Group.  I’m not getting paid to say this, I just honestly believe they are the best firm out there. If you’re talking to someone else, I recommend you give Lucas Group a call, they’ll work with Officers and NCO’s alike, but there are some people they won’t work with.  So here’s an hour long conversation about a candidate they won’t work with given to you in 700 words…

“You must have the right attitude”

I’ve said this before, and I discuss it in great detail in the book, but you are starting a new career and you need to realize that.  Look, I don’t care if you were a Brigade Commander in the military, you don’t know anything about my business.  If you think that you’re better than my team because you wore a uniform, then you don’t belong on my team.

You need to come out of the military with some humility.  You can be proud of what you did, and you should be, but if that pride makes you look down on others that didn’t, then you’re going to have a tough time and i’m not going to hire you.  Tell me instead that you don’t have a problem starting at the bottom.  Say, “It’s an opportunity to learn about the business and I’m confident my skills will get me promoted quickly.”  Bam!  That’s what I want on my team!

 

The right combination of “shuns”

“You have to have the right combination of the 3 ‘shuns’: Location, compensation, occupation.  If you tell me ‘I want to be a program manager in west chicago and make $120k a year,’ I’m going to say ‘good luck.'”  

You need to have realistic expectations of what kind of job you can find when you get out.  There was a boot shop in Fort Bragg that had a sign that read, “we do 3 types of work: Good, fast, and cheap.  Pick any two.”  That saying is very similar to what you need to consider in your job hunt.

Location

“I can’t tell you how many times i’ve heard, ‘I need to stay in Dallas, my girlfriend is from there.’ Then I have to take my recruiter hat off and put on my life coach hat…”

Location is the 3rd question of the big 4 questions, go read more about that here.  Although there are occasionally good reasons to limit yourself geographically like a special needs child or a sick family member, generally you should consider a wider net.

Compensation

“I had a guy tell me, ‘well with BAH, Flight Pay, and Jump Pay i’m making about $130k a year, so I expect to make something commensurate to that.’ With a history degree? There’s no way.”

You need to be realistic about what you’re going to make.  That’s one of the reasons why finances are the 1st of the big 4 questions. You are going to take a pay cut, just wrap your mind around that.  Plan to live off your base pay and understand what that means to your budget.  This way, if you get a job higher than your base pay, you’ll have extra spending money.  Don’t worry, I have the utmost confidence that if you want it, you’ll be able to get promoted quickly above and beyond your peers. More on finances here and here.

Occupation

“I have guys tell me that they only want to do program manager jobs.  Dude, you don’t even know what’s out there and what you’re qualified for.”

The 4th big question is to understand what you want to do, and i’ve explicitly said “lead people” is an acceptable answer.  It is important for you to want to do something that you find interesting, but you should keep your mind open to possibilities that you might not have considered.

“If the alarm goes off in the morning and your feet don’t immediately hit the floor, you have a job not a career and there’s very little compensation or location that is going to make up for you being miserable 40, 50, or 60 hours a week.”

So basically if you’ve read the book or follow the blog, chances are you’re going to get a headhunter to work with you because you’re not going to make those mistakes right?  I’ll close with one final quote:

“The biggest obstacle in these guys’ career is themselves.”

-LJF




You are not prepared for your Interview

You’re excited, you’ve got an interview!  So you go to the internet and google the 50 most common interview questions because you’re high speed and shit so you’re going to be ready.  Particularly you’re thinking about how you’re going to answer that “What are your weaknesses question”

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Well guess what Airborne, every other swinging dick out there is doing that, and companies are getting wise to it.  The point of the job interview is to see what you’re going to be like as an employee, not to stump you, and recently companies have started to move to behavioral interviewing.

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Behavioral interviews are the best way to figure out what a person is going to be like when they’re on the job because past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.  Questions sound like this:

Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult and unpopular decision

Tell me about a time when you had to negatively counsel someone

Tell me about a time when you had to identify a customer need and deliver to that need

Yeah, not so easy now huh hotshot?

I wasn’t ready for this, and really, haven’t started getting good at it until the last year or so.  Luckily I have a gift.  Some people are gifted athletes, or amazing singers, or incredible artists, I have none of those skills.  God’s gift to me was the ability to think on my feet and bullshit like a real-life Axel Foley. So when I encountered these questions for the first time, I was able to maneuver my way around them.

Let’s be honest though, i’ve seen plenty of you fuckers at promotion boards, even when you know what the question is going to be, you still screw it up, so here are some tips for you.

All your answers need to be in the STAR format

Situation- what was going on

Task- what was your role

Action- what did you do

Result- the result of course

One of the mistakes I made was trying to explain too much of the Situation when I was giving a civilian a story about the military.  It went something like this:

Our unit was finishing our deployment and the incoming unit was going to relieve us.  This is called a RIP/TOA or Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority.  Our AO or Area of Operations encompassed about 128km of main highway from a bit South of Baghdad almost all the way to Kuwait.  We did right-seat/left-seat rides which basically means you’re driving for a while, then they are….

AAAAAGGHHHHHH!!  Stop!  I’ve talked for several minutes boring the shit out of the interviewer and I haven’t even started talking about what I did!  Here’s this same example today:

The situation was that our unit was leaving Iraq and we were getting replaced, which generally is the most dangerous time of the deployment.  My task was to create the plan….

That’s it.  One sentence.  You don’t need to educate these people on military operations dude.  Just give them exactly what they MUST know to understand your story and nothing else.

I know some websites are going to tell you not to do this, but memorize what you’re going to talk about.  You need to have 5-8 solid examples of what a badass civilian you’re going to be.  Go back to your OER or NCOER and find some of your favorite bullets of things that don’t involve direct enemy action (if you can’t think of them off the top of your head).  Write them down on a separate sheet of paper in the STAR format.

Most of your time needs to be in the “Action” section talking about what you did.  You want to highlight your initiative, and remember this interview is about what YOU did.  So if there was a group of you on something, then highlight what your role was and what your contributions were.

For double extra super points, read the job description and know what qualities they are looking for in a candidate and prepare to highlight that in your responses.

Finally, now that you have your answers/stories memorized, be prepared to adapt them to the question asked.  The same example can be used to highlight different traits.

If you want more specific advice, please ask!

Good luck!