My final year of college comprised of me sneaking out of class every Monday and Friday for like ten weeks to interview with companies. I had to drive north, south, east and west from San Louis Obispo. I gained a lot of weight eating fast food, bummed off of old friends’ apartments in different colleges, and I had a hard time getting a job. Some interviews I felt confident in, and others didn’t.
Of course, having four different jobs after graduating gives an updated perspective on how to rock your next interview. Or if you’ve never had a big kid job before, give you some confidence and pointers that will make you better prepared to look at your manager in the eye.
Overview before the live interview
I’m keeping this short because it’s not very important.
Assuming you get passed the resume screening, you will have a phone call with HR. HR is basically looking if you’d be a good cultural fit on their end. I wouldn’t ask HR questions on culture because they will give a very general response. Ask cultural questions to the hiring manager. More on that later.
Ideally, next, you’ll have a quick phone call with the hiring manager. Have the job description up on your laptop and reference it often. Try and put in the full amount of time allotted for the interview.
After that, they should offer you a live interview. If they pay for your flight, it’s a sign they like you.
This article is going to get granular on the live interview portion. Sit tight.
Tactics
On Traveling: Make sure you’re in optimal cognitive shape before entering the room. Driving can really screw you up just because it can be so exhausting. Set a sort of mantra where it’s easy to get into the groove such as black coffee right before the interview or a 20-minute nap in your car.
Companies that pay for your flight are pretty much less than 12 hours so be prepared for that.
Also, either bring an extra dress shirt or wear your dress shirt right before the interview. You never know when a fry or piece of salad can land on your shirt. The most stressful thing in the world is a stain on your nice clothes.
Before you walk in the door: Have a nice resume folder and a few resumes printed on nice resume paper. If you have product development projects, you can treat them as portfolio pieces. It’s very important to reread the job description and more important to read as much as you can with the company you’re working with. Doing this allowed me to get two job offers in one week (probably also a correlation of timing too)
On Arrival Time: There’s a lot of articles on LinkedIn about how people will arrive late, make an excuse, hire them and they were an awesome candidate. Ideally, you want as much exposure time with everyone you interview regardless. Some people are huge sticklers when it comes to time, and some people will waste your time by being late. It is what it is, but to maximize your ability to impress, be on time. In fact, your job is to make everyone you talk to be late cause you’re just so interesting to talk to. Of course, if you are late, be transparent about it, act a bit flustered, and gather your confidence.
On Dress Code: No matter what you do, whether a factory, startup, or established company, wear something “one level up”. This is generally a button-up dress shirt, slacks and nice shoes. You can vary it up, but in general, this is the safest bet. Nobody really cares how well you dress once you get the job but it does help with a first impression which might make or break who they choose.
On Reading People: Ideally, you’re going to be meeting a lot of people and having high Emotional Intelligence helps a ton in this time of the interview. Try to scan signs of excitement and engagement when you tell your story. Some general tips on a positive response include if they ask follow-up questions during your interview, if they smile, shake hands, and look you in the eye, and finally, if they introduce you to other people as you walk through the building, it’s a good sign.
On Skillsets: Generally, people want to know how you do a job and depending on the questions ask, you can glean on the type of company they are. People who ask about strengths and weaknesses generally like to categorize and sort their employees to fit a big picture. People who ask you to describe fixing a problem that happened in the past generally are looking for people who can fix problems in their daily life at work.
On Soft Skills: People will ask you what you’re good at and what you suck at. It’s a trap with an easy solution: be humble when talking about your strengths and be confident when talking about your weaknesses. Hook them with examples and stories. Flesh them out by either practicing them or writing them down beforehand.
On Gauntlet-Style Interviewing: Depending on company culture, you’ll maybe have to be interviewed a bunch of people to get the role. Leclerc had me interview 2 people, Isagenix had me live interview 10 people all day, Better Meat Co, I interviewed their founder, WeWork, I had 5 interviews mainly through Zoom. Each company has a different method of doing so. Some will even send you to the kitchen and make a sauce from scratch to impress the manager. Point being, it can be super exhausting.
Pace yourself, ask for water repeatedly if need be, breathe and evaluate every situation. Unfortunately, it’s better to please everyone than just your hiring manager. You actually never know who will make the final decision. Some decisions are team-based, or they have to have their blessings through multiple key-contacts. Try and be likable to everyone.
On Compensation: It’s a tough topic. If they low-ball you, do what a good scientist does: gather data to show them you’re at market price. If you’re just starting, it’s hard to prove you’re more than that. The best trick I have is to leverage urgency and data. For data, IFT has an ok salary expectation guide, but the best way to really get good data is to ask directly for help on LinkedIn. Most people won’t give you their salary online but some might, or give you resources that will tell you.
But leverage or the ability to take advantage of the cards you got is super important. I was low-balled in my first job at Leclerc but then got an offer for another job at a tomato factory. The tomato factory would pay me $50k salary but I’d have to work a lot. Leclerc would pay a lot less, but I wouldn’t have to work as hard. By leveraging the fact that the tomato factory wanted me for $50k, convinced them to put it near that level (and also it was hourly so I ended up making more money). In the four jobs I’ve had, I’ve negotiated successfully half the time. It’s very situational and it’s like playing a game of high stakes poker. Leverage such as a reputation or another job offer is super important if you have it. You most likely won’t when choosing your first job but the worst they can say is no if you ask.
Cultural Fit and Urgency
If you’ve been vetted by a piece of paper and a phone call, people want to see if you fit in because you’ll be spending a lot of time at the location where you got the job. This is the wildcard when it comes to getting the job or not.
It’s also very important to understand the culture of where you’re working. Yes, I know you desperately looking for any job and you’ll take the first one you get, but try your best. If culturally, it’s not a good fit for you (political bias, lack of diversity, no free coffee, emails late at night) then it’s ok to reject a job offer.
Culture isn’t really found in first impressions and it’s more subconscious rulesets than written policy. With cultural fit, the people who interview you have to like you. But you should also like them.
What is also hard to read is how urgent your role is for the company If it’s a training program for an account manager job, perhaps it follows more criteria rather than someone who just left and they need to fill up a position in 2 weeks. Or this company is on a hiring spree because of funding and might have regretted spending so much on ad money.
People also sometimes say referrals help get the job. I personally think that unless you’re next in the family line, most people don’t get a job via connections starting out. However, the more years you’re in the industry and the more you have something to prove, it gets astronomically easier.
All this section is really saying is that there are so many factors if they find you are not a good fit. It’s frustrating, but it’s not your fault. There might have just been a better candidate technically, a more likable one, or went to the same school the manager did. There are many factors and most of the times, it’s the luck of the draw.
The End of The Interview
The most important thing in the world is to ask a series of questions at the end of the interview. Do this for everyone you talk to.
There are two reasons why it’s vital:
- It shows you actually care about the job and people hire people who care
- It allows you to really dig into if someone actually likes working there or not
Here is a list of questions I highly recommend asking. Some are generic but important. The best questions you can ask are follow up questions during the interview. It gets the person more engaged.
- Who will I be working with? (department wise)
- What’s an average day look like for me? (you can ask what an average day is for them, but it’s not as valuable)
- What do you think the current team needs to improve on? (a glimpse if you fit the bill)
- Is there room for advancement? (they will say “yea, sure” but ask for examples involving people)
- What is the work culture like? (do they expect you to work a lot? Are there remote days?)
- What’s your commute like? (friendly talk but also important data for you to consider moving)
- Are there any skills you think I’m lacking in this role? (good feedback)
- Are there chances of improving said lack of skill? (Do they care about training employees?)
- Are there chances to travel? (if you care)
- Are there tough days? (If they say yes, ask how they deal with them. Try getting an example
It Gets Easier
Even with one year of experience, getting your next job gets a lot easier. Experience matters especially if your next job is at an adjacent industry. I was able to switch from snack bar processing to snack bar development in just a year and a half because the skills were just so rare and valuable.
What has made my ability to get a job exponentially easier was, of course, the effort I put into developing my personal brand. The podcast, which allows me to not only interview people at exceptionally high calibers in the industry, but also allows me to showcase that I’m smart and that has paid off tremendously. If people are fans of the podcast, they know my work and they know I’m not afraid to show it. For the people who don’t know, it’s generally not the right fit because their cultural fit does not encourage them to listen to podcast. (Podcasts are generally a sign of a demographic of people who want to learn).
There are very few people who have a personal brand in the world of food science. I wish there were more. But let me give you some actual advice. If you want to never worry about being unemployed, the best thing is to always do great work and have the ability to talk about it.