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5 Tips on Interview Prep With Thea Kelley

5 Tips on Interview Prep From Thea Kelley by Mark Anthony Dyson

When it comes to landing a job, interview prep is just as important as your resume. Hiring managers interview hundreds of candidates throughout their careers; they can spot your lack of preparation from a mile away.

Thea Kelley is an experienced career coach and the author of Get That Job! The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Interview. Recently, she was kind enough to speak with me and offer her advice on interview prep:

1. Be Real

Many job candidates prepare for interviews as if they’re bracing for the impact of a car crash instead of getting ready for a conversation. Hiring managers can sense how guarded you are when you walk into the room, and it doesn’t make you look good.

Kelley says it’s important the interviewer “feels like they’re connecting with [you] as a human being.” In addition to letting your guard down, avoid talking as if you’re some kind of job-seeking machine.

“Phrases such as ‘I possess the ability’ – who talks like that?” Kelley ponders.

2. Keep Your Language Simple

It’s okay to use a little industry jargon to demonstrate your knowledge, but don’t deliver memorized soliloquies or use large words that are unnatural to you. If you can answer a question using smaller, simpler, more direct language, do so.

I like using a recorder with coaching clients so they can hear their tone, vocabulary, and grammar and take corrective action if necessary. Every aspect of your delivery will face scrutiny in an interview, so pay attention to it all when practicing.

3. Display Your Emotional Intelligence

“Emotions can be beneficial for job interviews,” Kelley says.

Telling stories rather than dryly answering questions allows you to showcase your passion, enthusiasm, and even a little appropriate humor. This makes it easier for the interviewer to envision sitting next to you for eight hours a day.

4. Relax

Kelley points out world-class athletes who earn millions of dollars take the time to learn relaxation techniques. You, too, can benefit from practicing relaxation techniques before an interview. Kelley suggests using visualization to “imagine yourself in an interview and being authentic.”

5. Be Memorable; Tell Vivid Stories

Stories connect candidates to interviewers in ways that data can’t. They foster relationships and conversation, rather than inquisition. Storytelling is also a valuable way to work your own questions for the interviewer into the conversation.

Kelley says a list of attributes is not enough to demonstrate your fit or expertise. You must be able to show how your experience is relevant. Offering the interviewer vivid and specific examples makes your qualifications real and convincing.

Don’t just interview to pass a test. Interview to make it real, capture the interviewer’s imagination, and connect with them.

The article came from excerpts from my interview with Thea below:

This article was originally published on Recruiter.com!

by Mark Anthony Dyson

6 Bold Job Search Strategies That Will Challenge Your Thinking

6 Bold Job Search Strategies That Will Challenge Your Thinking by Mark Anthony Dyson

If you’re tired of applying to job boards, and no one of hiring significance is paying you any mind, keep reading. You’ve heard it’s not a numbers game where the more you apply, the increase your hiring chances. In 1990, this was a helpful strategy, but in 2015, more was needed. Your friends say it works, but it’s been five years since they’ve looked.

I warn you, career practitioners will roll their eyes when they read this article.

How many times have you tweaked your resume to no avail?

I understand lousy job search advice is everywhere, but so is excellent and meaningful information is still at your fingertips. In 2015, on an episode of “The Voice of Job Seekers,” Jim Stroud offered some of his strategies own he wrote for his book, “The Number One Job Hunting Book in the World!”

I think they are still daring to suggest to job seekers in 2023. But, since YouTube and podcasts are real media channels for any potential user to grow an audience, monetize it, and influence many, why not suggest it? Regardless of how few succeed, it’s as viable.

If you listen to much of what we discussed, you should concentrate on being more visible than forcing your way to be seen. No one will remember you if you look like the rest of the ducks. During your job hunt, be the lead duck or the different one. Just don’t be the lame duck or the same duck. Do you dig?

1. Add value to relationships without asking for reciprocation (at least for some time)

Why not be helpful during your job hunt? Although we are not talking about taking out someone’s garbage or washing some stranger’s car, we are talking about being a resource or helping make life easier for someone. If someone offers immediately to reciprocate, then ask without inundating them (wash my hands, feet, clothes, and car, please will get you to block, if you know what I mean). Online, it’s done in many ways, but to name a few:

Articles, links, or quick tips to a free or low-cost resource
A “how-to” phone call teaching someone how to do something
An encouraging tweet, note, or phone call for no reason
Providing the help they need to improve a website, comment or share their resource
Provide a contact for someone else to get a job

2. Get on someone’s podcast, video show, or guest post on a popular blog

Stroud suggests you go to iTunes, look for your industry’s subject in podcast form, and pitch to get on a show so you “…can position yourself as an expert.” Or go to YouTube, explore the video shows in your niche, and pitch an interview idea to help you appear as the “go-to person.”

3. Go to your community radio station and do a weekly show

Go to your local community or college radio station to pitch a show interviewing local experts, or be the expert yourself. You can do the same with a podcast (local or national experts will get you international listens if it doesn’t scare you). As you talk with experts, you will be seen as an expert. Some won’t let you use it to promote your small business, but others will allow almost any content. Of course, you want something to boost your expertise and experience.

4. Target large companies so other large companies can hire you

Stroud also shared with us, “… by focusing on top companies or startups winning awards or growing in popularity, you become attractive to their competitors. Under working at Verizon, you automatically look attractive to AT&T and Sprint.” Again, the theme is to gain visibility and not gain attempts. It will figure into your career trajectory for years to come. This job hunt can’t be a temporary solution, even if the job is a short-term contract.

5. Volunteer

By now, you can find countless stories of careers by people who started as a volunteer. I wrote about it a couple of years ago, reasoning how there is no reason not to volunteer. You don’t have to volunteer even full-time to create a valuable experience. Don’t wait for your options to run thin to volunteer. Here’s a more recent and robust article to read.

6. Go Mobile, Young Man/Woman

I dare you to write an article on your LinkedIn platform and provide a reading of the paper too. You can use SoundCloud to embed on LinkedIn (it’s the only audio service LinkedIn allows the player for people to listen right there). You can also do it via YouTube (for the bold, as YouTube is the only video player anyone can embed). This way, those who frequently use the LinkedIn app will access your article through a mobile device, particularly when they don’t feel like reading. When you publish it, curious people click play and keep moving.

Pick one of these strategies today and focus on a career with a longer-term return. Notice some of the strategies require forms of selflessness. It has a great return, but it does require a little faith. By no means are these suggestions for only desperate job seekers. These are creative suggestions for the dog days of your job hunt and those wanting to level up their branding efforts. If you want to be seen differently than the other 100 applicants for positions you apply for, be different and try alternative methods.

How many times are you going to tweak your resume?

This article first appeared on LinkedIn. I sprinkled an extra point. Let me know your thoughts.

by Mark Anthony Dyson

How To Show Your Brand is More Than Your Title

I want to share my annual thoughts on job search trends that are slightly different this year. Instead of one list where I share a list, I want to dive deeper into each one I share and then write a round-up linking to each article.

Let’s start by stating the obvious. You’ve heard me say that job search is a lifestyle. You’re going to need to market the brand you have. It’s more than titles, acronyms, and letters behind your name unless it’s an M.D., JD., and others. Even MBA letters behind a name have lost their essence. It won’t evolve into anything significant until it’s visible with applied knowledge.

If you differentiate yourself from your peers and competitors, you’ll lump yourself in. It would help if you wanted to stand out, but listening to many folks who are telling you a brand is something you create. If you’re making a persona instead of exploiting the one that markets yourself, you’re doing it wrong.

Yep. I used “markets.” Get used to it as of right now. We’re all trying to get some visibility. It’s not magic. It’s intention.

Let’s talk about the title with the letters behind it. Many experts will say on LinkedIn it doesn’t matter. Titles are marketing if they’re useful and universally known. Labels are marketing if you do something only 50 people in the world do. Titles are helpful when you are professionally involved in an industry where you’re paid to have those skills, and everyone knows what it is. OK, so maybe I’m wrong about this. It may get you some helpful LinkedIn SEO.

But it’s not your brand.

I’ll argue if you can’t capture your brand in the fewest words possible, you’re thwarting your marketing efforts. It works well spent if you want your brand and work to be its referral engine. People need to scan and click. Take their thinking from them, and infuse it wherever possible, with as fewest words as possible.

We’re remote, and we’re online. Present yourself as a gold mine, not a land mine:

How are you valuable?
What do people need from you (what have you been told)?
What solutions are you known for?

You have to explain a title; if you have three inexplicable titles, people may not ask anything of you.

My wife and I contracted our electrical work to George for many years. George has been our go-to guy for whatever electrical job we needed for our two-flat. We thought that’s all he did, and in fact, we also enjoyed his company. We know that he also owned several pieces of property.

We didn’t know he retired from the government after 32 years of finding hidden money as a tax accountant. We didn’t realize this until this year about George.

If we’d known, it wouldn’t change our relationship with him. But he only wanted us to understand what is relevant to us. George solved one problem for us. He has received many referrals from us just for the work he’s done for us. George created the demand for his work only as an electrician for us.

Be like George.