“WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?!” immediately went through my head. My second thought was, “Oh, no. My STAR candidate just TALKED HIMSELF OUT OF A JOB!” I had just asked my candidate to outline a strategy to achieve the primary goal of the position for which he was interviewing… and he said, “Oh, that would be hard. Those people (the clients) are awful to work with.” My candidate has 13 years of experience. He has built whole departments from the ground up, including in a startup environment. Is the job hard? Yes, no doubt. But he was INTERVIEWING TO GET HIRED. This is an example of someone who has talked himself out of the job. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not impossible to recover from saying the wrong thing. If he admitted that ‘that came out wrong.’ Or said, ‘The clients are tough, but I’ve had success doing (an example or 2 )…’ Or ‘I think clients would respond well to your company because I’ve seen (example) work well,’ we would have moved along and had a really engaging conversation. As it was, however, there was nowhere to go. I asked follow up questions to give him an opportunity to recover, to no avail. Unfortunately, I could not move forward because he had just told me that he’s not interested in moving forward – because moving forward would mean working with (paying) clients who are ‘awful’. And he stuck to it. Sorry, but there are so many great candidates out there, I want someone who is excited by the challenge. Also, HE deserves to find a role that HE’S excited about.
And that’s the moral of the story: there are lots of jobs & lots of candidates out there in the world. Your experience is valuable – you are valuable – so take the time to understand what the new company needs, make sure your experience translates well, and use your experience to sell the heck out of yourself!

#interview #jobsearch