November 2012 - Job Interview Coaching

November 22, 2012

How to Negotiate a Pay Rise

When negotiating your pay rise, you need to first set the value high by you first setting the initial offer, your employer will then come in under what you stated, but due to you setting the mark high (this has to be realistic) you will often receive a higher salary compared to when the employer sets the first initial offer, which is often low.

This is because we use the initial offer as a baseline and then the employer and employee negotiate from this first offer, all the following negotiations or salary offers are compared to the original offer as we naturally compare everything.

In this example the employer’s original offer is £25,000, your counter offer is £35,000, the final offer will be around £30,000.

If you set the initial offer for the same position at £42,000, the employer’s first offer will be around £30,000 which means the final offer will be around £35,000.

Now obviously these figures and offers will vary depending on your experiences, negotiation skills and the employer’s business acumen, but the point is by setting the initial offer high, highlighting your value, you will be offered a higher wage while leaving the employer believing that their shrewdness has secured them a good deal (you asked for £42,000 and accepted £35,000 – £5,000 more than you would have accepted if the employer set the bar low with his initial offer).

As you have stated your perceived value in monetary terms with your initial offer, the employer is forced to offer you a higher salary as they can’t offer a salary that is dramatically lower unless they believe that you are not worth the money or if the company has set a non-negotiable salary limit for your position.

If you enjoyed this article you will also enjoy reading:

November 22, 2012

A Key Piece of Job Search Advice

I have worked with hundreds of people who originally struggled securing employment even though some of these professionals were experts in their industries. To key piece of advice to any job hunter is to TARGET your application, CV and Job Interview. It sounds simple, I know but so many job hunters fail to do this. They will have a general CV that they will tinker with before they apply. But what job hunters need to do in today’s competitive times is to really match the job criteria (from the job advert, company values and job specification) to the duties on their CV or the answers in there interview.

Often during the interview and on the job application, applicants and interviewees will often discuss and record irrelevant information that they feel is one of their key achievements, but if their potential new employer doesn’t deem this skill important then don’t mention it as the employer will not see it relevance. Remember research has shown that employers initially skim through CVs and applications, looking for the skills they require. The job interview is the same, you may be passionately talking about a past experience but the employer is sat there thinking “great but has that got to do with the role your applying for?”

Read the job spec and research the company values, from this you will be able to gather enough intelligence to really target your CV and stand out, winning more job offers.

If you enjoyed this article you will also enjoy reading

November 22, 2012January 4, 2021

Influencing the Interview Part One

We have put together a series of 3 videos to help you influence the job interview using Psychology, NLP and Hypnotic persuasion techniques.

During this small series, you will learn how to delve into the employer’s mind to really understand what they desire, you will command the interview by selling your skills using the interview answer structure pattern and you will learn to use hypnotic language patterns in the job interview.

So let’s get started with Video One of Three

November 22, 2012

Can NLP & Conversational Hypnosis Work In Job Interviews?

Are you like others who wrongly believe that the job interviewer will hire you on your skills and experiences? The truth is your skills and experiences got you the job interview but your attitude, personality and chrism is what will secure that all important, often life changing job offer.

NLP using language patterns that can influence the job interview, they are easy to learn but highly powerful. Today I will share with you several patterns you can use in your next job interview, enabling you to influence the job interview.

Eliciting Values

The first step is to understand what the person who is interviewing you values? We can check the job specification, we can research the company mission, but you need to know what will influence your interviewer?

Ask the interviewer “what type of person are you looking for?” then listen to the employer’s criteria, use this same criteria as part of your next interview answer.

The ideal place to do this is during the walk from the reception to the interview room, you can start by making small talk, “this is a great location for a business..” the employer will mumble something, agreeing with your statement. Then ask, “Have you been interviewing all day?” the reply may be “yes your the third person I’ve interviewed today” and then ask, “and what type of person are you looking for?” this is the key time to listen “well, I really need someone who can bring creative ideas to the team..” now armed with this expert insight, you can answer the interview question mentioning how creative you are, or by giving some real life creative ideas.

Hypnotic Rapport Building

People like people who are like them. Ask the interview talks about the company, during their sales pitch to entice you to work for them, agree with what they are saying. “We encourage team work, as we believe that in a team your creative juices will flow..” you can agree by, “it sounds really interesting, I agree with what you said regarding the team work, in my last position at the beginning of any new project I would first put a team together to come up with creative idea, the idea being that ‘that there was no wrong ideas’ people could suggest anything and it would go on the board, sometimes some silly ideas came out but the objective worked, by everyone looking at the project from a creative viewpoint we would quickly come up with an idea that would work, this process save time and really inspired the team to want to make the project a success”

Again you are listening to what the employers deems valuable and your saying “I do/believe that to”

There are many ways to deepen rapport, which are covered in the amazing book the 73 rules for influencing the interview, but the easiest way to get anyone to like you is through a smile. Now this seems old hat, maybe? But the science for this is real, when psychologist has wired people up to monitor the neutrons in the brain, something amazing happened. When you smile your mussels are pulled in such away that your neurons fire and you feel good about yourself, but what’s even more amazing is, when the person who sees you smile is also wired up the psychologist discovered that there happy neurons also fire just by seeing you smile.

You have probably seen this in action when you see an adult looks at a baby, as the baby smiles, the adult cannot help but to also smile. Don’t underestimate the smile, it is a powerful rapport builder and often underused in the job interview.

Future Pace the Job Outcome

People, who successfully diet and lose weight, do something completely different to those thousands of people who start to diet and then give up. The secret is that successful people in all areas of life, visualise the outcome, the dieter doesn’t see themselves dieting they visualise themselves being fit, healthy and thin.

For the successful interviewee, you need to influence the interview by making the employer visualise you being successful in their company. You have most likely already read the 73 rules for influencing the interview, which covers a large amount of ways to influence the interview outcome, but for now you can flow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1 – talk about the future not the past; it’s good to highlight your past successes a little, but in reality people aren’t interested in what you did, they want to know WHAT YOU WILL DO for them. They want to know how you will make a difference, how you will use your skills to make their organisation successful and how by hiring you they will increase their profit. Whenever possible future pace, “Yes I’m an excellent team leader, to increase the team’s productivity and moral, I will A, B and C…”

Step 2 – It’s not I it’s we; your goal at this stage of the interview is for the interviewer to imagine you working successfully for their company. When answering interview questions, interviewees will often say “I did X..” “I was able to..X” or by using the future pace above “I will do X..” To create a stronger bond, every so often change the “I” to a “we” this change in the referral index will most likely go unnoticed, but because the mind makes images out of the words you hear, this slight change of context will change the image in the interviewers mind. Rather then seeing you being successful working for them, the interviewer will now see both of you being successful and this is highly motivational.

“I agree, it’s really important to have a motivated team, when I’m managing the team I will carry out regular appraisals with the team, this is chance for each individual to get positive feedback on what they have achieved over the past month, and to look at new ways to further improver their performance. I have used this method in past positions and it has a constant result in improving team motivation by 25% which results in us meeting our targets.”

In this example the answer ends with “…which results in us meeting our targets” instead of “results in me meeting my targets” now this slight change in wording has altered the interviewers vision, he might see himself getting praise for hiring you and meeting the targets. As long as the image is positive he will associated that positive feeling with you, when he thinks of you later when deciding who to hire, he will remember feeling good about you and your answers and he probably won’t even remember this image that popped into his head!

Step 3 – Ask future Pace Questions; at the interview end you will be given the chance to ask some questions. This is another chance to ask a future pace question, to get the employer to visualise you being successful while working for them.

“What’s more important to you, me having creative ideas or me being able to implement the ideas?” this is a great double bind question, no matter what answer they pick they have to see you being creative or implementing creative ideas and when they answer you can agree with them “I agree having creative ideas will help drive the business..” “I agree you have to be able to implement the ideas…”

“Imagine you recruited me, what would I being doing in the first couple of weeks?” the employer now has to imagine they recruited you

“If you offered me the job, what would I need to do to prove to you that you had made the right decision to choose me?” Again the employer has to visualise you working for them.

“Imagine the we had a great couple of years working together, and as a team and business we were really successful, in what directions can see the business growing?” there answer doesn’t matter to much, as long as they think about you being successful together

If you enjoyed this article you will also enjoy reading:

November 10, 2012

The 2 Key Benefits of a Holiday Job

For a job hunter securing a holiday job benefits them two fold; first holiday jobs are easier to secure because the employer will let their guard down during the recruitment process hiring people for the holiday vacancy that they might not have hired for a full time position. Why would they do this, you ask? Because for the employer they are desperate for staff and they know they can get rid of you within a couple of months if things don’t work out.

So for all the job hunters who struggle to secure full time employment, you can easily get a holiday job and during your time their, you can prove to the employer what a valuable asset you are so, when the time comes to letting the holiday staff go, the employer will want to keep you on offering you a full time position.

Second, this holiday experience adds value to your CV. Ideally if you find a holiday job in a sector you have planned out as a career then this experience is invaluable. for the those who use the holiday just for extra money, this experience will still add value to your CV deleting gaps in unemployment which some employers generalise as laziness. Ideally the job hunter should aim for a job in a sector they are looking to turn into a career, but any job is better then none as people see employed candidates as a better prospect

November 7, 2012

GROW – Goal, Reality, Options and Will

The GROW model is a set of questions to help you achieve your goals. The coach will ask you a set of questions to move your thinking into a positive direction, to motivate you and to improve your performance.

First, you need to agree a Goal and Outcome. What is your goal; make the goal specific, measurable and realistic. You have to believe in your goal, also be consistent don’t have a goal that conflicts with another goal or you will lose motivation in an instant.

Goal Questions:

The Goal – what do you want to achieve? Keep this as simple as possible! The goal questions will support you to understand your goal and when it will be achieved.

What do you want to achieve?
How will you know that you have achieved that goal?
How will you know the problem is solved?
Who is this goal for?
What is important to you right now?
What do you really want?
What is the benefit for you?
What would make you happy?
When do you want to achieve your goal?
What areas do you want to work on?
How long might it take to achieve your goal? Is this feasible?
How much would you be prepared to pay to achieve your goal?
Describe your perfect world
What will you look for when you working towards your goal?

Reality Questions:

To achieve your goal you need to understand the Reality of your current situation, skills, time constraints, attitudes, process and how far or near you are to achieving your goal.

What is happening now?
What has contributed to your success so far?
What, who, when, how often
What is the effect or result of that?
How busy are you?
What is the current situation like?
What progress have you made so far?
Who is involved? What are they like?
What’s working and not working?
What keeps you awake at night?
How easy is it to get things done?
What is required of you?

Option Questions:

First look at the overall big picture and the break this down in to smaller details, in NLP we call this chunking down. Remember that you have different experience and knowledge which open new possibilities and options.