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Hello, and welcome back. This is episode 77, Identifying Hiring Manager Concerns. So stay tuned.
Hey, there. Welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you and your career.
On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six-figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Today, I’m talking about another reason why a lot of candidates don’t get hired. So we’ll start with identifying the hiring manager concerns. A reason why a lot of candidates don’t get hired is because they don’t identify these concerns and they don’t address these concerns. They’re not aware of them, so they don’t think about them. They’re not really aware. They’re not in the hiring manager’s place, so they’re not thinking about what the hiring manager might be going through. They’re not thinking about the managers experience.
Normally, we’re just thinking about our own experience. And if we’re thinking about our own experience in a positive way and showing up how we need to, that’s one of the things that you need to master. I talk about a lot of the podcasts how to do that. One of the things we haven’t really gone into to is what’s the hiring manager feeling, thinking, asking themselves? What’s going through their head?
So we don’t address the concerns because we don’t know what they are. We don’t really think about what they are or take time to put any energy into what they are. So that’s what this episode is about. So the main concerns are, can they trust you? Can they leave you in charge of something? Can they trust you to run something and make decisions that are best for the business? Can you adapt to their environment? Will you fit into their environment? Will they enjoy working with you? Will it be fun for them? What will it be like? What will happen when things go bad or wrong? How are you going to respond?
How will you interact with the team and other people? Will you cause trouble or will you create more collaboration and solve problems rather than perpetuate problems? How resilient are you? How engaged will you be? What’s going to motivate you to do your best work? These are some of the things that they’re going to want to know, they’re going to want reassurance about. And they don’t necessarily know this, consciously. But I guarantee you when they hear reassurance of these things and things you say, and how you show up, they start to feel that inkling of comfort and trust, and headed towards yes, towards this person.
A tell is in the questions they will ask you. So there are specific concerns that they might have with, if you’re switching industries, or if you’re switching work environments drastically. For example, one of my clients recently, he was moving from government to private sector and he was noticing that the questions that they were asking him in the interview were geared towards that concern of, will you be able to keep up with us in the private sector? Because I know that the government does things pretty slowly and their concern was, are you going to be able to keep up with a fast pace? Are you going to be able to learn new systems and technologies?
Because they have a preconceived idea that people coming from government work very slowly, use the same thing all the time. Don’t really make changes. Now, this is not always true, but this is the concern that this particular client was dealing with. And knowing that, and having awareness around that is going to be huge for him because when he goes to talk to them, he can address this concern head on and he can educate them about his experience and how that ties in with why he wants to move to a faster paced environment.
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So knowing the concerns ahead of time is a huge advantage. And if you don’t know what the concerns might be in your particular situation, you probably just have to go on a couple of interviews and the questions they will ask you will tell you what their concerns are.
So if they’re asking you, “Tell me about a time you made a mistake,” I can tell you that their concern is how does this person respond when they make a mistake? How do they process that mistake? How does that affect others around them? How quickly do they attempt to go to the solution?
They want to get a feel for that. And every question that they ask is something that they want to alleviate one of their concerns. And they wouldn’t be able to tell you, “I’m concerned about this, this, this, this, and this.” But I can tell you that this is what I’ve picked out from hundreds of interviews and sitting in on them, right? And the debriefing conversations. That’s what they’ll say. They’ll be like, “Well, this person they’re really outgoing.”
This was a situation that I had, another example. We were interviewing for a developer. Software developers are normally more introverted normally, and I’m generalizing. Not all of them are, for sure, but some, they’re more introverted. They’re more quiet. They’re more heads down in their work. And this particular candidate was the opposite of that. He was super outgoing. He was like, “Let’s go talk to everybody.”
He was more like a social butterfly. He was a DJ at a local club in town and he was part of several events and really involved in the community. He was just the opposite of what you think a software developer would be like. So in the debriefing room, they were like, “Well, will he be bored here? Will he get tired when people are not interacting with him all day?” That was a concern.
So they would ask him questions about that. They would be like, “How would you feel about an environment where there’s not a lot of talking going on, we’re just working on problems and stuff?” And he needed to address that in a way where they could feel safe, bringing him on board. He did a very good job of that. He ended up getting hired. What happened was he ended up bringing other people out of their shell.
So he would set up things at lunchtime and he would get the people who were not very social to be more social. That was his role that he played and he actually contributed to the environment. He collaborated and he brought something new to the culture that wasn’t there before. If they hadn’t have given him the chance to explain, and if he hadn’t have addressed the concern properly, then they might have passed on him. Right?
I think that happens a lot. In fact, I know it does. People will pass on somebody thinking, “Yeah, they’re just not going to fit in.” Right? There’s no real way to know until you invite the person in, but the person has the chance in the interview to address that concern. Right? So there’s two examples of some concrete concerns. The main concerns are the ones I listed in the beginning, and it’s going to be, “Can they trust you? Can they leave you to make decisions? Can they trust you to work on behalf of the business in the best way?”
When things go bad, how are you as a person? What happens? Right? I had worked for one company where they did a personality test before because they want to know what your stress behaviors are. I had one manager who looked at a candidate’s personality test and she’s like, “Oh no, that’s not going to work. This person’s personality is way on this side, or whatever, of the spectrum.” And they were like, not the autistic spectrum, the personality test had different spectrums. They were just like, “This person will work because of this personality test and their score.”
I’m not sure how accurate this was. I’m really not. But this just goes to prove that hiring managers and companies want to do everything possible to have these concerns addressed, sometimes before they even talk to the person. So they’ll do a personality test as a screening, right? So that’s essentially what
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some of the concerns are. And for your specific situation, it’s not difficult to find out what their concerns are.
It might involve having a few conversations. It might involve going to a couple interviews to see what they ask you and what they might be worried about. But the concerns aren’t really pretty glaring. So why does this happen is because they are human. And if you put yourself in their shoes, you’d be thinking the same things.
You’d be like, “If I’m hiring for my business or my team, something that I’m responsible for, I have concerns too. It’s a normal, natural thing.” So by default, you would have concerns about bringing on the wrong person, right? This is something that we don’t do enough is go into their shoes and be like, “Okay. So if I’m hiring for this person, what am I worried about? Honestly, what am I worried about?” Right?
Most of the time, it’s not a conscious thing. We don’t really know. We’re just going on feel. We’re hoping this person makes us feel the things we need to feel so we can hire them. But we don’t really know. So nobody really breaks that down, but that’s why the interview the way it’s structured. And that’s why there’s all these screening processes in place. That’s why sometimes they make you do an assignment. That’s why sometimes they make you do a personality test. That’s why they ask you certain questions. It’s all because they want to cover their asses.
They want to make sure that they have done the best possible job at making sure that their concerns have been addressed. So they’re not conscious of this most of the time. So it is your job to show them they can relax around you without them having to think about it too hard, right? You just want to have them feel that comfort and trust level around you.
What sometimes can start have happening is when candidates are asked things that they’re not prepared for or maybe they’re not feeling great about themselves. They might start to get defensive and they might start to clam up and they might start to feel attacked or defensive about the questions if your mindset is around, “Why this is relevant. They’re just trying to pick out my flaws. They should just believe that I’m capable. This is insulting my intelligence.”
I’ve heard all these things before. Some candidates will just get in that space of like, “Why are they even asking that?” That is such a stupid question? Or they might ask, “That’s not even relevant to the role.” Or they might think, “I don’t know that. I could figure that out though. Why are they interrogating me?” So this is where that mindset of interviewing comes in that really causes you to clam up, hold back, and not access everything that you have to share with them. That would make them feel like they can trust you, right?
Because you don’t have to have everything. You don’t have to have 100% of the answers all the time to convey this feeling in the interview. Okay? I promise you. So what normally happens is when we are in the wrong mindset around this, we clam up and we… It’s funny when I’m coaching people on this. I see that they respond as if they had something to hide, kind of like, “Oh, well, I don’t want them to think this. So I don’t want to say this.” Right? And then they start to feel interrogated, attacked, and they freeze.
Then it repeats as a cycle. This is one of the biggest problems is someone will make the same mistake with their mindset throughout the interview. They won’t know that that’s the mistake they’ve made. Then they’ll go to another interview and it’ll be the same thing. They’ll create the same response, the same energy, the same results. Then they’ll start to get really frustrated. They’ll be out of their value bubble by then.
Because if you’re frustrated, feeling attacked, and interrogated, you’re not focusing on the abundance of things you offer to them with your skills, abilities, your character. And you as a human, you’re totally off focusing on that. And you’re into a different mindset, which doesn’t help you in the interview. Then you
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end up going from interview to interview with this mindset, which ends up having you in a cycle of this is not working.
So many people, they get so many interviews because, obviously, they’re qualified. They have what they need. People don’t interview for fun, so obviously they’re interviewing you for a reason. And then you’re just going making the same mistake. And it could be this mistake. It could be one of the many other ones that I talk about. That’s what I teach you, and that’s what I help you figure out inside my program.
This is the thing. It’s like if you are stuck in a perpetual interview cycle, there is a clear reason for that, and I will pinpoint what that is. So that’s what happens. So why it doesn’t work, you could probably guess, is that they sense this from you. Especially, if it goes on over time, it increases an intensity for the worse. So they sense that you’re hiding something even if you have nothing to hide, which as I was saying, it’s really interesting to me because my clients are trying to hide things, but I tell them, “You did nothing wrong. You have nothing to hide. If you were going to tell the truth, what would you say?”
A lot of times the truth is fine, right? It can be finessed a little bit. We can use some words that feel better, but that is you. That is the truth of you, and that’s the only way that you need to show up. It’s better for you. It’s better for them. So they sense you’re hiding something. If you quickly want to move away from a topic, they’re going to sense that. They’re going to be like, “Oh. Well, they were clearly uncomfortable talking about that. So that’s a red flag.” They sense that you’re not being open with them. They know that something is up. So that’s a red flag for them, and that causes them to not trust you. Right? Even if there’s no reason not to trust you. Because in the role, you’d be great. Right?
So my clients are normally, like I normally on a default loop of, I need to say a certain thing, I should be a certain way, this needs to happen for them to you think, blah, blah, blah. So that takes you out of your value bubble, out of your truth, out of your authentic self, and they can sense that really, really easily. And if you put yourself on the other side, you’d be able to sense it from somebody too.
I’m sure you’ve been in that position where you have, right? Like, “Oh, that was weird. They were really uncomfortable with that question. I wonder why.” And then they just want to dig deeper and they want more, but they probably won’t go there in the interview. They’ll just be like, “Okay. Yeah, that was a red flag. Don’t feel it. That person wasn’t the right fit.” Right?
So what we need to do instead is start looking at it from their point of view. So literally imagine you are hiring for the most important role in your company. You are interviewing someone and you can tell that they don’t think your questions are relevant. They don’t think that you should be asking this. They want to sidestep. They’re not really into answering that question. It doesn’t feel open. It feels like they might be hiding something. You will pick up on that and you won’t feel good about welcoming that person in. Right?
So put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, “What would I want from buddy?” And ask yourself… Say you are in a situation, let’s say you are making a career change and the obvious concern might be, “Well, can they transfer over these skills that they had over here to this? Can they really do that? What would you want them to say honestly that would help you trust them?” Right?
Let’s assume they are a fast learner. They do pick up things fast. They would be a huge asset to you. And maybe they’re a diamond in the rough because other people might pass them up because they don’t have that specific experience. But you’re like, “You know what? I think this is a good decision and a good investment to bet on this person.” Because there’s people out there who, if they change what they’re doing, they can jump in, learn really fast and do a really good job at something. Right?
We know there’s people like that. Assuming you’re someone like that, the person that you’re interviewing for is someone like that, how would you like them to convey that to you in a way where
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you are sold? And you’re like, “Yeah, I trust them. Yeah, I think I should move on this person. I think we should snap them up before someone else does.”
Put yourself in the hiring manager’s position. What would you need to do in order to show that to them? What would someone need to do to show that to you? Okay? Imagine how you would feel comfortable with them responding? And I don’t mean just what you want them to say, but their demeanor. That’s huge. They’re energy. So are they open when they’re talking about things? Are they closed off?
I heard one business coach that I listened to her podcast. She built a brick and mortar business doing massage therapy. She was very successful at massage therapy. And then she decided she was going to start a coaching business online. Totally different. Right? So totally different industry, but obviously there were transferable skills. Coaching people was the transferable skill. Right?
So she put it really well where she said, “Yeah, when people asked me like, ‘Oh, have you ever coached on business before?'” She just talked about her results with massage therapy and she’s like, “No, I haven’t, but I built a multimillion dollar massage company in five years. Do you want to work with me or not?” No shame. Right? No trying to justify. No trying to explain. This is a way that you shift the dynamic. You’re like, “Yeah, I’m valuable. I did this. I didn’t do exactly this, but do you want to work with me or not?”
It’s putting out the energy of like, “Well, if you know someone’s going to and it’s happening, so you’re either coming with me or you’re not, and that’s fine.” So just kind of that energy. So that was just an example that I heard that I thought was really powerful because it was like, “Yeah, you can share your results in your other area of your success.”
So say you’re switching from accounting to consulting or something. I’ve had a client who did that or say, you’re switching from insurance to Salesforce and they’re like, “Well, have you ever worked on a big Salesforce project before?” And if my client were to say, “Well, no. But in the insurance industry, I exceeded the expectations and I created massive increases and I did blah, blah, blah.”
She just needs to talk about her experience there and then say, “Would you like me to do this for your Salesforce or not?” Maybe not those exact words, but because if you have been successful in the past, there’s no reason why you won’t be successful in the future. It’s just other are people’s beliefs. And when they start questioning you in that kind of underlying tone of like, “Well, have you done this before?” Then we get all in our head like, “Oh my God, I haven’t. What if that doesn’t work? What if I can’t? What if I’m not good enough?”
It’s like, “No.” It’s like, “Well I’ve done this other stuff. So do you want me to help you produce results or not? Because I can and I will.” So it’s up to you, right? It’s just like, “This is who I am.” So just that unapologetic, “I am successful. No, I have not done that exact thing. But I’ve done this, this, and this. Do you want to work with me or not?”
And that shifts the dynamic because they are trying to put you in an inferior position when they ask you the questions in that way and you get to just rise up and put yourself at an equal level or even higher, right? You get to choose how the dynamic goes for you. You get to choose how you respond to those questions, right? Nobody can put you at a lower level. Nobody can make you feel lesser or smaller.
You can respond with how you want to respond, and then you are all of a sudden back up where you want to be. And this is being in your value bubble. If you stay in your value bubble, then none of that will affect you. So Value Bubble podcast, reference that if you haven’t listened to it yet. But this is what I’m talking about. Anything that will take you out of your value bubble will have you doubting yourself, will have you be like, “Oh no, what if I can’t? What if they’re right? Uh-oh, I don’t have a specific example for that crap.”
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And then the rest of the interview goes downhill. That’s out of your value bubble. In your value bubble is like, “Well, I’ve done this, this and this, and this. Would you like my help?” And saying it in a way where you just feel unstoppable, powerful, confident, whatever you can get on board with that is in your value bubble so that you can present that way.
So curiosity and compassion, that’s where you need to go. So if somebody’s asking you questions about their concerns, you want to get curious and compassionate, just like you’d want someone for you to do, right? So if they’re like, “Hmm, I don’t know. Are you’re really going to fit in here because it’s really quiet. We don’t really talk a lot. We just communicate on Messenger. Are you sure that’s going to be okay with you?”
Then the curious and compassionate way to answer would be, “Yeah. How do you communicate? What are the ways that you guys do get your points across? Do you have meetings or do you talk… Is it just randomly on the messenger? How do you communicate around here?” Then they have an opportunity to tell you and then you can assess, “Oh yeah, that would be great. I really like that way of communicating. That sounds really good to me.”
In my previous company, I use those tools a lot or I use Messenger a lot. I mean, they’re going to have a way of communicating. They have to. Right? So if they’re asking you questions that are concerning for them, you get to just get curious and compassionate about why they’re asking that instead of getting defensive and angry about why they should just know that you’ll be fine or why they’re asking you. Right? So just watch if you are having those kind of responses, because they’re just default responses that your brain gave you that you weren’t really aware of.
And there’s nothing wrong with it. We just need to shift them because they don’t help us. So you’re going to want to look for that question behind the question. What are they really asking you? They want to know something about you. They want to feel a certain way and that’s where the question is coming from. That’s what they’re trying to tell you. They’re saying like, “Please let me know how you’ll navigate this new environment. Give me the confidence so that I can be sure that if I put you in this position, you’re going to thrive. Tell me how you’ll do that.”
They don’t ask the questions in that way, but that’s ultimately what they want the answers for. And quite honestly, if you don’t like the sound of the environment, then you need to be honest about that too. You might need to say, “You know what? It doesn’t really sound like a fit for me. I’m not sure that I would enjoy that.” And that’s okay. You get to walk away from that if that’s the case, right?
So always weighing it with your needs and their needs because we’re always looking for a win-win, right? But what we don’t want to happen is for you to be passed up because you didn’t address a concern that could have been easily addressed. Why it works so well is because they will connect with you through these exchanges, through these honest, open, explorative exchanges.
They will connect with you on those. So if you’re feeling closed, resistant, interrogated, attacked, frustrated when they ask you questions, they’re not going to connect with you through that energy. They will connect with you through curiosity, compassion, exchanges, where you get to ask them how it works for them and what they do, right? And then they get to ask you, “Would this work for you?” That’s where you connect the most.
When you open up and you’re honest with them about how you feel and what you want, they let their guard down more and more and they are willing to open up more to you. It’s how human nature works. Have you ever heard that? If you want to connect with somebody, you can start by telling something vulnerable about you and then they will feel more comfortable telling you something vulnerable about them. Or sharing something that not everybody knows about them or that they might not talk about. That connects people. Right?
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These are perfect opportunities to connect on this level. So what you’ll need is the willingness to be humble, the willingness to not know everything, the willingness to admit that you’re not perfect and that you don’t have 100% of the answers, but the willingness to know that you will be able to figure it out if you want to, right? That you’ll be able to adjust to an environment and how you might do that if you want to, if it sounds like something that would work for you.
Honestly, not justifying it because you’re like, “Oh, well, this is good enough, I guess.” If it’s something that you are excited about and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that might be really good for me.” What ends up happening is you get a deeper insight into this person who’s interviewing you or people, group of people, company and they get a deeper insight into you. And this increases your chances of getting hired exponentially.
So sets you ahead in your career because this skill is not just something that you would use in an interview. This is something you can use in meetings, in promotional conversations when getting your raise. Everything that you have learned here on this podcast, you can apply with humans in the world and for the rest of your career trajectory.
A lot of the times my clients will tell me that some of these shifts have been huge in their interpersonal relationships. Like when they’re communicating with a team member or their manager, just putting yourself in their shoes and having compassion for them. A lot of the times people are misunderstood. Somebody might come in being like, “Oh, well, what have you done? Have you done this? Can you do this? What about this?”
They might just be coming from a place of having a lot of people that they hired, that it didn’t go well for, or maybe they had one person and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to make that same mistake again, so I’m going to be extra tough this time.” Then you show up and you’re are like, “What is wrong with this person?” If they have a story, they have a reason why they’re behaving in that way. When you come from curiosity and compassion, you cannot go wrong.
So it sets you ahead in your career when you can come from this place. It helps you navigate your relationships better. And when you’re able to do that, you’re able to move up the ladder a lot faster. It helps you to solve and deflate conflicts a lot faster. And when you come from that curiosity and compassion, you become the person that people come to, to resolve conflicts. So that was me. I was like the office life coach.
People always came to me. They’re like, “Oh, you’ll know what to do. This person is doing this or this person is doing that. How do I deal with them?” My answer was always curiosity and compassion. It always starts there. Because when you show that to someone else, then they will show it to you in very rare occasions. When a person is very, very hard to get through to, it might take a little bit more than that. But normally that really, really hits the nail on the head for most people, because that’s what we need.
And if you ask yourself… People want to be understood, to be heard, to have their opinion explored. And when we don’t even take time to do that at all, then they start to act in a different way. They start to push more. They start to be more defensive. So you can’t really have a conflict with someone who’s not willing to. That’s where that saying that comes from is like, “It takes two people to have an argument.”
Just a little side note. My sister had a dog and he was just so submissive that my dog, Carly, she will like attack other dogs. She’ll be like, “Grrr.” She’ll be initially defensive. She normally doesn’t do anything to them, but she’s like initially like, “Grrr.” She goes in really strong and defensive.
My sister’s dog, Teddy, he would just… When she did that, she’d like come over to him and she’d be like, “Grrr.” And he would just flop over and be like, “Okay, yeah. Do whatever you’re going to do. I don’t
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care.” And then she didn’t. She was just like, “Oh, okay. Well, this is weird. There is no conflict to be had.”
So if you’re just not somebody who’s going to argue and you’re just going to come back with questions, then people can’t really have that dynamic with you. It’s just not possible to have that dynamic if one person is not willing to engage in it.
So there you have at my friends. That’s the episode for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I will speak to you next week. All right. Have a great week. Bye-bye.
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