How to Become a More Persuasive Interviewee

On some level, all job seekers know it’s important to be persuasive.  However, how important persuasion is and how to become more influential during the interview process remains elusive to most.

Persuasive Interviewing’s Effect on Career Success

What separates people who are highly successful from those who struggle in their careers is not always talent.

Nor is it skill set, education, or work ethic. Don’t misinterpret that: capabilities, experience, and dedication play a substantial part in one’s cumulative success.  Though they don’t tell the full story.

There’s one critical component to most people’s success that is rarely, if ever, mentioned. It’s a person’s ability to persuade a hiring manager and make the interview outcome favorable, regardless of how relevant their experience is.

Alone, that ability to influence a hiring manager carries tremendous weight when calculating one’s cumulative career success.

What You’ll Learn

In the first installment of the multi-part series, you’ll learn the core components that make a candidate persuasive.

Once learned, the strategies will be game-changers. You’ll be more confident, engaging, and desirable as a job seeker.

3 Abilities All Persuasive Interviewees Possess

Over the years, our recruiting teams have seen countless candidates with amazing qualifications get rejected in the first round of interviews.   Then, lose out to someone much less qualified.

Confused?   You’re not alone. The reality of the situation is, it happens everyday.  Very few people ever get to see the interview process from the executive recruiter’s vantage point.

We assure you, we see David beat Goliath for a highly coveted job all of the time.  What’s their secret?

The less experienced job seekers utilize a strategy comprised of 3 very simple, yet highly critical persuasion strategies.

3 Strategies to Become More Persuasive

• Uncover the hiring manager’s true motivations
• Prepare compelling, interchangeable talking points aimed at addressing those motivations
• Maintain a high degree of relevancy when answering the interviewer’s questions

This is the recipe that allows a less qualified, yet more persuasive candidate to get the job.

What are Interchangeable Talking Points?

In the video, we’ll teach you a method to determine a hiring manager’s real motivations before the meeting.

Then, once you uncover a hiring manager’s priorities, you can prepare highly persuasive, interchangeable interview points.  So, what exactly are interchangeable talking points in the context of an interview?

It’s simple.  Interchangeable talking points are pieces of information about your background or skill level critical to address somewhere in the interview because they directly address the interviewer’s needs.

Moreover, they can be integrated into the natural flow of conversation regardless of what questions are asked.

Why is Preparing Interchangeable Talking Points Important?

Interchangeable talking points have shown beneficial in a myriad of ways ranging from persuasion to reduced anxiety. Some advantages job seekers see in interchangeable talking points is they do the following:

• Work regardless of the interview questions you are asked
• Capable of persuading any interviewer personality type
• Proven effective for job seekers with less relevant backgrounds
• Help reduce the impact of nervousness
• Alleviate many other interview factors that often erode interview performance

Additional Topics Covered

In addition to the above, we’ll teach you a lot more about becoming a persuasive interviewee.  Some of the other critical strategies you’ll learn will be:

• Biggest mistake interviewees make that undermines their ability to influence a hiring manager
• How persuasive interviewees prepare persuasive talking points for an interview
• The secret formula to interview persuasion

The Verdict

Persuasive interviewing comes from knowing what a hiring manager wants, having prepared talking points that speak to those needs, and discussing only what is relevant.