Thursday’s Thought: Got An Interview? Turn It Into A Sales Presentation

At one of my former company's, when we brought candidates in for an interview, we took a different approach to determining if they were a superstar or super-dud. And since the act of traditional interviewing has only a 50% correlation in determining how well someone will do on the job, this method proved much more successful than the typical Q&A game most organizations (as well as job seekers) play in the corporate world today.

If they passed the normal pre-screening questions during the phone interview, we invited them to prepare for and make a presentation to a panel of interviewers selected as a team of decision makers from various departments in the company.

They were informed that they would be given 1 hour to present a PowerPoint "sales" presentation on their background, abilities, skills, competencies, education, projects, projected contributions if they were hired for this position, and anything else that they felt were critical for the team to know in order to make an informed decision on their candidacy.

This process proved to be very informative and it was evident after that hour long presentation that this candidate was, or was not, a viable candidate for the job.

Thus, I would suggest that you offer to do the same the next time you get an in-person interview. Just run it by the recruiter as an idea that you had, and see if you can persuade them to let you stand up in front of the room and have the "judgment" team sit in the audience and evaluate your presentation. I believe you will have a much better chance of convincing them to move forward with you and conversely, if this role is not a match for you, that will also became very apparent using this method. Bottom line: you will either be at the very top or very bottom of their list after this 1 hour presentation.