Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door (25 page)

After a job interview, do you know what happens in the office of the recruiter, personnel manager, and boss you just visited? They close the door and take out an evaluation form or a recording device and pass judgment on your future. In other words, they do their homework.

I’m astonished at how few job candidates take their own futures seriously enough to record or organize their notes on interviews that potentially have such an impact on their lives.

If you’re going to put your future and your fate in anyone’s hands, it should be your own. You have your own evaluation to make, impressions about your performance and about the company.

Those of you who have read my first two books—
Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
and
Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt
—probably know what’s coming next. First there was the Mackay 66 Customer Profile. Then came the Mackay 33 for Employees and Managers. What else but the Mackay 22 Post-Interview Homework, which you fill out
after
all job interviews? All these forms are available free on my Web site,
www.harveymackay.com
. (Can you tell I like lists?)

Because I believe so strongly in my mantra, “Prepare to win,” I’ve also prepared a questionnaire I call the Mackay Sweet 16, which you can also find on my Web site. This will help you get ready
before
you ever go to your first interview

You will find the Mackay 22 in the next chapter. Was I smart enough to use the Mackay 22 when I got my first job? No. I did, however, strongly suggest that my three children use the Mackay 22 when they launched their job hunts. They were each ultimately successful.

As for the Mackay 22 form, obviously you don’t flip it out during your interview. Don’t refer to it either. The job interview is a corporate ritual, and your role in this mating dance is not to take control but to react intelligently and creatively to the signals you get from your interviewer. Getting the job is always going to be your #1 priority, but getting the answers to the questions about the job is right up there as a close second.

Simple discipline. Basic questions. But for my money, simple and basic are the only way to go. This is so important, I’d fill it out even before I wrote the thank-you note to the interviewer!

Complete the following form as soon as possible after your interview, while the information is still fresh in your mind. (Research tells us that we forget 50 percent of what we’ve heard within four hours.) Then, use it as a reference tool as you move along toward getting the job you’ve always wanted.

Spend a second “packing your parachute” for the next outing.

The controller of the company at your last interview zinged you with: “Say, in the fourth quarter of 2008, Time Warner incurred a noncash impairment charge of goodwill and other assets at its AOL subsidiary. You don’t recall what the number was, do you?”

“Not offhand,” you muttered limply. After all, what’s this? You’re a marketing guy, not a finance guru!

Put all those hours of watching Regis and
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
to work for you. And I don’t mean remembering Gaborone is the capital of Botswana. Go to the next interview armed with a phone list of “lifelines,” and prime two or three of your friends in advance. When someone spears you with a gotcha question, you can be the perfect New Age team player and say, “That’s a great question. I don’t remember just now, but I know a guy who’s a whiz on AOL. Shall I text him on my BlackBerry and see if he’s there?”

Elsewhere in this book, I recommend not taking your smartphone to an interview at all. If you decide to do so, make certain it is turned off until it might be needed. The above opportunity is one of the few convincing reasons I can think of for taking your cell phone sidearm with you.

Here is the crucial information you should gather after each job interview: