Always Be Interviewing

Today’s post is a guest post by my won­der­ful friend Mr. Waf­fles on Wednes­day. We first met almost 2 years ago and hung out for a week in Ecuador at Chau­tauqua 2017. I also went to vis­it them in Cal­i­for­nia last year. Mr. WoW and I have some pret­ty great philo­soph­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions, and recent­ly a lot of those have been on inter­view­ing and job hunt­ing. I asked him to com­pile some of our con­ver­sa­tions into a blog post and he hap­pi­ly did so. This is the result. Read on to the end as to why this top­ic is so near and dear my heart right now. Take it away, Mr. WoW!

I’m a bit of a loose can­non when it comes to my career. I like to chalk it up to the fact that I had an uncon­ven­tion­al men­tor. But, some could just say that I’m a lit­tle whacked out of my head.

That being said, some­how I’ve man­aged to make it this far in my career. I haven’t been fired. I got laid off once, as a part of a con­sol­i­da­tion after an acqui­si­tion. And you know what?? Some crazy f*ckers have actu­al­ly let me man­age peo­ple. Like REAL peo­ple. Like they actu­al­ly gave me the respon­si­bil­i­ty to make sure that these peo­ple are doing their jobs, when I’m lucky if half the time if I know what I’m sup­posed to be doing.

In all seri­ous­ness, I’ve man­aged some teams, and I’d like to think that I’ve done fair­ly well. I’ll take the fact that I keep in touch with a lot of the peo­ple that have worked for me, and the ones that still work for me come to me with ques­tions and advice, as a positive.

But, a few things that I tell them has got­ten me in trou­ble more than once.

Let Me See Your Resume

I remem­ber I came into a new job. I got intro­duced to my team, there were two of them that were fair­ly junior. So they showed me the ropes of the in’s and out’s of the place we were work­ing. We had our week­ly 1‑on‑1 meet­ings that were their time, to ask and talk about what­ev­er they wanted.

It could be career advice, per­son­al advice. Hell, we could just go and get cof­fee and stare at each oth­er, I mean it was their one hour each week of my undi­vid­ed attention.

Actu­al­ly, one of them took to the FIRE mind­set pret­ty ear­ly on, so a lot of the time we spent dis­cussing dif­fer­ent invest­ment strate­gies and how he should allo­cate things.

Then there came a time when I told each of them.

Bring your resume to our 1‑on‑1. I want to review it.

Wan­na watch some­one freak out? Have their boss tell them to bring their resume to a meet­ing. That cer­tain­ly rais­es some red flags.

Am I get­ting Fired?

I had to reas­sure them that no, they were not on the chop­ping block. I just want­ed to make sure that they had a resume that was up to snuff, because as I put it:

I’m loy­al to you the per­son. This com­pa­ny will come and go, but I want to make sure you are set up for your career.

So, yeah we sat there mul­ti­ple times, review­ing their resume and mak­ing sure that it was good enough to catch the eye of some­one that was scan­ning them.

Today, both of them have moved on and moved up in their careers. I’d like to think that I had some impact there. At least… that’s what I tell myself.

Never Turn Down an Interview

Anoth­er thing that I tell every­one that works for me that is a lit­tle unconventional:

Go inter­view with oth­er places.

I’ll tell you what. This lit­tle piece of advice is most cer­tain­ly uncon­ven­tion­al. Espe­cial­ly com­ing from your boss. But there are sev­er­al rea­sons why it’s good, not only for the employ­ee, but also the employer:

For the Employee:

1. Inter­view­ing is a skill that needs to be prac­ticed. You need to keep it up, oth­er­wise you lose it. It expos­es you to dif­fer­ent inter­view styles and allows you to get used to being “on”.
2. Inter­view­ing at oth­er firms allows you to know what skills peo­ple are look­ing for. If you go into the inter­view and they start ask­ing you about some­thing you don’t know, you know what to look into. This also might be some­thing that you are able to bring back to your cur­rent employer.
3. You learn the actu­al mar­ket val­ue of your skills. Most employ­ers don’t keep tabs on the mar­ket val­ue of their employ­ees. So, it’s up to you to know what your val­ue is. The best way to fig­ure it out is to find what some­one else is will­ing to pay for your skill set.
4. Should you actu­al­ly get all the way through and get an offer, you don’t have to take it, but you can prac­tice nego­ti­at­ing. Noth­ing like bring­ing a big ol’ can of IDGAF to a salary negotiation.

For the Employer:

1. Your employ­ees are exposed to oth­er ways of doing things, and poten­tial­ly can learn some­thing that might be ben­e­fi­cial to your orga­ni­za­tion. I know for me, I learned sev­er­al impor­tant ways to actu­al­ly inter­view new can­di­dates, sim­ply by going through oth­er processes.
2. You learn the val­ue of your employ­ees. As an employ­er, you want to be pay­ing your peo­ple a fair wage.
3. As an employ­er, we want to know what makes a com­pet­i­tive work­place. If one of our employ­ees goes out and gets a new offer, what are the ben­e­fits? How is the com­pen­sa­tion structured?
4. I always want­ed to employ peo­ple that oth­ers are inter­est­ed in. If some­one else likes what they are doing, it’s my job to keep them hap­py and keep them want­i­ng to work at our company.

So, while this might be a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, I feel like it’s actu­al­ly quite ben­e­fi­cial. Should the employ­ee go out and find a new job that is bet­ter than the one we are cur­rent­ly offer­ing, great!! That’s awe­some, good for them.

What have I learned from interviewing?

In an effort to heed my own advice, I am con­tin­u­ous­ly inter­view­ing. Now this doesn’t mean that I’m nec­es­sar­i­ly unhap­py with my job, but it does mean that if I get a call from a recruiter that is inter­est­ing or I find an inter­est­ing posi­tion, I’ll see what the oppor­tu­ni­ty is all about.

In my own expe­ri­ence, I’ve learned tons from inter­view­ing. It’s actu­al­ly made me a bet­ter per­son and employee.

One of the skills that I’ve picked up that has been most handy, is how to inter­view future can­di­dates. It’s been immense­ly help­ful to go through the process at oth­er com­pa­nies to under­stand how they approach interviewing.

Anoth­er aspect that has helped me along the way, is know­ing my own short­com­ings as an employ­ee. A lot of times I’ll go into an inter­view feel­ing con­fi­dent, and leave com­plete­ly deflat­ed. But, that’s a good thing. It means that I know where I should con­cen­trate efforts to improve my skill set. This has been a boon for me through my career as I have round­ed out my shortcomings.

I’m always sure to ask a com­pa­ny I’m inter­view­ing with how they han­dle things in their com­pa­ny, how their orga­ni­za­tion is struc­tured, what types of tools they use. These things are always invalu­able since you can brush up on what skills oth­er employ­ers are look­ing for, even if your cur­rent employ­er isn’t mak­ing use of that skill. I’ve actu­al­ly tak­en knowl­edge from an inter­view back to my own com­pa­ny and imple­ment­ed it with great success.

One of the biggest ben­e­fits I’ve seen through con­tin­u­ous­ly inter­view­ing is the salary bumps that come along with it. As men­tioned, inter­view­ing is the best way to test the mar­ket val­ue of your skill set. It con­stant­ly is chang­ing and if your skill set is worth more than your cur­rent salary, it’s time to con­sid­er the next move, whether that be nego­ti­at­ing a raise with your cur­rent com­pa­ny or look­ing to move exter­nal­ly. I’ve used this to my advan­tage sev­er­al times.

Wrap Up

Like most things in life, it’s impor­tant to keep gath­er­ing up expe­ri­ence and con­tin­u­ous­ly learn and stretch your­self. And inter­view­ing while you are employed is one of those ways to brush up on a very impor­tant skill and keep aware of the cur­rent trends in the mar­ket place.

While this might be a lit­tle con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, con­stant­ly inter­view­ing at new places is ben­e­fi­cial to you and your employ­er. Espe­cial­ly if you are get­ting inter­views at respect­ed and impres­sive companies.

Gwen’s Thoughts

Mr. WoW was one of a few peo­ple I leaned heav­i­ly on when inter­view­ing for my cur­rent posi­tion at a gov­ern­men­tal agency here in DC. I found the tran­si­tion from free­lancer to work­er more dif­fi­cult than I antic­i­pat­ed because I was out of shape inter­view-wise. My skills were hel­la rusty. I might have found it eas­i­er to get back into the W2 world if I had kept up my skills. With his and a few oth­er peo­ple’s help, I land­ed this gig.

Part of what I did was revamp my resume. My resume was­n’t bad, but it was­n’t WOW either. I paid a friend of a friend some mon­ey to redo my resume and make me sound like the super­star I am. She did a fan­tas­tic job! As part of that process, she helped me tweak my LinkedIn pro­file. I’ve been at this job for almost 3 months now and I’m back on the inter­view cir­cuit. I did­n’t go out look­ing, but a recruiter for a Very Big Tech Com­pa­ny in Sil­i­con Val­ley head­hunt­ed me based on my LinkedIn pro­file. I flew out last week for an on-site inter­view and have com­plet­ed 6 inter­views so far. I’m cur­rent­ly wait­ing to hear how I did and if I move on to the last inter­view in the process. I could more than dou­ble my salary and have a real­ly cool job, so my fin­gers are crossed. Who knows, maybe my next post will be about me mov­ing to Sil­i­con Valley!

Thanks to Mr. WoW for being such a great friend and for being will­ing to write this post. What are your thoughts on hon­ing your inter­view skills? Sound off in the com­ments below!