Not the usual job interview advice

Something else that inspires me is street art around Madison.

I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters.

Too many.

I bet that’s a familiar affliction for many people reading this.

But I do it because you never know what is going to inspire you. You never know what will light that fire in your imagination that takes you to a new place.

Most of the newsletters I subscribe to are not about job hunting. They are about business, and design, and A.I., and politics. Subjects that fascinate me.

A great newsletter I subscribe to is called “Contentment” by Tracey Wallace. It’s about content marketing, not job hunting. But she wrote a recent issue about getting better at interviewing subjects for articles. And I thought it absolutely applied to upping your job interview game.

These are Tracey’s two pieces of advice:

1. Follow the pain.
   Every employer has a problem that they want their new employee to solve. Your task should be to figure out what that problem is, and figure out how you can solve it. If you can’t figure out what that problem is, make sure you ask about it in the interview itself. (Always be sure to have questions prepared.) It’s better if you’ve figured out the problem beforehand, but either way, you need to position yourself as the cure.

2. Make them the hero of the story.
   This is a version of my evergreen advice, “It’s not about you.” Your job interview isn’t about you at all - it’s about them. And frankly, they think they are pretty awesome. It will serve you well to figure out how they fit into the “Hero’s Journey.” (I’ve written about this before too.) How did they get where they are now? What is their struggle? And what is ahead for them? Anything you share about yourself should fit into their hero’s framework.

Do those two things, and you will be way ahead of anyone else they will interview.

---

Since we’re talking about being eclectic this week, I thought I would recommend something completely unrelated to job hunting. Is that OK? Because this week I listened to an audiobook that knocked me out. It’s Susanna Clarke’s “Piranesi,” read (really, acted) by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

It’s a fantasy story that leaves you quite disoriented in the beginning, because it’s not clear where we are or what is going on. But Clarke’s beautiful spare prose and Ejiofor’s powerful voice carries us through. You will never look at a marble statue the same way again.

I hadn’t listened to an audiobook in years; I’m more of a podcast guy. But it was wonderful, and might be just the thing to distract you during these difficult times.

See you next week.