Kevin Downey

Getting hired for a job is never a case of the luck of the draw. If you go into an interview unprepared, you’ll know it, and you won’t fool yourself or your interviewer into thinking otherwise. If you lack the confidence to win that job, it will show, and your interviewer will probably assume you're not interested in working there long term.

If you apply for a job you don’t want, and they hire you anyway, think about what that work environment looks like. You’ll be working with several people who don’t want to work there and will probably underperform. So make sure the job feels like the right fit for you. Pursue it. Justify putting in the effort to win it, and you’ll at least be in the running. If you don’t get hired, learn from your mistakes and try again until you succeed.

I started my management career working for a retail company with an award-winning brand that took an unconventional approach to everything they did. Other retailers would try to figure out our secret formula. Yet, it wasn’t one single thing or something you could hack. It was a philosophy and a way of being. It was a casual place to work with casual, comfortable uniforms and a sense of belonging for employees and customers alike. We valued integrity and stood behind everything we did. It was also a fun place to work and a fun place to shop. I received a lot of applications and resumes since it was also such a popular place to work.

So when weeding out who I should and shouldn’t interview, I looked for consistency. If there were inconsistencies on a resume, I wouldn’t interview them. For example, if someone bullet pointed their skills, and half of the bullet points they closed out with a period, and the other half had no punctuation, I figured that person’s work ethic would likely lack attention to detail, not be thorough, and their performance would likewise be inconsistent. The same goes for the answers they might deliver in an interview.

I’d often ask a candidate what their availability looked like, and if they were willing to work nights. I remember one candidate who told me their availability was wide open. Later, when I asked about their hobbies, they told me they performed in a rock band five nights a week and invited me to come and see them play. With that offer, they told me I shouldn’t hire them because they lied about their open availability and didn’t catch that they’d contradicted their previous answers.

Anytime I interviewed a candidate, I looked for a specific personality. Those I hired were down to earth, had a positive energy, had integrity, seemed on the same page, and answered every question perfectly. In other words, they got it. These were the candidates I knew right away I was going to hire. More often than not, I knew as soon as they turned in their resume or application, or ideally both. They had the confidence that comes with being in their element. They already felt like they belonged there, and I looked at them and knew they belonged… a person who could do the job right and interact with our customers our way. They embodied our values and seemed at home in our environment.

So when preparing for your next job, go the extra mile. If you want to work there, make it happen. Put your all in. When you do this, you’ll go into your interview with confidence, and your interviewer will know right away that yours is going to be a good interview.

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