I was recently watching a Marketing video from Derek Halpern as a precursor to his new product launch. Derek is an expert in understanding and applying human behavior towards marketing and selling. In his video, Derek introduced a simple graph that illustrates how to understand where people are on the buying scale.
He calls this line the Yes Line. The more closer people are to the Yes Line, the closer they are to making that purchase from you. The simple concept is the desire for a product and the trust in your product has to match for a customer to feel strongly about making that purchase. Additionally, the higher the price of the product, the more trust and desire has to be generated for the buying decision.
Let’s apply the same ‘Yes Line’ strategy towards landing the job you want. This is the same STRATEGY that candidates MUST use to land the job they want. The simple difference to this basic psychology concept is that – You have to generate enough trust and desire for your skills,capabilities and potential to make the hiring person want you. And similar to the price of the product, the more responsibilities the job has in store and potentially more the company pays you as remuneration, the more trust and desire you need to generate to land the job. Let’s explore how you can do that.
1. Desire – This is achieved by demonstrating your capabilities and competencies as it relates to the job you are applying for. Candidates often make the mistake of talking about all their competencies and capabilities as it relates to their current job. Although this may prove that you are a capable person, it does not demonstrate potential for the job you are applying for. The interviewer is looking at you the candidate from the lens of whats in it for me aka is this person capable of doing this job well ? it is thus important to speak the interviewers language and talk about how u can transfer your capabilities to the current job. Talk about the common problems that abound in the current job or the industry and some ideas you have on solving the problem. Ask the interviewer if the problem is occurring for them. If you have not done that job before, talk about how you have researched or spoken to others in the industry about a possible solution and how your skills are transferable and can help you apply the solution. By talking the interviewer’s language about what most interests the interviewer, you are generating DESIRE in the interviewer to hire you and thus moving him closer to the “Yes line” from a desire standpoint.
2. Trust – This is a tough one – to generate enough trust to get hired in an hour’s conversation. Nowadays we have multiple rounds of interviews and different people talking to the candidate. Networking is a great way to get to know more about the organization that you want to work for. By gathering and knowing more about the organization, you are gaining knowledge about the organization and slowly building a relation with at least a few folks in the organization, thus inching your way up in the trust line. The relations that you build with these people can in turn lead to more knowledgeable discussions in the interview, thus generating more trust. Additionally, these folks may be able to give you insights into the requirements of the job and the gap that exists. A more formal way to do it through informational interviews. Informational interviews are not very popular and not many organizations are open to this.
Realistically, it may not be possible to move as fast up the trust axis as you may be able to move up the desire axis in the interview room. But a basic level of trust along with a strong desire must be generated to get your foot in the door. You then build your trust in the first few months at your job and close the gap confirming to the organization that they made the right decision to hire you!
If you are going through the job search process now, how close to the ‘Yes Line’ are you?
Leave a Reply