A Sure Way To Fail An Interview

When you don't get the job, you often don't know why. Most often you don't get feedback about your interview. Here I give you one of the reasons why you did not go beyond the first interview. If you did not get the job after the 2nd or 3rd interview, it's not your interview skills that suffer. There may be other circumstances that were at play. But if you did not go pass the first interview, you may have failed it. And it's your interview skills that need polishing.

One of the critical factors in the first interview is your communication skills. From my professional experience if a candidate can't clearly articulate their answers, it's B-A-D. They get disqualified in the first 10 minutes.

Think back when you were in an airport or in a public transportation. And they were announcing something about delays, but you couldn't understand a word. How annoying was that? In an interview setting it's the same. Some people have a very indistinct manner of speaking and it's hard to understand what they are saying. This indistinct way of speaking "almost to an unintelligible extent"in Dictionary.com is defined as "mumbling". I refer to it as "physical mumbling".
"Physical Mumbling" is, uh, littering, you know, your language with filler words such as, uh, you know as "ums, like, uh, you know's" and not articulating your words well. If you did not get this last sentence, you know where I am going with this. When someone speaks like that, they appear as unprofessional and not having mastered the English language.

But, of course, you don't speak like that? Do you? To make sure that you don't, here is a "Mumble Test". To do the test you need some type of a recording device. Almost everyone has one or another, say on your phone or iPhone.

1. Get your phone out.
2. Ask yourself a sample interview question, does not matter which one.
3. Push the RECORD button and answer the question.
4. Press stop and listen to your speech.

Another way to check for "Physical Mumbling", if you don't have an iPhone or such, is to ask a good friend or someone you are comfortable with to count the number of filler words you used in answering an interview questions. If you have more than 3 or 5 "ums" or the like in your entire answer, you need to practice eliminating these filler words.

A note: don't mistake mumbling with having an accent. Even with accent you can still articulate well.
The second type of mumbling I define as "Mental Mumbling". "Mental Mumbling" is not being articulate and not using professional language.

Here is an example. Imagine an interviewer asks you a question: "Please tell me about your recent accomplishments."

And you start: "Well, in my last position I was in charge of setting up a conference for the company. I found a name of a company from a colleague of mine. She said she used them several times and they were very successful. I decided to follow her advice and call them up. But when we did start working with them there were a lot of issues. Also, my manager went away on vacation. So when I called the conference company they told me that their assistant did not get our requisition. Then I thought maybe we should get together with them and have a brainstorming session. So I called them up again and tried scheduling the meeting for this week." And so on and on, and on. You've already lost your interviewer.

What I suggest you say in this situation:
"When my manager went away on vacation, I was charged with putting together a conference. Before that he used to do it. It was a large, whole company conference with a lot of logistics involved. It became my responsibility to research a conference provider and negotiate the contract. Once I had a vendor located and secured, there was a big issue with mailing of invitations. The provider did not mail them on time and we had to pay extra to deliver those invitations on time. What I did was I negotiated a rate reduction because of the extra expenses incurred on our part due to failed mailing. On top of the reduction, the conference company even gave us all the meals complimentary."

Both answers contain about 120 words. Now, you can be the judge of which answer gave you the most information. If you use the first answer, especially early in the interview, you will be disqualified almost immediately. And you won't have a chance to redeem yourself later in the interview. From interviewer's point of view, if you answer one question like that, most likely you answer all the questions like that.

But if you learn to answer questions as I showed you in the second example, you will come across as professional and well spoken. Even if it is not a part of your job to be well spoken or professional, speaking well increases your chances of getting any job. Don't shoot yourself in the foot - rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Marina is a Certified Human Resources Professional, with over 10 years combined experience in coaching, human resources and recruitment. She worked at large and small organizations, and understands challenges of both recruitment and job search. Her Human Resources experience will shed the light for the candidates into behind the scenes decision making process of recruiters and hiring managers. This insight will be invaluable to job seekers who are having difficulties in getting recruiters to call them back for job interviews.

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