But remember that recruiters can’t hire you. They are intermediaries who add value to their clients by screening and presenting qualified job candidates. Occasionally their endorsement carries significant weight. If they recommend you highly, it increases your chances of getting a job. But recruiters can’t make you an offer. Only their clients (called “principals”) can do that.
“I’m hugely okay with note takers as long as it doesn’t delay our process,” says Seattlejobs.org’s president Janice Brookshier. “After all, I’m going to be taking notes.” A job interview is not a social occasion. It is a business meeting. And in American business culture, taking notes in support of a business meeting is considered not only appropriate, but often a sign of professionalism.
Far from a sign of disorganization or weakness, taking notes is a mark of a well-organized professional. The cultures of companies such as IBM, Cisco Systems, and Computer Associates International actually encourage note taking at all meetings. Employees are issued notebooks, and they are expected to use them as part of a culture that insists that people stay accountable for the goals and objectives they take on.
Melanie Mays, a recruiter with Empyrean Consulting, Inc., in Dallas, Texas, supports note taking because it encourages candidates to listen rather than talk. “I coach candidates to apply the 80-20 rule in job interviews: You should be listening 80 percent of the time and talking only 20 percent of the time. If taking notes helps, I’m all for it.”
These recruiters believe that taking notes actually keeps the attention on the speaker by minimizing interruptions as the applicant makes a list of insights and responses that can be referred to when it’s the listener’s turn to speak. Note taking does not have to be distracting. The point of notes is not to take down a conversation verbatim, which would be intrusive. The purpose is to remind yourself of important points that are being made and questions or comments you don’t want to forget when it’s your turn to talk.
The most important thing is to ask permission. “I never have a problem with people who ask permission to take notes during an interview,” says Sandra Grabczynski, director of employer development at CareerSite.com, an online recruiting service in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “It generally impresses me that the applicant is taking the opportunity seriously.” Whipping out a notebook without asking permission may strike some interviewers as presumptuous.
Candidates are not the only ones taking notes. Rich Franklin, HR director at KnowledgePoint, a software maker in Petaluma, California, prefaces most interviews by saying that he will be making a few notes during the course of the interview. “At that point, I invite them to take notes as well, if they want,” Franklin says, adding that he’s gratified when they do. “Benefits and insurance plans can be pretty complicated, so I appreciate candidates taking notes. It shows me they are serious.”
In fact, Bryant Howroyd’s practice is to ask just one question, and then immediately throw the ball to the job seeker. Bryant Howroyd’s first question, after greeting the job seeker, is:
What is your understanding of our meeting today?
How’s that for turning the interview topsy-turvy?
But Bryant Howroyd understands she can tell more from candidates by the quality of their questions than by the quality of their answers. So the next instruction is:
I would now like you to ask me seven questions.
Depending on the quality of the applicant’s response to the first query, Bryant Howroyd invites the applicant to ask her from three to seven specific questions. The higher her initial estimation of the applicant, the more questions she requests. What’s more, Bryant Howroyd gives the applicant permission to ask her any questions at all. No limits. And then she listens. “I learn a lot more about people by allowing them to ask me what they want to know than by having them tell me what they think I want to know,” she says. True, the hiring company ultimately selects the applicant, but “the applicants I most admire insist on being full partners in the selection process,” she says. Now, are you really ready for an interview with Janice Bryant
Howroyd? Robin Upton is a career coach at Bernard Haldane Associates, the largest career management firm in the United States. Based in the firm’s office in Dallas, Texas, Upton coaches her candidates to ask two questions of the hiring manager. The first question is:
Now that we have talked about my qualifications, do you have any concerns about me fulfilling the responsibilities of this position?
Does it seem counterintuitive to ask the interviewer to articulate his or her concerns? Many candidates think so. But they are being shortsighted, Upton argues. Once objections are stated, the candidate can usually address them in a way that is satisfactory. Unstated objections will doom the candidate every time. Upton’s second question is:
As my direct report in this position, what are the three top priorities you would first like to see accomplished?
This question, she says, effectively determines the hot buttons of the hiring manager, demonstrates the candidate’s understanding that every hiring manager has priorities, and underscores the candidate’s commitment to action by the final word in the question. Remember, “accomplish” is a term dear to the heart of every hiring manager.
If you don’t ask questions in the interview, many recruiters will wonder if you will avoid asking questions on the job. “If I set up a scenario for a technical candidate, and they don’t ask qualifying questions, I really wonder if that is how they would approach an application development project,” says Kathi Jones, director of Employee Central at Aventail, a Seattle-based provider of extranet services. “Are they letting ego get in the way of asking the hard questions? Do they play on a team or play against the team? I think you can learn as much from someone’s questions and their thought process as you can from the answers,” she adds.
Here’s another wrinkle. Recruiters expect candidates to ask enough questions to form an opinion about whether they want the job or not. If you don’t ask enough questions, recruiters who may otherwise be willing to make you an offer may nevertheless reject you because they have no confidence you know what you would be getting into. “At the end of the day, as the interviewer, I need to feel satisfied that the candidate has enough information on which to make a decision in case I make an offer,” says Richard Kathnelson, VP of human resources at Syndesis, Inc., in Ontario, Canada. Open-ended questions that generate information-rich answers signal to Kathnelson that he is talking to a resourceful candidate who knows how to make informed decisions, a skill vital to any job.
Some candidates think that when the interviewer says, “Now, do you have any questions?” it’s a polite indication that the interview is about over and they are about to wrap up. They couldn’t be more mistaken. The question really signals the start of the main course. Everything that came before was just appetizer.
Recruiters are unanimous on this point: Job seekers who fail to ask at least a few intelligent questions are destined to remain job seekers. If you don’t ask questions, you leave these impressions:
Not one of these impressions works in your favor. Of course, not any old questions will do. If you don’t think about this in advance, you run the risk of missing a critical opportunity by not asking intelligent questions or by planting your foot in your mouth by asking stupid ones. Good questions show the interviewer that you are interested in the job. Great questions tell the interviewer that you are a force to be reckoned with.
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