Someone asked me a couple of months ago, “is this the worst job market you’ve ever seen?”
My answer – Absolutely not.
A bad job market means companies aren’t hiring.
That said, this might be the most competitive job market I’ve ever seen. Companies are hiring, it’s just that competition for the roles their hiring is quite difficult.
An interview is like an at-bat. Obviously there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get on base, but make sure you’re nailing these three items during the interview process to ensure you making the most of your at-bat.
- Execution over Ideas
Gone are the days of conceptualizing ideas or summarizing activities. Hiring managers want to get into the nuts and bolts. “How” beats “what.” Candidates who can walk through a campaign they personally built or projects they personally led (budget, timeline, results/impact) consistently outperform candidates who speak fluently about strategy, but stay vague on their actual role in getting it done.
TLDR – don’t focus on WHAT you do. Focus on HOW do did it, and the IMPACT it made on the organization.
- Culture Fit
I’m finding that a lot of companies are shortening the initial conversation with the hiring manager to 20-30 minutes. We all know it’s impossible to get into the weeds in 30 minutes, but that’s not what they’re looking for. They’re looking for personality & culture fit. “What’s the point of hiring someone that’s great at what they do, but I don’t enjoy working with them. The first conversation is simply a meet and greet to make sure we’d get along”, one hiring manager told me a while ago. Just because the job looks perfect on paper, doesn’t mean it’s the right fit. Lastly (and probably most important) there’s no quicker “Abort button”, for a hiring manager than a candidate that they can sense a twinge of an ego.
TLDR – Didn’t get a that job you were a perfect fit for on paper? You probably didn’t connect with the hiring manager/team as well as someone else did.
- Preparation
Whether you’re prepared (or not) for an interview tells the employer so much about you.
Do you know about the story of the company? Background of the person you’re interviewing with? One or two competitors or points of differentiation?
And none of this you have to do yourself! Throw the company into Claude and tell it to give you an executive summary. There is literally no excuse not to have a strong baseline overview of the company you’re interviewing for.
“I don’t want to spend a lot of time researching a company I might not work for”, someone told me a few weeks ago. “Fine”, I said. “but other people absolutely are”
Bottom line – competition for jobs right now is tight, and companies are making decisions based on the smallest of details.
How you do anything, is how you do everything.