“What do you know about us?” This is a disarmingly simple question, but to Scott Tannen, founder and CEO of Boll & Branch, it is one that can make or break a candidate’s qualifications and Tannen, having interviewed more than 1,000 individuals himself and hired 400-500 of them, knows that this first question will quickly assess whether a candidate has come prepared or simply come to investigate.
“I think that if they haven’t done their homework, that’s the largest red flag,” says Tannen. “You don’t have to be correct about all the answers, but you have done your homework. It’s not about remembering the facts,” he emphasizes. “It’s about showing that you care about what the company does.” Somebody who says, “You make bedding” has an opportunity to say, “You make high-end organic bedding, linen, sleepwear, furniture, home goods. This is what me, now with my wife, over 10 years ago, started.”
A prepared candidate shines by having already taken the time to learn more than just the corporate homepage. They may reference particular product lines, new projects, or interesting facets of the firm’s past. To properly prepare, according to job search gurus, a search should be conducted on the corporate homepage to learn the corporate “why,” “how,” and “how long,” and should be extrapolated to corporate social media sites to learn more recent information regarding new releases, trends, or milestones.
What she suggests is consistent with what has been learned about the job interview process: passion and interest are as important as skills. The process of preparing insightful questions to ask during the interview demonstrates interest. Rather than asking something that can be looked up on the internet, the job candidate can ask about the plans of the business to expand into new regions and how it defines success when it comes to customer experience.
A different voice on the topic is offered by Christian Sutherland-Wong, the CEO for Glassdoor. Often, he will ask a prospect what their “dream job” might be in order to understand their levels of ambition and purpose in seeking a position. “We want individuals who have big ambition, big dreams,” he says. The “biggest turn-on,” he argues, would be individuals referencing their own “dreams and ambitions,” then tying them back into the position they’re seeking.
Curiosity about learning is a quality that makes a great deal of difference for Tannen. He remembers conducting an interview for a merchandising internship with a student who did not have any related background. She talked about developing a brand of her own at college and wanting to learn more about the inner workings of Boll & Branch. “It’s one of the best interviews I’ve ever conducted,” Tannen says, emphasizing the “incredible desire to learn” of the interviewee. This intern is set to return to the company as a full-time employee after college.
Studies can also be of assistance to the candidate in matching their style with the company’s culture. It may be helpful to identify if the company has a culture of being creative or professional. It may even affect how the person would state their reason for wanting to be part of the company. After all, the reason cannot be solely focused on the benefits the person intends to gain. Finally, Tannen states that “arriving prepared is really not a very hard thing to do, but it truly distances the great applicants from everybody else.” This clearly states that as people applying for a job, one needs to take hours, not minutes, to be prepared, to ask questions that will lead to fruitful conversations, and to display passion for the job as well as a plan to deliver when one gets the job.
