Job interviews after Coronavirus
By: The Coach For Free
Tags: Interview Tips, Job Interview, Coronavirus Update, Corona, Coronavirus

The job market is now slowing down since the corona virus is spreading around the world. The main reason results in the interconnected economic system that was consolidated over the last decades. As a result, when one side of the world is being impacted, the other side is rapidly impacted as well.

We should not expect corporations, multinationals, or businesses to change over-night; however, the coronavirus crisis has already impacted the way we think and the way we live, and that will also impact the way we work.

But before we continue, we would like to share with you important information; It only takes on average 3 weeks for something to become a routine, for an action to be repetitively executed to be considered as a norm. Now remember, for several weeks, all governments asked their citizens to keep social distancing with almost everyone, relatives included.

We may think that this will be a temporary momentum in our life, but the truth is that social distancing will become a new norm.

Now you are right when asking, how is this going to impact my work?

In theory, nothing will change, work will remain work, but the truth is that social and human contact is the underlying element for building “Social Trust” and social trust is the primary criteria for human beings to trade and therefore doing business.

Let us tell you more about it: in our society, human contact is used to build trust, it is the essence for which you will grow your inner feeling about a person, a colleague, a friend or anyone who makes your social group. Have you already wondered why corporate companies spend so much money on business trips?

The simple reason is that they know that without this, their relationship with customer, team and colleague will be very fragile. Trust will be low or even nonexistent. A deal will not be dealt until two people shake hands.

As we know that human contact is the base for building trust.

How do you socialize in a world where corona is everywhere, and social distance is the only way to fight it?

The answer is simple: you hire people with strong social skills or what we also call human competences or behavioral knowledge, the official term is “SOFT SKILLS”. Soft skills are personal skills that demonstrate a high degree of emotional intelligence and used to build trust between human beings.

Among others, soft skills are:

Listening, compassion, politeness, empathy, discipline, diligence, patience, affability, forgiveness, resilience, responsibility, leadership, honesty

All those skills help anyone who uses them properly to start building relationships and therefore create an environment of trust necessary to make profitable and sustainable business.

If our future is fulfilled by uncertainty, companies will ensure that within their organization those skills are largely available so during crises like the one of corona, employees are not disrupted by the social distancing and will keep business up and running through intensive and well executed remote communication. Only possible if soft skills are found everywhere in their employee’s personalities.

Now that you know that soft skills will be highly valued, how can you emphasize them during a job interview?

First, make sure you are fully aware about your soft skills.

You can use a combination of few techniques: solitary brainstorm which means you will first list on your own the ones you THINK you have. Then, you will use surveys with your family, friends and colleagues by making sure they have a clear understanding of what soft skills are. Finally, to take an online soft skills test, I particularly recommend this test.

With those 3 techniques you will be able to cross all the skills you have and understand the strongest ones by highlighting the ones that come back each time.

Now you know which soft skills you have you need to read the following carefully:

“Being able to identify its own soft skills could boost your career twice as fast”.

We need to say it again.

“Being able to identify its own social skills could boost your career twice as fast.”

No kidding: soft skills are the secrets that bring people to the top.

Let us help you understand better here, you can be the best engineer on earth, if you do not know how to communicate your ideas; no one will give you the opportunity to develop them. You can be the best cook but if you do not know how to convince the restaurant chef to hire you; you will never be able to make customers test your delicious dishes.

Now, let us bring you further in this reasoning; Think about the people around you; how many think they deserve a better job, how many think their manager is not good enough and they should be themselves the manager? Now, imagine those same people in the role of your manager. What do you see in them? Why do you think they are still where they are today? the truth is that either they don’t have the skills or they don’t know how to put them forward or worst they might not know that soft skills are a big part of a career boost.

So, during the job interview, put your soft skills forward because they are the key to succeed and believe us or not, the first job interview is for 90% of the time, only to assess your soft skills.

Hiring managers assume that you will be capable of doing the job based on your education, experience and other, those are the reasons for sending at first your cv.

The reason for inviting you for a job interview is to figure out if you can listen and respond to the question in a structure and concise way. Are you able to interact and solve problems in your own building relationship with your colleagues, will you be a good fit in the team, will you be patient and resilient to change? Those are all soft skills questions; the hiring manager tried to answer during the first interview.

Let us give you an example: when a hiring manager asks you if you can summarize your CV in a few sentences, here you need to start from general to details, you need to use 5 to 6 sentences max and you need to highlight the experience that actually matters for the job you apply to. Being able to do so already demonstrates your capacity in summarizing, keeping your audience interested by your content and enabling the interview to switch from questions/answers to conversations.

What you need to understand here is that behind each question, a soft skills assessment is being hidden. So here is where you use your soft skills to read your hiring manager’s mind, adapt to his tone of voice and follow emotions so you can start connecting with your future manager.

If you can do so during your interview, we can guarantee you that three things will happen:

1. You will relate to the hiring manager and the job interview will look more like a conversation rather than a series of questions. This generally gives a positive feeling to the interviewer. The chance that you will be invited to a second interview is big.

2. You will boost your confidence and start to build up the attitude for the second interview as you have settled down the tone with your interviewer. If you were able to turn the interview into a conversation meaning both the interviewee and interviewer were exchanging information, you already know more than your competitor who did let the question and answer job interview style take place.

3. Most of the work is done, remember we say that the first impression is often the right one. If during the first interview you are able to demonstrate that you understand your manager’s pain point, you can clearly express an answer in a structure and concise way and that you can adapt to the conversation based on the type of question meaning you have strong soft skills… You are already halfway in the interview process.

Remember at the end you want to demonstrate how capable you will be to build relationships regardless of the situation so you can quickly and efficiently create a trusted environment using your soft skills.

Skills like listening, patience, communication or resilience are going to be needed even more now that corona and social distancing will be the new norm.

Knowing this, you are now armed to better take the lead on your career and get the control during your job interview.

Focus on those skills and you will be able to stand out from other candidates, focus on those skills and you will boost your career twice as fast as you were planned to, focus on those skills and you will control the interview better than you expected when you started to read this blog.

So, start running the race and get yourself ready for your first interview.

If you are interested, we are offering job interview preparation sessions, we like to call it “Job Interview Preparation Unique Experience” because we deliver all the little secrets which make candidates stand out from others. Our session includes one full hour of coaching.

If interested, you can click here.