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Why You Need to Do More in an Interview Than Answer Questions, with Ann Tropea

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A job interview is not a legal deposition; you aren’t there to sit quietly and only speak when spoken to. You have the opportunity in an interview to share who you are and build rapport with the hiring manager, says Find Your Dream Job guest Ann Tropea. Ann urges you to practice before the interview, to create a list of your most valuable offerings, prepare questions for the employer, and not be afraid to steer the conversation in a direction that allows you to offer your solutions to their problems. 

About Our Guest:

Ann Tropea is cohost of the Career Bitches podcast. Ann is also an author, a public speaker, and an advisor for student media at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Resources in This Episode:

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 468:

Why You Need to Do More in an Interview Than Answer Questions, with Ann Tropea

Airdate: September 18, 2024

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

A job interview isn’t a legal deposition.

As with any business meeting, you need to know what you want to accomplish before you walk into the room.

Ann Tropea is here to talk about why you need to do more in an interview than answer questions.

She’s the cohost of the Career Bitches podcast.

Ann is also an author, a public speaker, and an advisor for student media at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

She joins us from Baltimore, Maryland.

Well, let’s jump right into it, Ann. Legal depositions: some candidates actually do this. They think when they walk into the interview room, their job is to answer the questions, and then their work is done. Is that a good strategy?

Ann Tropea:

I mean, it is a strategy. It’s not one that I would generally advise. First of all, it doesn’t really set up a very conversational dynamic, and let’s face it, you’re almost never under oath during a job interview, so there’s no reason to sit there and answer questions as if you’re in front of a jury.

Again, it doesn’t really create the kind of rapport that you’re looking for in what really should be a conversation.

Mac Prichard:

I think people who do that, it’s well-intentioned. They think, “Well, the employer has a set of questions, and I want to make sure that I answer them all.” Is that what you think is typically going on when that happens?

Ann Tropea:

I mean, sure. Most people do not interview often. I happen to have interviewed a lot in my career for various reasons and developed a theory of what you’re supposed to be doing during an interview. I think going into it, wanting to answer questions and fill in gaps for your potential employer, of course, is important. I’m definitely not advising not to answer the questions that are asked, but there’s a little bit more to it than that. Some of that comes from the fact that your potential employer they may not interview very often.

They may not be sure what they want to know, and so this is really an opportunity for you, as the person being interviewed, to, yes, answer the questions asked as clearly and completely as you can, but also understand that your potential employer may not have a full picture of what they should be asking you, and so that’s an opportunity for you, as the person sitting there in the interview, to help them along that path and maybe go beyond the four corners of the questions.

Mac Prichard:

I’m glad you made that point because I think that sometimes an applicant may think that the person sitting across the table from them is an expert interviewer who’s trained in it, and as you say, many people don’t do job searches frequently, so they don’t have a lot of experience in interviewing, and that can be the case for the hiring manager as well.

Now, when an applicant only answers questions, Ann, what does the interviewer typically think of a candidate like that?

Ann Tropea:

Again, I tend to approach interviews as an opportunity for a conversation. It would be very one-sided if you’re sitting down and having coffee with a friend and only answer questions that they ask specifically and then sit there silently for the rest of the coffee chat. You know, of course, some interviews are going to be more formally structured, and if that’s the case, then definitely go with the flow, read the room, and figure out what style of interview you’re in.

I think you probably have a pretty good idea, depending on the type of job that you’ve applied for, the company that you’re potentially going to be working with, how straight-laced, and how formal the interview process is. Sometimes, you don’t really know until you show up, and of course, if you’re in a virtual interview, it definitely changes the dynamic, but again, I think the point here is that it’s important to treat the interview as a conversation, as a back-and-forth exchange of information, and not just a one-sided, “You ask, and I answer.”

Mac Prichard:

Well, you mentioned you have a theory about this, and I know that you have three particular recommendations for how to stand out in an interview by asking questions and doing more than just answering questions. Before we get there, in general, Ann, what kind of questions have you found that employers hope candidates will ask when they’re in the interview seat?

Ann Tropea:

I think employers don’t want to hear questions that everybody asks, and there are a thousand and one resources out there that give you standard what you should ask in an interview. I think that employers want to know that they’re special, that you did your homework, that you cared enough to really think about what you want to know. They’re looking for thoughtfulness; they’re looking to see that, frankly, you know what you’re talking about, and you’ve done some real thinking and have good questions that are specific to that employer and that demonstrate that you’re thinking beyond just getting the job.

You’re thinking beyond the offer letter. You’re thinking about, “Well, what am I going to be doing in six months to a year?” What would be good for me to know now? I think those types of questions are always welcomed from potential employers, and you certainly can’t go wrong by, again, do your homework, please, before you go into your interview.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s talk about the three recommendations you have for what you can do in an interview beyond answering questions. Your first one is when you ask questions; one of the benefits is that it creates and builds a personal connection with the interviewer. How does this happen, Ann, when you ask a question of a hiring manager when you’re in the interview room?

Ann Tropea:

One technique that I have experienced and that I have heard from clients over and over is that it’s really important to create that connection and that rapport at the very beginning of the interview. There is usually an awkwardness if you are sitting across the table from one person or maybe a panel of interviewers, or if you’re online, maybe a whole host of people in your Zoom interview.

You, as the interviewee, have the opportunity to use that awkwardness at the beginning when no one’s really sure who’s going to talk first or how it’s going to work, to jump in and break the ice, so to speak. You can be the one, as the interviewee, to ask where everyone is calling in from, if it’s a Zoom meeting, or make a joke, if that feels comfortable to you. I am often the one going the joke route or making some small talk with the people that you’re sitting with.

Now, if you’ve done your homework, as I’ve mentioned, you have sufficiently stalked everyone on Google and on LinkedIn and whatever social media and company websites, figured out where everyone went to school, where they are from, any point of commonality or similarity that you can bring up, this would be a really good place to do that, and you can say something like, “Oh, hey, Mr. XYZ, I saw that you went to NYU. I’m also an NYU Alum. When were you there?” Et cetera, et cetera.

Again, it’s just a way to create a quick, personal connection with the people that you’re sitting with so that they’re predisposed to like everything that you say after that.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s pause here, Ann. I want to take a break.

I want to dig in a little more into this topic about how you make that connection in the first moments of the interview.

Stay with us. When we return, Ann Tropea will continue to share her advice on why you need to do more in interviews than answer questions.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Ann Tropea.

She’s the cohost of the Career Bitches podcast.

Ann is also an author, a public speaker, and an advisor for student media at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County.

She joins us from Baltimore, Maryland.

Now, Ann, before the break, we were talking about why you need to do more in an interview than answer questions. There are three recommendations that you have for how to do this: how to do more than simply respond to questions from an employer.

The first one was look for ways to build connections and rapport with the interviewers in the first moments of a conversation, and you talked about, in the first segment, looking for common connections and doing the research that would help you to make those links.

What advice do you have, Ann, for someone who might be shy? I was certainly much more shier earlier in my life; some of us are just built that way. For someone who is uncomfortable with small talk, what have you seen work with your clients?

Ann Tropea:

That’s such a great question. I am a big proponent of the “fake it ’til you make it” school of thought, so if you are someone who feels uncomfortable making that first step, I would say do it anyway. Try, at least, to start some conversation. If it’s awkward for everyone, all around, it’s going to be an uncomfortable thirty minutes, hour, however long your interview is. I guarantee you’ll feel better if you can at least say a few things.

Whether it has to be about the weather or baseball or whatever you feel comfortable generally chatting about. People in line at the grocery store do that, and if that’s really way outside of your comfort zone, then take the opportunities that come up in that early conversation to make the interview a little bit less formal, a little bit more conversational in whatever way makes sense.

A lot of this advice has to do with being able to read the room that you’re in and know the audience that you’re talking to, so it is a little bit of waiting to see who the conversation is going to be with, but you know, it’s not the end of the world if you just can’t work in that joke that you’ve been desperate to use, and I’ve had to let that go, for sure, during interviews. It’s not always time for a joke.

Mac Prichard:

There always is a limited amount of time during interviews, isn’t there?

A second benefit of doing more than answering questions in an interview is that, and a reason candidates need to do that, it allows you to share important ideas and information that you want an employer to know about you. How do you do that, Ann?

How do questions or other techniques deliver the messages that you want an employer to know about you?

Ann Tropea:

Right, so something that I always recommend to clients is, before you go into the interview, make a short list of three things that you really want the potential employer to know. They can be things that are on your resume or in your cover letter, but they might not have made it into either of those documents or any of your application information because you have limited space on your resume and cover letter, and you can’t truly give a full picture of who you are as a new team member from either of those things.

What you can do is decide, “I know I really need this employer to know this about me.” Find a way to work that in your responses to their questions. If they ask you…There’s almost always an opportunity to answer a question that’s been asked and then say, “Related to that, I also wanted to share XYZ.” You can use interview questions as not just a means of communicating the answer, but you can use those questions as a jumping-off point to make sure that you’re able to share everything that you feel like it’s important for your potential employer to know.

Mac Prichard:

How do you make those choices before you walk into the interview room when you’re compiling the list of the three top points that you want an employer to know? Is it connected to the employer’s needs? What do you recommend?

Ann Tropea:

Yeah, I always do a deep dive into the job description, and again, grain of salt, not every job description is written well, not every job description, frankly, is written accurately, but that’s really what you’ve got to go off of. If they’ve hammered home a certain skill set or experience in a certain area, I would definitely make sure to highlight, that would be one thing that I would want to highlight in the interview. Even if you’ve submitted your resume and that information is in your resume, I think it’s a lot to assume that everyone interviewing you has read your resume with any degree of care or detail.

That may sound a little cynical, however, people are busy. Maybe they read your resume and liked it enough to give you an interview, but they didn’t read it line by line with the kind of attention that, as the writer of that resume, you might hope that they would.

Mac Prichard:

Your third recommendation for what you should do in an interview besides answer questions is look for ways to control the flow and the direction of the conversation. This might sound counterintuitive to our listeners because, after all, Ann, isn’t the employer in charge of this conversation.

Ann Tropea:

I think approaching it as a hierarchy is a mistake. Yes, the people that are interviewing you likely have some questions they want to ask, but again, this is a back and forth, this is a two-way exchange, and your engagement in the interview, the way that you engage in the interview, says a lot about you as a candidate and as a potential new member of the team.

The interview is really an opportunity for you to show that type of leadership and ability to shift the conversation, and it can be tricky to do that on the fly. Practicing in advance will help for sure, but when you’re answering questions, think about ways that you can use that question again. Use it as a jumping-off point to make the point that you want to make, and not necessarily give just an answer to the exact question asked.

For sure, answer the question asked; that’s always a good idea, but you can also go beyond that and expand and make connections that maybe your potential employer didn’t even think about.

Mac Prichard:

To sum up, look for ways to make connections and build rapport in the first moments of an interview, think about your top three key points that you want to make about yourself, your candidacy, and the benefits to an employer, and look for ways to deliver those messages by taking control of the flow of the conversation.

Any questions you shouldn’t ask in an interview? We’ve been talking a lot about the ways to deliver your messages and use questions and other techniques to build rapport, but anything that you would avoid doing?

Ann Tropea:

Don’t ask about vacation hours or hybrid work policies, unless that is the culture of that company and you’ve done your research, and you know that this is a thing that they do.

Anything where it seems like you’re already trying to figure out how to not be at work as often is probably a bad idea.

Mac Prichard:

Well, it’s been a terrific conversation, Ann. Now, tell us, what’s next for you?

Ann Tropea:

Again, I’m the cohost of the Career Bitches podcast, and we are ramping up for production of season five, so we have four seasons that you can find on Spotify, Apple, et cetera, wherever you find your podcasts, and continuing to consult for Career Valet. It’s a woman-owned business services company that I started working for back in 2019, and that’s where I learned how to write an amazing resume, so you should definitely check them out.

I also just wanted to give a quick shoutout to my students at the Retriever, the student run and edited newspaper at Maryland in Baltimore County.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. I do hope that listeners will check out your show. You and your co-host, Marcelle Yeager, do a wonderful job, and I enjoy it a lot. It’s a great program, and you’re doing great work.

I know listeners can learn more about you and your work at Career Bitches, Career Valet, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County by connecting with you on LinkedIn. We’ll be sure to include that URL in the show notes.

Now, Ann, given all of the great advice that you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing that you want a listener to remember about why you need to do more in an interview than answer questions?

Ann Tropea:

This is an opportunity for you, as the interviewee, to tell your story, take control of your narrative, and feel empowered in the process. I encourage everyone to do that. I hope that everyone will approach interviewing as a fun thing to do instead of something that’s dreaded.

Mac Prichard:

Next week, our guest will be Yauhan Mehta.

He’s a career coach who helps you stand out, get job offers, and maximize your salary.

Ask someone how to find a job, and you’ll often get the same three answers:

Visit job boards.

Go to career fairs.

Apply online.

Each method can work, but everybody else is doing the same thing.

Join us next Wednesday when Yauhan Mehta and I talk about four unconventional ways to get hired.

Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media.

Our sound engineer and editor is Matt Fiorillo. Dawn Mole creates our transcripts. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.