William Byham - Landing the Job You Want: How to Have the Best Job Interview of Your Life

Empowered Teams: Creating Self-Directed Work Groups That Improve Quality, Productivity, and Participation by Richard S. Wellins, William C. Byham, and Jeanne M. Wilson

HeroZ: Empower Yourself, Your Coworkers, Your Company by William C. Byham and Jeff Cox (also available on audiocassette)

Inside Teams: How 20 World-Class Organizations Are Winning Through Teamwork by Richard S. Wellins, William C. Byham, and George Dixon

Leadership Trapeze: Strategies for Leadership in Team-Based Organizations by Jeanne M. Wilson, Jill George, and Richard S. Wellins, with William C. Byham

The Selection Solution: Solving the Mystery of Matching People to Jobs by William C. Byham with Steven M. Krauzer

The Service Leaders Club by William C. Byham with Jim Davis and Ray Crew

Shogun Management: How North Americans Can Thrive in Japanese Companies by William C. Byham with George Dixon

Zapp!: Empowerment in Health Care by William C. Byham with Jeff Cox and Greg Nelson

Zapp! in Education by William C. Byham with Jeff Cox and Kathy Harper Shomo

Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham with Jeff Cox (also available on videocassette and audiocassette)

1. A Clean, Well-Lit Establishment:
They Could Have Called It the Need-a-Job Cafe

2. Start Spreading the News:
Identifying Your Qualifications

3. They Say Its Not What You Know, But Theyre Often Wrong:
Looking at Your Knowledge/Skill Dimensions

4. Apply Yourself:
Behavioral Dimensions and Using What You Know

5. Beyond Method Acting:
The Importance of Motivation

6. Artists Impression:
Profiling the Dimensions of a Job

7. Cupids Arrow:
Matching Your Dimensions to the Job

8. So, Tell Me About Yourself:
Opening the Interview

9. A Day in the Life:
Behavioral Simulations and Tests

10. If You Were a Tree, What Kind of Tree Would You Be:
Coping with Difficult Interviews

11. Dont Call Us, Well Call You:
Ending the Interview on a Positive Note

12. 20/20 Hindsight:
Learning from the Interview

It seems like there are a million books out there that promise to help you get a job.

This book is different.

Lots of people will tell you what they think job interviewers are looking for.

We know what interviewers are looking for.

A t Development Dimensions International (DDI), were in the business of teaching managers how to interview job candidates. We work with organizations that want to do a better job of selecting the right people. For almost 30 years, weve been training managers in a process we call Targeted Selection. The Targeted Selection method is a simple one. Its based on the idea that a persons past behavior predicts future performance.

Think about some of the questions youve been asked in job interviews. Does Whats your best quality? sound familiar? How would you answer that question? Youd probably say something general such as, Im a hard worker, or Im a quick learner. And dont forget that old favorite, Im a people person. When you give answers like that, what does an interviewer learn about you? What have you said to demonstrate the benefits of hiring you over any of the other people who want the job?

What does being a people person actually mean, anyway? If youre good with people, that might mean you have a knack for convincing people to do things. It might also mean that you show a lot of concern for other peoples needs. Or it might mean that you work well in groups or teams. It might mean all those things. Your past behavior is a specific time when you led a meeting or made a personnel decision or coached a team. When you talk about your behavior, youre not discussing what you think or how you feel. Your behavior is what youve actually done. We call an example of a past behavior a STAR because a complete example includes a situation or a task, the specific action you took, and the result of your action.

After hearing such specific information about your past behavior, an interviewer can draw a conclusion about your future performanceand make an accurate evaluation of how youll perform in the job you want.

Targeted Selection training sessions give our clients the tools to do just that. Weve worked with more than 7,000 organizations to help their managers make accurate and consistent decisions about whom to hire and promote. Our clients include McDonalds, JCPenney, Citicorp, Motorola, Toyota, General Motors, Avis, Kraft Foods, Eli Lilly, and Coca-Cola. In the past year nearly one million interviewers were trained in the Targeted Selection system.

Our consultants spend time with these clients and perform a job analysis, which consists of talking to managers and employees, asking questions, and getting to the heart of what theyre looking for in a colleague. We find out what kind of performance they expect for each position being analyzed. We then classify these expectations into dimensions of performance. Dimensions are specific types of behaviors, such as leadership or planning and organizing.

We help managers develop interview questions that seek information about candidates past behaviorsSTAR examples in specific dimensions. After the interviews the managers use the information to determine which candidate is best suited to their needs.

Our system enables organizations to ensure that applicants are considered fairly: All candidates for a particular job are judged on the same job-related criteria. This system eliminates worries about discrimination or bias. And managers can be sure that theyre hiring the very best people.

DDI is recognized as a world leader in interviewer training and employee selection. In fact, it was while President and CEO Dr. William C. Byham was delivering a keynote address to a human resources conference that we were asked to consider sharing our expert knowledge on interviewing with the people on the other side of the deskthe job seekers. Thats how the idea for this book was conceived.

We began by thinking about the kinds of information that would be most helpful to people going on job interviews. Plenty of books on the market offer advice on things like what to wear, but not much practical advice on how to answer interview questions. So we designed Landing the Job You Want to help you:

• Know what to expect from an interview.

• Prepare for the interview.

• Handle a difficult interviewer.

• Critique your interview performance in order to do better the next time.

• Decide whether a job is right for you.

If youre reading this book, odds are youve got some important things on your mind. Maybe youve just been told that your job is being eliminatedor that it might be. Perhaps youve heard a rumor that your company is being reorganized or sold and that everyone will have to bid for a job in the new organization. Maybe today something snapped, and you realized that you just cant keep doing the same job forever.

Whatever your situationfinding a place for yourself in a changing organization, leaving your present job, returning to the workforce after an absence, or finishing school and looking for your first professional jobyoure probably feeling confused and anxious.