John B. Molidor - Crazy Good Interviewing: How Acting A Little Crazy Can Get You The Job

Praise for Crazy Good Interviewing

I work with businesses to help them improve performance and profitability. Businesses look for the right people, and hire those who win in the interview process. If you know someone who is about to graduate, this is a perfect graduation gift. If your adult son or daughter wants to move back home, they need this book, too!

Joe Calloway,
author, Becoming a Category of One

Enlightening, engaging, and highly empowering! This book is a MUST READ if you want to know how to GET that job!

Monica Wofford,
CSP, CEO, Contagious Companies, Inc., author, Make Difficult People Disappear

John is a master presenter and a leading authority on the conduct of the selection interview. His wise counsel will serve you well if you need advice on preparing for and standing out in an interview setting.

Carol Elam, EdD,
Associate Dean for Admissions and Institutional Advancement, University of Kentucky College of Medicine

This book is a job seeker's bible. If you need a job, you need this book. I plan on anonymously leaving it by the bedside of several family members.

Molly Cox,
co-author, Improvise This!

I taught John the basics of interviewing while sitting around the dining room table. He'll teach you that and so much more. Be good to yourselfget this book!

Mary K. Molidor,
Mom, Grandma, and Grandma the Great

Copyright 2012 by John B. Molidor, PhD. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Molidor, John B., 1951

Crazy good interviewing : how acting a little crazy can get you the job / John B. Molidor, PhD, with Barbara Parus.

ISBN 978-1-118-29514-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-33184-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-33405-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-33516-1 (ebk)

1. Employement interviewing. 2. Job hunting. 3. Personality. I. Parus, Barbara. II. Title.

HF5549.5.I6

650.144dc23

2012006126

To Our Parents

Otto B. Molidor

One of the great executive recruiters and dads

Mary K. Molidor

One of the great master interviewers and moms

Anthony E. Parus

One of the great multitalented and multilingual dads

Erica J. Parus

One of the world's most beautiful and supportive moms

Foreword

When I first met John B. Molidor, Ph.D., I fell in love with him. Everyone else does, too.

He's, well, unusual, both as a dean of a college of medicine and as a CEO. He's also unusual because he is a professor of psychiatry and a master presenter. He loves observing people, figuring out what makes them tick, and then teaching us how to use this information.

Along the way, he forgot to grow up. Intentionally. He gets something very few people get: People who make a massive difference take their results seriously and themselves lightly.

He is the epitome of Let's knock it out of the parkand while we're at it, didja hear the one about the rabbi, the priest, and the minister who walked into a bar and asked to interview the bartender?

He stays light. He just can't help himself. But don't kid yourself. Even as he's yucking it up, he's moving mountains. One huge area of his expertise is how people perceive others and how they make judgments about theminstantly. This has played nicely into his interest in the selection interview and how it works. But, more importantly, he shows us how to use this information to manage this process.

On so many occasions over the years I've known him, I've seen him light up like a light bulb as he explained to me how he, as one of the deans of the medical school, helped his students get the jobs they want. It's a play-by-play about each studentwhat they did to get ready for their interview, how they performed in the interview, and how they put it all together to seal the deal.

Just by looking at him, you know this man is no stuffed shirt academic. Take his teaching uniform, for example: dress slacks topped with a Hawaiian shirt in a colorful floral print. Keep in mind that he lives in Michigan with its frigid winters. But, by no means does his casual attire reflect his attitude: He's a man on a mission. He not only taught thousands of people lessons on how to land a job, he taught them a far more powerful and additional lesson: how to be in the workplace and in life. He hammers home the importance of being authentic and being the best you that you can be.

John wrote Crazy Good Interviewing about how to get the job you want, based on his many years of conducting workshops and teaching interview techniques. When the idea for this book was just a seed in his brain, he was searching for the right person to help him germinate his vision. Where would he find such a person?

His keen observational skills, combined with his vast interview experience, led him to Barbara Parus, a writer extraordinaire who has a knack for transforming dry subject matter into fun, reader-friendly prose. The two seemed to be an ideal fit. They are both big-picture people with an irreverent sense of humor. John, who is very methodical and analytical, asked me what it was like working with Barbara, who had interviewed me for a magazine cover story. Happily, I gave her the thumbs up. This set the ball in motion for