Selling is structuring what you say to impel another person toward a buying decision.

‘Structure’ means not only structuring your questions and phrasing but the overall shape of the dialogue, which can be understood as:

Opening.
Demonstrating Value.
Closing.

Opening is twofold: being open about your intent and ‘opening’ the interviewer as with a sales prospect where the ‘opener’ would likely relate to the business needs – the reason you are there facing each other.

 

Otherwise you end up answering  questions about your CV or ‘offer’. Which in the context of a job interview, where you are the offer, means talking about yourself.

That’s what most interviews are: a pitch for the job. Ditto many sales scenarios which sales people refer to as beauty contests, i.e. where each seller makes their pitch.

‘Beauty contest’ because someone has to get the deal. As opposed to a sale with no formal process where the buyer might opt to do nothing.

This is typically the case in a tender situation with a short-list of rival bidders competing for the business.

In virtue of being interviewed at all one is already qualified for the role on paper.

In spite of what Steve Jobs said about it being “Better to have a hole than an asshole filling it”, unless all the candidates are very weak, the chances are someone will get the job.

Conventional interview advice for candidates tends to reinforce that frame, that the candidate should aim to impress the interviewer in the hope of being awarded the role.

Hence the interview fits the beauty contest ‘frame’ with the interviewer as judge whom the contestants must impress.

But the object of the interview, at least for the candidate, is to engage with the interviewer in terms of the factors that will determine their selection process/’buying decision’, and at the very least win commitment if not a definite decision while in front of them, just as one would a sales prospect.

Not merely to impress them: ‘please choose me’ vibe.

Which in part means re-framing the interview to position one’s self as the selector. After all, a genuinely high value candidate is bound to have other options.

The ‘reframe’ is more in the structure than in substantive content, i.e. toning and timing: when and how more than what you say.

And in a sales or senior management role the interview itself is the demonstration of value given you’re already qualified for the role on paper in being interviewed at all.

Which is bound to be a key attribute of what they’re looking for in a salesperson to represent their business.

That you have other options being inferred by the interviewer from the impression you’ve left them with by holding your own frame rather than being pulled into theirs.

Boss the interview is a method to enable the candidate to properly engage with the interviewer, i.e. to frame the interview as a ‘sale’, influencing the selection decision in the moment.

Because that’s the only time when you can exert a decisive influence. It’s too late after you’ve left the room. You might still get the job, but why leave it to chance?