Irrefutable Success

Dur­ing the past 27 years, I have worked for 5 dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions. While I have had the oppor­tu­nity to work for some incred­i­ble orga­ni­za­tions and with some awe­some lead­ers, each move brought me closer to my ulti­mate goal mak­ing an invest­ment in the lives of other people.

How­ever, “the one that got away” still per­plexes me to this day.

It was 1995 when I got a call from a friend who was a man­ager in a man­u­fac­tur­ing orga­ni­za­tion. He was about to be pro­moted, and he asked if I would be inter­ested in the Assis­tant Man­ager posi­tion that would replace him within the year.

“Heck yeah!”

I quickly began to pre­pare for the inter­view. Although he had rec­om­mended me, I would need to go through the selec­tion process at the cor­po­rate office.

I did three things to prepare:

1) I reviewed my own rea­sons for want­ing this posi­tion, ensur­ing it was in align­ment with my core con­vic­tions and purpose.

2) I con­sid­ered pos­si­ble ques­tions I could be asked and how I would respond.

3) I con­ducted a thor­ough research of the orga­ni­za­tion and par­ent com­pany, to the extent that I knew more about the orga­ni­za­tion than some of the peo­ple who inter­viewed me.

When the big day came, I was sched­uled to inter­view with 3 peo­ple in what promised to be a cake walk. I was told I would be in and out in less than an hour. Two hours and 6 inter­views later, I was asked to inter­view with a Vice Pres­i­dent of the par­ent company’s par­ent company.

The Vice Pres­i­dent asked if I were won­der­ing what was going on, since I had inter­viewed with so many peo­ple that day. He went on to explain that, at some point dur­ing the process, they had actu­ally begun inter­view­ing me for a new posi­tion they were con­sid­er­ing at the cor­po­rate level. Although he didn’t share any specifics about the posi­tion, it seemed important.

Appar­ently, to use a base­ball anal­ogy, I had been bat­ting 1000 dur­ing the inter­view process. That is, until he asked the one ques­tion that shook my world: “Would you be will­ing to move to work at the cor­po­rate office?”

With­out think­ing, I said, “No, I need to stay where I am.” He responded with, “OK, I’m sorry to hear that,” and sud­denly the inter­view was over.

A few days later, my friend called and told me he had heard about the offer and that I had turned it down. Nei­ther he nor I knew what exactly what I had turned down. This has baf­fled me for years.

Here’s the point…

By using the three steps listed above, I found that I was very pre­pared for all the parts of the inter­view I had been able to antic­i­pate. Use those steps in prepa­ra­tion for your next interview.

By respond­ing to one unex­pected ques­tion with­out fully under­stand­ing what was being offered, all of the pre­vi­ous suc­cess that day was negated. While it’s pos­si­ble that hav­ing all the infor­ma­tion wouldn’t have changed my answer, now I’ll never get the chance to find out!

Whether you’re in a job inter­view or any other impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion, this Proverb holds true: “He who answers a mat­ter before he hears the facts–it is folly and shame to him.” (Proverbs 18:13)

Lis­ten, under­stand, then respond.

Can you think of a sit­u­a­tion when you responded impul­sively and it cost you some­thing you weren’t pre­pared to lose? What could you have done differently?

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Tags: Decision Making, Interviewing, Listening, Preparation

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