Working as an IT recruiter has taught me that in general terms, hiring manager often look for two general things from the person they’re thinking about hiring:
1. Technical skills
2. Communication skills
Certainly these are just two traits but they tend to be the ones that in general terms always come to the forefront.
IT professionals usually need to have some sort of technical background and technical understanding – they probably took Computer Science as a major, they probably have an IT certification or training under their belt, maybe they know programming languages, can work with various platforms like UNIX, NT, stuff like that – so their technical skills are going to be tested regularly in the job.
IT professionals are – to be blunt – often incorrectly stereotyped as being people who can’t communicate very well. Either it’s because English isn’t their first language or because (as the stereotype goes) they’re a “techie” and not a people-person.
Even hiring managers often ask “what are their communication skills like” when they see a person’s name on a resume I’ve sent them that they can’t pronounce and they wonder if they can communicate well. This happens quite often actually.
Think about your industry and ask yourself what could happen during an interview that an interviewer might test you on, just to see if you have what it takes to perform in the job you’re interviewing for?
For an IT staffer, it could mean a technical skills test or where they are asked technical questions in an interview to gauge their technical competencies. As mentioned above, their language comprehension might get tested due to the stereotype about a lack of communication skills that IT pros are often accused of having.
For a salesperson, maybe the interviewer uses the old “sell me this pencil” routine to see how the salesperson responds and to gauge their sales skills.
If you work in public relations and are interviewing for a PR role, the interviewer might suddenly put you under a stressful situation and ask you a blunt or trick question to see how you respond. After all, if you’re going to work in PR you’re probably going to get angry customers or nosy newspaper columnists calling you asking you blunt or trick questions for real. Can you handle it?
Success – or a lack thereof – is often situational. Depending on the situation you’re facing and how you respond to it, you can either nail it and handle the situation well or blow it and ruin things.
