Page 153 - John Kador - 201 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview-McGraw-Hill (2002)

THE QUESTION LIFE CYCLE

I know I can drive the revenues and net the customers.What kinds of
processes are in place to help me work collaboratively?

Besides asking for the job, bid-for-action questions ask for an indication
of how favorably the interviewer assesses you. One way to assess a com-
pany’s interest is to see how hard the interviewer tries to sell you on ac-
cepting the job when you ask these questions. Some candidates grow
pale at saying something as blatant as:

Are you ready to make me an offer now, or do I need to sell myself
some more?

But what do you have to lose? If the job you are applying for has any
marketing or management quality at all, the interviewer will be im-
pressed by your confidence. Every great salesperson knows to “ask for
the order.” Here’s how to ask for the job in the final interview. Begin
with a statement of your understanding of the opportunity:

As I understand it, the successful candidate will be someone with x
education, y qualifications, and z experience. Do I understand the
opportunity correctly?

Here your purpose is threefold. First, you are testing to see if you indeed
understand the situation. If you missed something, or, more likely, the
interviewer forgot some important requirement, now is the time to get
it right. Second, assuming you summarized the position correctly, the in-
terviewer is impressed by your organizational skills. Third, asking for
agreement at this point is a strategy for getting the interviewer into the
habit of saying yes. Yes is the answer you want to the next question, and
it’s good to have the interviewer in a yes mood.
The critical next question is:
Do I meet the requirements?

Now wait. That’s the hard part. The interviewer is making up his or her
mind. The answer will tell you if it is time to close or if you have more
persuading to do. If the interviewer is positive and says that, yes (there’s
that word again), you have all the qualifications, you can now deliver the
strongest closing line there is:

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