Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep119: Big interview mistakes you're making and you don't even know it.

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.meiping.com. This is Mei Ping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to my 30-day live stream challenge and in today's live stream, I want to talk about one of the biggest nightmare that you might be encountering if you are currently an active job seeker or you have been job seeking in the past and you have basically

gone through the job search process, you will understand exactly what I mean. And in today's live stream, I specifically want to cover interview mistakes. So today's topic is inspired by the multiple interview coaching sessions, the one-on-one interview preparation, as well as mock interview sessions that I have been doing with my one-on-one interview preparation, as well as mock interview sessions that I have been doing with my one-on-one clients. And it was really inspired by these similar mistakes that I've been hearing from all of my clients, regardless of seniority. So I have been doing one-on-one coaching for clients who have only worked for like two years and clients who have worked for 15 years facing similar problems along their job search process.

And one of the biggest hurdles actually is the interview mistakes. So today I do want to share with you a list of common interview mistakes that I'm seeing in no particular order, but can be very detrimental if you don't fix the mistake or worse still, you don't even see and you don't even know that you're making that mistake. Now, this is one of the things that I want to help you identify as well as giving you that awareness to start developing the skills or maybe avoiding some of the bad mistakes as well. So if you are new to my 30-day live stream challenge and you're new to my channel or my LinkedIn, hi, my name is

Mei Ping. I'm a professional career coach and formerly corporate leader as well as hiring manager. So if you missed today's session and you want to watch the replay, make sure that you head on to my YouTube channel as well as my Spotify podcast. So let's dive right in. So there are several interview mistakes and one of the biggest one I see is candidates who are not familiar with their resume. This is the absolute no-no and I think one of the biggest killers that I see in people who prepare, you know, from like dressing well, you know, all these pleasantries you know the basic preparation but um uh that's one important thing that you forgot to do and it is really familiar familiarizing yourself with your resume so basically every single thing that you say

and you can write in your resume like do you know what's the real story or it's just something that you may have forgotten so this i think is one of the biggest problems because in the one-on-one coaching sessions i noticed that when i asked my clients like okay can you tell me a little bit more about what you did here what you did there like they have no idea um if you don't know right how are you going to convince the hiring manager to hire you you're not going to sound confident and that's not a good thing. The second interview mistake I see is also assuming that the hiring manager or the interviewer have already read your resume end-to-end. Now, this may be a reasonable expectation,

but I think one thing to also realize is that sometimes, interviews can be pretty busy as well. And as we all know, and in case you don't know, I'm going to tell you right now most interviewers or hr hiring managers they probably scan through your resume um six to six seconds is like kind of the industry standard for the first round screening but even if it's before an interview i may take as a hiring manager formerly hiring manager myself i may take a couple of minutes to skim through the, you know, candidate's resume, but I'm not going to like read through line by line, try to figure out what happened because like, if I'm really going to do that, then like, what's the point of the interview, right? So the interviews is really for the candidate to

really explain, right? And clarify, provide details, you know, to be able to, yeah, give us, give us confidence that like, you know, we should hire you and so forth. So that's why you should never, never, never, ever assume that the hiring manager has read your resume. It's your responsibility to make sure that you share the necessary information that you need to share during the interview to help the hiring manager better assess if you're the right candidate. And that's really the purpose of an interview.

Now, on to the third interview mistake that happens a lot as well is really losing your track of mind as you are talking. So some of my clients describe it as, you know, going blank. So have you ever experienced this as well? Have you kind of like in the process

of answering the interview questions or when you first heard the interview question, you've just felt that your mind went blank. If you have been feeling this way, it's normal actually and the root cause of that is that you don't or you rather, you know, you likely don't have a structured way of structuring your interview answers and therefore you're just like saying whatever comes to mind and I'll be honest and say that you know most things that just randomly come to mind may not be the most confident answer or it may not be the most convincing answer in terms of like you know selecting you as the best candidate and so forth so this may be something that you want to be mindful of,

you want to really think about if you are doing it and maybe you don't even realize that you're doing it as well. So moving on to the next one, next interview mistakes I think a lot of job seekers make is applying randomly for any job, getting the interview, and then panicking. So this is actually part of the six-step career planning process that I teach, and I do have a free training on that. And I'm just going to give you guys like a really, really quick summary here. And the main point is you want to make sure that you are very clear on your career interests, options, and directions first before you do anything. Before you update your resume, your LinkedIn profile,

you do your targeted job search, or even, you know, wasting your time or rather spending your time in interviews, you should know exactly what you're looking for. It may sound very small, but it's actually a really, really big problem that I hear a lot from my one-on-one coaching clients and you know we have had multiple discussions and just like today itself i actually had a one-on-one interview coaching session it's a very new client and this client has been struggling to get job interviews and for the few interviews that he managed to get he didn't manage to get a single job offer. Now, these are two very bad indicators that you have problems, right? You can't land interviews or you can't land the job offers, even though you may have felt that you tried your best. Unfortunately, sometimes, I think if you're

using the wrong strategy or wrong method, the best effort may not really be helpful. So anyway, back to the story of this particular client who felt that he tried his best. And when I started the session, I really wanted to walk him through the six-step process, you know, I've just told you. And what he said was very interesting. He was like, oh, Mingping, I don't want to talk about this. Like, I just want to get to the interview problems or like help me restructure the answers as soon as possible. Now, if this is happening to you and, you know, similar to my client as well, actually, it's a very big red flag that, like, you are approaching it, like, completely wrong. So, if you only want to insist on focusing on the interview,

but you don't really want to, like, rethink, you know, or at least reconsider, are you even clear on what you're looking for, which is step one. Are you clear on what you're looking for? Step two, does your resume present you as the best candidate for the job? And number three, are you searching for the right jobs? Like if you're not doing any of these three, right, right, the interview mistakes is going to be like a recurrent situation because you have not fixed the foundation yet, if you get what I'm saying. So if you're watching on screen right now, this is actually the plan your career in six-step training I was referring to. So if you can see the image here and if you're listening,

that's fine. So similar to what I was saying, you should make sure that you are clear on your career interest and direction first and then you go and fix your resume and then you do your job search. By settling step one, two and three, then when you get into the interview process, it's going to be a lot cleaner. That is how it works. So if you want to learn a little bit more, you can just go to www.growyourcorporatecareer.com

just to go through the six steps. You can feel free to check that one out. But I say that the foundation of tons of interview mistakes and interviews problems and like low confidence and everything else, a lot of it is because the first three steps are not done well. And therefore, it's a complete chaos during the interview session itself. Anyway, for this other part in terms of interview mistakes, there was actually another client I spoke to a few days ago. So this client made a very interesting comment. So this client initially came to me saying that maybe I think I need to improve my English skills.

She was going to take a grammar class or something. So she said that the fact that I couldn't pass, I've been invited to multiple interviews, right? Really, really good companies, but I'm unable to pass any of them, right? And she was trying to tell me that, oh, you know, Mei Ping, do you think that I should go and attend an English class? Like, do you think I need to go and take Toastmasters?

Like, do you think I need to sign up for any of those courses? Which I think is really a, you know, great reflection point on her part. But after talking to her, I realized that, oh, it's not that she had any English language skills deficiency per se, but the problem is that the biggest mistake that she's making is that her interview answers doesn't have a structure. And therefore, it goes completely haywire

because she doesn't have a flow in a way, it goes completely haywire because she doesn't have a flow in a way that can be understood by the hiring manager, if you understand what I'm saying. Now, what you say versus what somebody else is hearing may not always be the same thing. And it's worse still if you don't have a structure for your interview answers. This is the basic, basic, basic thing.

So basically what I did was I taught her how to structure her answer using my hamburger method. And we're not going to go through in detail here because that's what I teach in my course. But I taught her through a method of how to frame her answers in a way that she can sound confident and she also doesn't need to memorize. And towards the end, I told her that, you know, the interview structure I can teach you, and that's a quick fix, you should be able to like up your self-confidence and up your interview confidence very quickly. But the reason why she's struggling to express herself, to structure her answers, actually is down to poor communication skills, or rather insufficient communication

skills. So communication skills is really much broader, right? So every time you're expressing yourself, if you feel like your message is not getting across, you feel like there's a blockage between what you're thinking versus what you're saying, that is a communication skills problem. It may not necessarily be an English problem. It just means that what's here in your head is taking a much longer time to come

up through your mouth i know it sounds a bit yeah anyway so that's really the point and the reason why i'm very very confident that my assessment is correct is because in the past my i had this one client who um no actually i had two clients who were in toastmastersters. They did pretty well in Toastmasters. They have frequently gotten awards and so forth. But guess what? Guess one thing that I noticed that they had in common when they reached out to me. They both couldn't pass important interviews.

And isn't it very strange? Wouldn't you think that somebody who has very good Toastmasters experience shouldn't have any problem passing an interview because, you know, they can present themselves well, you know, have good English, yada, yada, yada. Not necessarily so. Because you can present yourself well, but if what you're saying is not the right thing, what you're saying is not focusing on what the hiring manager really wants to know, and that's really around the content, right? So if you don't know what you're saying, it doesn't matter how well you say, right? It's like, if somebody is, you know this person is like BSing

you, is telling you some rubbish, even though the person can like present their, present what they say very well, like it's like in your heart, you know, like I'm like, yeah, this person, I don't think anything that this person says is true or I think this person is making up a story which is honestly even worse for your reputation even though it might be unintentional. Anyway, back to the client, the two

clients with Toastmasters experience. After working with them, for one of my clients, it actually only took one session. I helped her identify her inherent personality that's creating communication problems for her, restructure the answers, and then send her on my two-week workshop for soft skills

and specifically focus on communications. So that was in 2021, when I was still running my two-week workshop specifically focused on communications and productivity. But right now, a lot of that communications process, listening skills, expressing yourself, presentation skills, all those kind of content, I've actually included in my signature course right now, which is the Corporate Survivor, the online course with the step-by-step lessons. So right now, all my clients are kind of on that program

to gradually upgrade their communication skills that will help them at work, as well as preparing them for future interviews, future networking events, and so forth. But the reason why I wanted to share this story with you and also share with you different client profiles, people that you think shouldn't have a problem with interview, like, you know how

you can't believe that how many people will come and tell me to say that, hey Mei Ping, if you want to do my interviews, right, do you think I should go and join Toastmasters? Do you think I should go and take an English class? I hear this quite often and yeah, the answer is no. The answer is that you actually need to improve your communication skills because the

way that you are processing what you're're listening in terms of the interview question processing intention and processing like how to structure your answers and then being able to convey in a very confident way um that is communication skills guys like that is not toastmasters that is not like english or that's not like grammar stuff. Okay? So that was a really, really quick kill on some of the interview mistakes that I really wanted to talk about in day three of the 30-day livestream challenge where I will be talking about very interesting topics of conversation related to careers that I see online across multiple social media platforms, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, all the platforms that I'm fairly active on. So those

were the inspirations for this live stream that will go live at nine o'clock every day this month. So if you have a very interesting topic that you want me to share more perspective, DM me on LinkedIn and share the link or share something with me. Or if you come across a bad piece of advice on social media, career advice on social media, and you're wondering whether, huh, I wonder if this is right or wrong. Is this a misconception? Does this make sense and so forth? And you want my opinion on it, share the information with me, share the link with me um send it over to me so that i can probably talk about it and in an upcoming episode so um yeah so if you haven't clicked your reminder

to join yet so i will be going live at nine o'clock at gmt plus eight and that's singapore malaysia and hong kong time for the entire month of may so any ideas any suggestions anything that you want to know drop me me a DM so that I can create a topic for you guys. So the topic of every single live stream will be announced at about lunchtime every single day. So keep a lookout for that, set reminders. And if you feel that the episode and the live stream today is super duper helpful, share with a friend, make sure that you join tomorrow because we'll have like way more exciting topics to talk about

and yeah I mean let me know you know are you job searching right now are you struggling with interviews right now or are you even struggling with salary negotiation or you are currently at work

and like figuring out you know what's next in your career yeah I mean definitely let me know it'd be really really really good to go to hear good to hear from you so thank you so much for joining.

So if you guys have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Drop it in the comments for sure. So before we dive into that, just a couple of final reminders. Earlier I was talking about job search is a process. It is not a random act act so if you want to go through the step by step on to making sure to make sure that you are successful in your job search these step by step to make sure that like it's in the right direction you're moving forward not backwards you can check out my free training at www.growyourcorporatecareer.com where i will go through this six plan your career in six steps I was sharing with you just now. This was actually a really, really popular training that I started running

in 2021. And earlier in April this year, I ran the live trainings as well. So these six steps that you see here, which is identify career direction, then moving on to resume, LinkedIn, job search, interview, work skills, and then career growth strategy is something I'm going to cover holistically in this training. So if you're currently an active job seeker, I would highly recommend it. If you are someone who is like really thinking about exploring opportunities, I would highly recommend it as well. And for those of you who are sending me messages around the communication skills program that I was talking about, actually, this is my signature program called The Corporate Survivor, which is an online course with step-by-step video lessons. And for the soft skills portion, which is under Module 4, we have multiple lessons on communication skills

because communication skills is one of those most important, it's one of those important things. And if you're struggling doing interview, actually it's a really big indicator that, you know, you have communication skills problems and you might want to upskill on that as well.

So you can check it out. More information at www.thecorporatesurvivor.co on whether that is something right for you and your career right now. But the methods that I teach in my course, obviously, is from more than 10 years of working experiences in corporate,

as well as accumulation of the one-on-one sessions that I've had with so many clients who are probably investing way more in one-on-one coaching versus an online course. So if that's something that you want to do, make sure that you check it out at www.thecorporatesurvivor.co. So there are probably a couple of questions that I'm seeing right now.

So I do want to answer some of those as well. So let me have a quick look. Okay, so one of the questions I'm seeing is, is it safe to scan through my resume just before going for an interview? Okay, so as I was saying a little bit earlier, the first point that I shared is one of the mistakes that you might be making is that you are not familiar with your resume. So at the end of the day, it's your own version of your resume. So you should know what you're writing in there. And how early you want to look at it, whether it's the minute before, the hour before, the day before, the month before,

that is ultimately your decision. But the main goal is if you don't know what's in there, then how are you going to confidently, you know, convince the hiring manager to hire you? So that is really the angle to think about in terms of like, you know, when should you look at your resume? How often you need to look at it? You know, do you need to get it vetted and so forth? But I will say that if you are struggling with your job interviews right now, you may want to go one step ahead in the process, right? In the six-step process, you may want to go

one step ahead in the process and really ask yourself from step one, do you even know what you're looking for? Like, what do you want? And then step two is your resume position to, you know, positioning you for the best candidate. Then after that, are you searching for the right jobs? Because if you're searching for jobs randomly, then when you go for the interview, it's going to be pretty random as well, right, because it's not kind of exactly what you're looking for. And therefore, there's even a much higher chance that you are going to make mistakes. Because, you know, like if you're not even convinced yourself that this job actually makes sense, then how are you going to convince the hiring manager? Like, it doesn't work like that. Like, does that make sense? Okay. Are there

any other questions around interviews? are you guys struggling with interviews you can definitely let me know as well and i'm also seeing a lot of dms i know that you know interview is one of those days that can be a little bit sensitive so if you didn't get the chance to ask your questions during the live stream you can also drop me a dm on linkedin after that and let me know a bit about your career situation it's a lot easier if you let me know your career situation so that i can advise you know what's the next step and how i can best help you so this would really be the best method because um if you just you know send a message say hey maybe i need help i'm like but what do you need help with right so give give me a bit of description like you know send me a dm let me know a bit more like okay you know you've been job searching for some time or you know what has happened just a bit of an idea so that i can actually recommend like

okay do i think that just an you know just a one-time career consultation session would be helpful or i think you might be missing a few more foundational things as well but i think generally speaking most clients do start with one-on-one career consultation the reason is because if you don't know what you're doing wrong then how are you going to decide what is the next step right so um i hope that you enjoy this episode of the live stream so today is day three of my 30-day live stream challenge it's a little bit of a different style compared to my usual podcast recordings or my normal posts on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and so forth. So if you enjoy these live stream episodes, definitely drop me

a comment below or drop me a DM on LinkedIn and let me know. I really appreciate that. But other than that, I hope that you stay safe, stay well and all the best in your career. And leaving you with one final motto is you don't know what you don't know because we all have blind spots so before you can fly forward before you can you know um move ahead faster um i think you should first identify like what's holding you back like what are the actual problem areas then kind of fix the problem areas first then you can go ahead way faster so that is the message that i will leave you with. But other than that,

I wish you all the best in your career and as usual, if you need help, then I have tons of career resources in terms of free tips as well as paid programs that I'm very sure will be able to help you along your career journey. So, till then, I'll see you next time. Bye!

See you tomorrow.