Stefan Molyneux
  • 8 months ago
In this episode, I provide key insights for successful job interviews and salary negotiations, drawing from my experience in hiring. Emphasizing the importance of confidence and credibility in interviews, I advise against portraying oneself as a victim of past experiences.

Highlighting the significance of industry knowledge and quantifying achievements in negotiations, I share a successful team salary increase story. I stress the value of continuous learning and adaptability in showcasing growth potential to employers.

Encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset and consistent value demonstration, I underscore the importance of ongoing growth and learning for career advancement.

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Transcript
00:00 You it's definitely well just want to let you know there's a new feature or benefit or perk a bonus it's coming out for.
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00:43 Here we go.
00:44 I'm gonna start with something that i think is is interesting hopefully valuable.
00:48 Job interviews now it's actually one of my first semi viral videos was about job interviews and the reason that you should listen to me about job interviews is obviously i have.
00:58 Been interviewed a whole bunch of times but i probably interviewed well over a thousand people and hired a hundred people or more over the course of my career.
01:07 Which is pretty good that's pretty rare pretty good but this is in particular of course i mean bunch of people who work for free domain until i burn them out like matches lucifer matches.
01:17 But i suffer when i was chief technical officer in a software company co founded a lot of interviews and all of that.
01:23 So i wanted to give you some tips and thoughts keep this relatively brief if there's things that you wanna talk about else why so we'll just do this but.
01:33 Ok so the things that i was looking for because people have a big challenge.
01:40 When it comes to what do you why you there like what are you saying about old job right.
01:47 So if you say bad things about your old job that's a challenge i was always kind of on the lookout for that.
01:54 And the thing is though if you because if you want to explain why something went wrong in your old job.
02:02 You gonna have to provide so much context and the person is gonna have to trust you that you are you know.
02:09 Not at fault that you just had a bad boss and then you know why did you not know that you had a bad boss before you work they say oh well you know the bad boss was just moved in over me and so on ok but but.
02:21 It's kind of tough because i just tell you this from my standpoint i think this probably true as a whole but from my standpoint.
02:28 When i hear someone say i was a victim it wasn't my fault in some relationship thing i don't believe them now i don't disbelieve them.
02:38 But i don't believe that now there are a few treasured people in my life who you know some of some in fact on the call the truth you treasured people in my life if they say.
02:49 It was somebody else's fault i'm like yep ok i'm down for that right i believe that i accept that but for most people.
02:57 They'll they're selling you a narrative about how things went wrong and it's just not their fault.
03:02 They're innocent victims they tried their very best but just bad people had control and ruined their lives or made their life difficult or messed up with their career.
03:10 So what you doing unfortunately if you bring this kind of stuff to a job interview.
03:16 What you doing is you are making the assumption.
03:20 That's the relationship with the job interviewer is something other than what it is in other words you're asking for credibility when you just met someone.
03:28 Right so again if you know so you know someone for a long time there legit there honest there.
03:34 They tell the truth and and they do their best and and they have credibility with you then if they say you know someone just had a bad relationship with someone or some my boss was a difficult.
03:45 Then in general you probably believe them because you know the for a long time you have that credibility but in a job interview just remember you have no credibility because they just met you.
03:56 So if you start talking about things which would require the interviewer to trust them in other words.
04:02 I had a bad boss it was bad company or bad environment of bad clients and it wasn't my fault at all then you're asking for the job interviewer.
04:09 To trust you when he doesn't even know you.
04:13 That shows poor judgment and if you're trying to say I had I have put like you demonstrating poor judgment by asking.
04:20 The sun boss to take sides all the company was corrupt or they they they treated their employees really badly or whatever it is like well maybe you just bad employee right so don't assume trust.
04:32 In a new relationship don't assume you have any credibility.
04:35 In a new relationship maybe it's a little different if somebody's listen to my show for ten years and they do a call and maybe i have some credibility there but never assume trust in a new relationship and this is a funny thing to like you this isn't just in.
04:47 Job interviews of course you see this happening all the time where.
04:52 You know some woman on a date with bill the beans about her last boyfriend or you know how many.
04:59 Anti-depressants she's on i mean i remember being on a date i said this for the some time ago i remember being on a date with a woman and.
05:08 I should be told me that her boyfriend had left her with seventeen thousand dollars in debt and she was sort of railing about her boyfriend and it's like.
05:17 But we just met so we don't you don't have any credibility with me.
05:22 And of course if you blame other people for voluntary relationships your judgment looks suspect so when you end job interview you know.
05:31 What house you know what was going on at your last job what's going on at the job why are you looking and so on.
05:37 I say well i'm i'm looking to get to the next step in my career and i think i can do that.
05:42 Well as a tough thing is if you say i'm looking for the next step in my career but i'm gonna do it naturally then people will be concerned that you use that right because.
05:50 I mean everybody knows you're not too satisfied with the job if you're looking for new one and so trying to explain that why is the challenge.
05:58 Right so i'm looking for new challenge i'm looking to move on i'm looking to move i want more responsibility i want whatever it is right.
06:07 And then of course but then the question is why are you being given more responsibility your current job that kind of stuff right so.
06:12 I think there is a general understanding just based upon being in a job interview that.
06:17 You're looking for a new job because you dissatisfied with something in your current job and just try and keep whatever dissatisfaction you have do your very best to try and keep them to a minimum and just say i'm looking to move on i'm i'm looking to.
06:28 Acquire different different set of skills and whatever it is right and all of that so i think that's because whenever you're going for a job interview.
06:37 One thing that the interview knows for sure is that you can't get what you want in your current position.
06:42 Right so if you're looking like if you are really valuable employee and you wanted to get more into sales and marketing from tech.
06:48 They know that your current employer won't accommodate that so that the question is why cuz like really good really good employees.
06:55 Bosses like smart bosses will try to accommodate whatever really good employees wanna do so if you really good program and you wanna get into sales and marketing and you're really you know a great employee and so on then your boss will try and facilitate that as much as possible so.
07:07 Yeah looking for something different looking to move up looking to move on just keep it to a minimum as much as possible and and that way also discreet being knowing that you can be discreet is really really important.
07:18 Now the other thing that I would recommend a job interviews is come prepared with your value add.
07:27 So a lot of people this is particularly to in the tech world will say.
07:30 I know this code i know that code i've experience with this and that and and so on and you know that's all fine but that's kind of why you're in the.
07:38 That's why you're in the room to begin with that's kind of already know what you wanna do if you think to have your best chance at a successful job interview now successful job interview is not where you get the job that's sort of important to.
07:51 Recognize a successful job interview is where you get a job at a place you wanna work.
07:56 And you want to have a business competent manager so a manager who understands profit and loss and manager who understands that you need to get two to three x productivity out of your employees in order to justify.
08:08 Hiring them because like more than their salary because a variety of young over the overhead and taxes and computers and maybe some travel budget and expenses and.
08:18 Office space is a lot like that you need to spend and then just the risk is gonna be some turn over right so.
08:24 To get a job at the place you wanna work your manager has to be business competent.
08:30 Because if he's not in other words yes and understand the profit and loss and and all of that.
08:34 Because if it's not business competent then his decisions won't be driven by profit they will be driven by politics and if you've ever had a boss is in the politics.
08:44 It's a really crazy making situation that you really don't wanna wanna be in as a whole so if you're talking about.
08:52 Your value your value isn't the bag full of acronyms of things that you know i know sequel i know java and this all good right but.
09:00 What you want to do is you want to say here's the money i made for the last place right.
09:06 So you know i i i came up with this automated process that saved x amount of hours per week.
09:13 Of some guy who was you know a hundred bucks an hour right so it's a five hours a week from some guy.
09:19 Who was a hundred bucks an hour so it's five hundred bucks a week that i saved you know that's that's a lot right i mean that's that's that's some that's some good stuff right.
09:29 That's some good stuff that's a what to twenty four thousand a month or twenty five thousand a month.
09:33 I hear sorry a year twenty five thousand so you know so just with that one thing i covered a third of my salary let's say you make seventy five k so i spent a certain amount of time and i saved a third of my salary.
09:44 And then that did this other thing which covered even more of my salary and automated this process and i was faster than this guy and so you want to show.
09:53 The business value that you provide and that's in order to filter out managers who work on politics not profit because you don't want to work for those guys in my opinion that's that's pretty.
10:03 Pretty ratchet so make sure you come in it doesn't have to be a pure spreadsheet but you gotta come in with.
10:09 With your your back the value add right the business value at the monetary value add here's how i made money for my last.
10:18 Employer so that's how you get the question about weaknesses.
10:23 And you know of course this is all you know i'm too much of a perfectionist i tend to get over involved in my projects like all stuff that's obviously manages know that's just basic stuff.
10:35 So weaknesses i generally i would be pretty honest with my weaknesses oh you know i would go sometimes on for ten minutes about the things.
10:44 That i know that i'm not great at and with you give you weaknesses you want to give you weaknesses and your work arounds right.
10:53 You wanna give you weaknesses and your work arounds right so you can say that.
10:58 You know i tend to be not quite as detail oriented as i need to be.
11:03 And so i create a spreadsheet of all the details i need to remember or i'm i cross.
11:10 Check my work with someone who couldn't see the big picture so i bring the big picture to my worker my work companion who wasn't into the big picture he'd been the details to me and we both end up stronger wonder wonder twins powers activated something like that.
11:22 So whenever you talk about your weaknesses i think it's important to be honest about that stuff.
11:25 But when you know weaknesses incumbent upon you to solve it.
11:29 Would have some way to solve it and i think that's really important as well.
11:34 Now when it comes to salary right i mean that you've seen that mean i'm sure it's like to.
11:41 Gunslingers in the wild west and you know one one guy is saying what is the job pay and the other guy saying what are you currently making it just don't wanna.
11:51 Right so in my opinion and i went through this whole process at one of the companies i worked with where my tech lead came to be and said that you know they don't been sitting down and.
12:02 Talking with their friends and they felt underpaid as a whole right they felt underpaid relative to what their colleagues were making in similar fields.
12:09 The similar amounts of experience and so on so i ordered a salary review.
12:16 And ended up interviewing a bunch of people outside the company to get a sense of salaries talk to my friends who also manages how much you paying people for this that the other.
12:24 And i did end up making the case i got about a million dollars extra per year for my tech team in terms of payroll.
12:30 Which would you so when people like you gotta get help the underprivileged so to speak or you help the people poor than yourself well you know i've actually done that kind of stuff and of course the nice thing was that if they moved on they had that salary to base to start.
12:43 Working with so i think if you want to talk about if the salary comes up in a job interview.
12:51 Again my personal opinion what i would most respect to somebody who had industry knowledge.
12:56 Rather than here's my salary what is the job make right to say well you know my research and and what i talked about the colleagues and so on that the industry average.
13:06 For this job with this amount of experience with these kinds of responsibilities tends to be in this range right of course it depends exactly where you live and the different.
13:14 Postal zip codes more expensive more costly than others so.
13:18 Talking about industry standards and industry ranges is the way to go and then of course you know you want to be honest and of course if you made the case.
13:25 You know at the last place they made me they paid me eighty thousand dollars a year but i saved him over three hundred thousand dollars because of x y and z and you want to keep track of this in your job.
13:35 Right you want to keep track of the value add that you have brought.
13:40 To like when you're doing projects right you keep keep some notes you know here's how much time i spent.
13:47 Because the company this much here's how much i saved and here's the you know i'm not saying you necessarily keep all the source files and data right but.
13:56 You wanna have confidently be able to say here's what i made so you wanna keep track of value that you add to get your current job.
14:02 And that's two benefits right what three i guess one is just confidence the second is when you go for a raise you can say to your boss look i save the company x amount of.
14:09 Bucks so i did i deserve a raise right and here's my documentation for it and then of course if you are going for other jobs.
14:17 Having that kind of data available is really good and then you can confidently say okay here's the average industry averages you know between sixty and ninety thousand.
14:24 For this kind of for my kind of job but i also i really do keep track of what.
14:31 Makes company money i give you show a boss that you have a business mindset he's gonna be way more comfortable in hiring you.
14:40 Right so the very fact that you kept track of the value that you added to the last company makes you a lot more valuable to the new company.
14:48 And a lot of people just get down into the weeds and do their job and do their.
14:53 Work and and they just do what they're told and and kind of reactive and then i think about the business as a whole so i would.
15:00 Definitely keep track of that so you can say you know here's the range for this kind of position i think i should be at the upper end of the rage or maybe even above it because.
15:08 X y and z right like i don't know this value and so on right so now.
15:14 What about if you get called into a job and you don't have the experience to looking for.
15:20 So to me that was only one ever only one ever good answer for that which is.
15:25 If you hire someone who can really learn they will never ever be short of experience.
15:35 If you hire someone who can really learn because things in tech are always changing right so if you get someone who matches exactly what you want right now but they don't have much of a flexible ability to learn.
15:46 Then when the technology changes that we left to drift.
15:49 They'll get stuck right i don't know this but i also when i first started other things i didn't know and keep track of the things you're learning on your job again if you keep track of the progress in value that you add.
16:03 And the things you learn in the current job it'll be easier to make the case you say look.
16:06 I didn't know php and then i learned it and produce this and i didn't know my sequel and i learned it and produce this and i didn't know javascript and i learned it and produce this.
16:16 So you can and this is a choice that managers have to make right you choose someone who's got the right skills for now and hope that they can learn more in the future or do you choose someone who's good at learning.
16:27 And therefore will continue to progress no matter as the technology inevitably changes.
16:33 No matter what are you nimble right i remember your ninja can you write so when it comes to experience i think as long as you have.
16:41 And don't just say stuff like i'd say show it and showing it means that you simply have a documented you don't have to hand over the documentation of course.
16:50 But you can wave it around and read from it or say here's how i know this i can not just make it this up i actually.
16:56 No this right like how many lines of code are you able to get done in a week you should document that you should keep track of that so that you know that and then you can know.
17:04 That it has improved well you know when i first started i did i got a hundred lines of code done a week and then it went up to five hundred and then went up to a thousand so at this rate.
17:12 I'll be able to code windows nt in the long weekend so i would have right so i would think.
17:17 Fine just focus on your ability to learn and have everything documented again you don't have to hand over the documentation but.
17:24 But you need to know it for yourself cuz that's gonna have some real it's gonna be real confident builder and.
17:32 You want i think you want a boss who's got some thought of an entrepreneurial mindset because otherwise he's gonna put in a little cubicle and in a little intellectual box that you won't be able to leave which i would imagine for this audience is kind of.
17:43 Painful so in all of my jobs i tried really to think as an entrepreneur in this is obviously before i was.
17:52 An entrepreneur so even when i was a waiter i viewed myself in an entrepreneurial light even as a waiter because it's a waiter.
18:02 You are kind of an entrepreneur because you're working for tips and so the more value add that you can.
18:10 Bring the better right so obviously if there was a guy coming in who was obviously on a date with a girl i would defer to the guy and.
18:20 And all of that and that way he would seem higher status and that would be a value add.
18:26 That i could provide as a waiter i of course wanted the bill to be higher so i learned how to describe.
18:33 The one of the places i worked the desert was a profiterole which is like this amazing pastry and.
18:40 Ice cream and chocolate sauce and it's just an amazing vertical tower of diabetes but i learned how to describe that in a way that almost everyone would order it.
18:49 And so you're learning how to upsell because the more i can sell the better it is for the restaurant and then the better it is for my tip.
18:56 And so on right so and there's a certain kind of authoritarian deferment.
19:02 Which is where you are an authority and then you defer to in particular the man on the date.
19:08 So cuz they don't care if you defer to them and you don't have any authority so to be an authority about the restaurant and the food and so on it was a high and seafood restaurant.
19:17 To know everything to you know and then to defer to be high status and then to defer is really great so even as a of course when i had a newspaper route.
19:25 When i was twelve or so and i was entrepreneurial in that way in that you know i can always go and try and get more people to subscribe to the newspaper which up.
19:35 My income and so on so in every job imagine that you're a contractor who can be fired at any time and has to prove his value.
19:44 And if you take that approach and you document the value that you are providing you are gonna be ahead of like literally ninety seven ninety eight percent.
19:52 Of the employees out there who tend to be kind of reactive to that kind of environment so.
19:58 Entrepreneurial you can just claim to making claims without evidence is not particularly reassuring to bosses but if you make a claim i made money i learned this and i advanced that and i learned how to i didn't have entered my last job with this girl but i then became an expert at it and i'm willing to work weekends.
20:14 I love to learn and like i'm willing to study weekends and i love to learn and all of that and being a hobbyist also i mean i know this more in the tech realm if you are a hobbyist in other words if you.
20:24 If you love computers from the very beginning and you did it all for free i would always hire hobbyists over even very well educated people because i found that the hobbyists.
20:33 I remember i had one guy at a phd in computer science was terrible.
20:37 Terrible i hired another guy who'd never taken any education in computers it was fantastic because he was just a hobbyist who loved it so but again everything should be documented and if you take every job and every job interview.
20:51 As if you're an entrepreneur rather than an employee you'll get the right kind of boss and i think you'll get the right kind of.
20:56 Environment and that i think it's gonna be the most satisfying and of course as you as you practice and.
21:04 Home your entrepreneurial skills within an employee environment that when it comes to be an entrepreneur if you want to do that i'm sure you at least want to give it a try if you get the opportunity you'll be ready you'll be ready to do.
21:15 The entrepreneurial stuff which i think will be massively beneficial.