I am a factory, not a product

I had the pleasure of reading 'How Not to Sell Yourself During a Job Interview' by Michael Neece in his newsletter from his company, Interview Mastery. He likened the interview process to dart throwing, and you gauge the target through your opening interview questions. I replied with my own thoughts which I've included below.

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I appreciate what you had to say about interviews not being selling events in your April 1 newsletter. I started cringing over that kind of thinking when an ex-boss in a now defunct consulting company wanted us to consider ourselves as products to be on display.

Let me share my thinking for a moment. We are all factories of one sort or another. Let's not reverse things though. Actually it's our factories that are becoming more organic. Small systems integrated into larger systems and networked by various devices and protocols. But that's another story.

We each possess abilities of a greater or lesser extent. When left to our own we each produce to a certain level of quality. We each have lesser or greater capacities in our fields of interest. Our productivity is determined by such factors as our health, our strength, our intelligence, and our motivations. And all these things can be manipulated for self-improvement.

Sometimes trade-offs are involved. Will I spend an hour exercising or an hour in the classroom? I need to do both but time constraints will not allow it. I may get in a half-hour of exercise and still attend class. In the factory these are matters of scheduling, repair or preventive maintenance, or renovation or retrofit.

As I become more sophisticated, what I produce can be more sophisticated.

When I go to an interview the qualities I will attempt to demonstrate are my capacity, my passion for quality, my abilities, and my adaptability over time. I will make promises I expect to keep. My appearance will be neat if not elegant. A well-run factory keeps reliable schedules and has good housekeeping. Poor housekeeping and poor schedules interfere with productivity and my 'customers' need that assurance. And I do have a customer and salesmanship is required.

When I interview in this mode there is no dart throwing. In the nature of the best salesmen I will match my capabilities to the customer's needs through discussion and by assuming some control of the interview. We can discuss special requirements in terms of a schedule. Can I obtain the required knowledge in the first few months of work, on the job or through formal training and education? If I'm fortunate I have samples of my previous work to show. (Not everything I design is readily reduced to paper these days). My quality procedures and communication must be aligned with the organization's.

Do I have the job?