273: Mastering the 30-Minute Job Interview: What You Need to Know

Curious about how to make a lasting impression in just 30 minutes? Discover the secrets to mastering a job interview with precision and confidence. This episode uncovers strategies to showcase your skills while aligning perfectly with company expectations efficiently. I'll guide you through the importance of curiosity, showing how seeking clarity on the interview agenda can position you as the ideal candidate. Packed with practical insights on building rapport, communicating concisely, and respecting the interviewer's time, this episode is tailored for anyone aiming to stand out in a competitive job market.

Beyond time management techniques, I address common concerns about appearing too pushy and offer reassurance on using curiosity as a potent tool for preparation. Whether seeking new opportunities or looking to excel where you are, tune in for actionable strategies that will enhance your interview toolkit and empower your career journey.

Chapters

• 0:01 Mastering the 30-Minute Job Interview
• 10:20 Effective Strategies for Time Management

Transcript

John Neral: 0:01

Hey there. I love it when my listeners and email subscribers reach out to me with an idea for a podcast episode because they've got a question or a problem they want answered or solved. So today's episode is honoring a listener and email subscriber who reached out to me about how to handle the 30-minute job interview. We know that interviews can be filled with a lot of pressure to showcase your talents, build rapport with the hiring manager and interview team and make sure you're a great fit for the job, and vice versa. But how do you do it in 30 minutes? How do you accomplish everything you want in such a limited amount of time? Well, in this episode, I'm going to break down for you how to structure that 30-minute interview to your best advantage, along with a few tips to help you crush your next interview so you can feel more confident about why you're the best fit for the job. Let's get started. Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast and I'm your host, J Nerrell. I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. Now, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, this episode is inspired by a question I received from an email subscriber and listener about how to structure this 30-minute interview, so I'm really excited to dig into that. But if we're not connected on LinkedIn, we should be. So feel free to reach out to me and connect with me on LinkedIn. Tell me you've been listening to the podcast and also I'd love to invite you to come into my free email community Now. This is the Mid-Career GPS Newsletter. I email everyone twice a week with information directly related to your leadership and career journey, and from time to time, I will survey my listeners and subscribers about what they're looking for or what they need help with, and so this came directly from that. So if you want to get on my special and free email newsletter, all you need to do is go to my website, johnnerrellcom. You can click the show notes, check my LinkedIn for it as well. Come on in. I'd love to have you be a part of this community, but today, december 3rd, is also a special day, so I want you to stay tuned to the very end, because I've got a special story to share with you as well.

John Neral: 2:49

Okay, so this is what happens. So Jenni reaches out to me and she says hey, I'd love for you to be able to talk about how to structure this 30-minute interview, because it seems that, especially for mid and senior level positions, it's really hard to not feel pressured about getting everything in that you need to within this interview right, and one of the things that she shared with me that really stood out was that there's always a hard stop at 30 minutes, and so what I took from that message and what I've heard from others as well is that if you want to have a powerful, meaningful and effective interview where you showcase your skills, talents and expertise without feeling as if you're rushed or pressured to get all of your points covered, you've got to find a way to master this 30-minute interview and do it in a way that you feel confident and competent in your answers, where you're giving them enough but not feel like you're leaving anything out. So there's some rationale behind these 30 minute interviews, and right now, as we're talking in December of 2024 and heading into 2025, one of the things I want you to know right off the start here is the leverage is with the company. The leverage is with the company. The leverage has always been with the company, but in this job market right now, companies are taking more time hiring talent. They're lengthening their process.

John Neral: 4:40

Maybe you have been asked to submit a portfolio or a work or a project sample and you've done all this work only to find out that you're not even getting called back or interviewed or considered for the job after that submission. So what I want you to know here is that if you are going to interview for a position with whatever business or company that is, you are playing their game and by their rules. So if you want to be part of that process, you've got to play the game. That doesn't mean you don't have power or leverage in that relationship, but you have to know that they're going to set the expectation and the boundaries for what that interview is going to look like. So the first thing here is I want you to get really clear on your thoughts about how you are showing up for that 30-minute interview. You've got to honor their process, but from a job seeker's point and this is where my listener had reached out and shared things as well in that she said look, you spend five minutes on niceties and welcoming and then it's 15 minutes where they share about the job and you only feel like you have about 10 minutes left to sell yourself, and that certainly doesn't feel like a tremendous amount of time.

John Neral: 6:05

So here's what you can do to prepare for that 30-minute interview. And it all begins with is getting as much information and clarity as possible about the job you are going to interview for. You are allowed to ask whatever questions you have, be it from the recruiter, the HR professional. Maybe you're talking with the hiring manager directly about what to expect in this interview and, yes, you can ask for a sample agenda for the interview. You're not asking about the questions which, in most cases, you're not going to get Some you will, some you won't. But if you know what the agenda is, you now know what the structure is, and having that structure is vital in terms of preparing for what you will expect.

John Neral: 7:08

The other thing I want you to consider here is I want to offer you to get past any thoughts you may have about being pushy or aggressive leading up to the interview. I've heard people say to me John, I don't know if I can really ask that question. I don't want to turn them off. I don't want to be perceived as a difficult or argumentative employee at the start. You're being curious. You're asking information to help you prepare for the interview. It's your interview. You have the right to know as much as possible going into that interview. So if you are finding or feeling that you are afraid of being a little too aggressive or pushy, I really want you to examine that, because when you are more prepared, you will have a much better interview.

John Neral: 8:01

Now, if you are told this is a 30-minute interview, the other thing I want you to remember is I don't care how awesome or incredible you are, do not expect extra time. If they have told you this is a 30-minute interview and this is a hard stop, you've got to get everything in within those 30 minutes. Do not think you're going to go in there and be like look, they're just going to love me, everything's going to be great. They're going to want to keep talking to me. More than likely there's someone else scheduled right after you or they have another meeting.

John Neral: 8:37

Failure to honor time boundaries in an interview is a huge turnoff for hiring managers. Remember it's their process. Your job is to honor that process. You can play however full out you want within those 30 minutes, but you've got to honor their process. Additionally, when it comes to preparing for your interview, I want you to tighten up your story. When you think about the questions you may be asked, the stories you want to tell. I want you to get your details in line and get to the story as quick as possible. Eliminate the fluff, get rid of the detritus. What do they want to know? If you're following the STAR method, they want to know the situation, the task, the action, the result. The most important thing you've got to focus on is the result. Where did you achieve significant results that are noteworthy or of interest to the hiring manager that you can bring into that company? Additionally, you've got to practice. Whether you practice by yourself, recording yourself into your smartphone, hiring an interview coach, working with a peer, whoever that may be, you've got to practice and you have got to time yourself. Here's my general rule of thumb you want to keep all of your interview responses to two minutes. Do not go over two minutes because, more than likely, you will then start to lose their attention, and you want there to be some time for follow-up questions or dialogue, if the interview allows for that.

John Neral: 10:20

Now, if you are unhappy with this interview process, if you believe that a 30-minute interview is impersonal or too formal or it's cold, again, I need you to really think about that thought that you're having and how that may be impacting the way you are showing up for the interview. One of the things I talk about in my interview prep course, which is called a simple five-step strategy for crushing your next interview, is you want to build the relationship as quickly as possible. There are strategies and techniques to do that, but you want to be able to come in and you want to get right to the point. But you want to be able to come in and you want to get right to the point. You do want to be nice, you want to exchange some of those niceties and everything. But if you've only got 30 minutes, what is the focus? The focus or goal of that interview is to see if you are the best candidate for the job and on your end, you're looking to see if this job in this company is a great fit for you.

John Neral: 11:29

So if I were going into a 30-minute interview, here's what I would be doing. Number one I would make sure that I'm not being long-winded. Tighten up the story, get things to where they need to be. The second thing I would do would be I would find a way to monitor my time. So if I'm doing a virtual interview over Zoom or Teams, I'm making sure that my smartphone with the timer okay is clearly with an eye shot, or I'm bringing up a clock on my desktop and putting that somewhere in the screen so my eyes don't look like they're roving all over the place so I can monitor my time. I would also make sure that I'm taking notes in some way. I've always been that kind of person going in an interview that I would have a notepad and a pen out and I'd be jotting down some keywords or things to make sure that I wanted to talk about or things that they said. That was just part of my process and how I showed up for interviews, but it also was a technique to keep me on time.

John Neral: 12:43

Right Now, if you're going in for an in-person interview and you go into the meeting room and you don't see a clock, you could absolutely call out to the interviewer and say look, I want to let you know I'm going to put my smartphone out here and I'm going to put the timer up. I know we only have 30 minutes. This is a strategy I use to make sure that I'm not going too long winded in my answers and we get through everything. Would you be okay with that? You have a right to do that, okay, Again, this is another way you get to build the relationship with the hiring manager. You're setting ground rules or expectations about what you need to be successful. So if you need to make sure you've got a time piece there to keep track of things, that's okay. Additionally, in my practice I would make sure that I'm not talking too fast. I'm eliminating my filler words. I'm making sure that my points are clear and clean and concise. I would make sure in prepping for my interview that I am polished but not robotic, that I'm able to talk freely without feeling super rehearsed but definitely knowledgeable of the content in the question that I'm going to be responding to.

John Neral: 14:16

The other thing I want you to know here is that it is the interviewer's responsibility to manage the time. They have a hard stop at 30 minutes. It is them who will let you know time is up. It is not for you. I would not be sitting there going oh hey, I see we're at 30 minutes, but what I would do is say this I know this interview was only scheduled for 30 minutes. I want to be respectful of time. If there's nobody coming in after me or you don't have another meeting, is it worth it for us to continue this conversation? It shows respect, awareness and, in my opinion, a little bit of savvy. Right For you to get some immediate feedback to say hey, I think this conversation is going well. Is it worth it for us to continue this conversation If it's not? If they do have a hard stop.

John Neral: 15:11

You want to make sure before you leave that interview whether it be with the person you're interviewing with or from the recruiter or HR rep what the next steps are going to be. You want to make sure you know that timeline. You also want to make sure you have plans for following up and what that may look like. So a few minutes ago I mentioned to you that I've got an interview course. It's called A Simple Five-Step Strategy for Crushing your Next Interview. I normally sell this course for $97. And as part of a Black Friday sale, I dropped the price to $27. I'm going to leave it at that for the month of December. So if you're listening to this and you want some help in building your interview toolkit, I just want to invite you to come in and grab this course. You can go to my website at johnnarrellcom forward slash courses to learn more about it. But if you're looking to simplify the way you are showing up for an interview and do some strategies that I coach my clients on time and time again, that have proven effective and relevant and helpful to them, I want you to come get the course at johnnerrellcom forward slash courses. So, jenny, personal shout out to you, thank you for reaching out to me. Thank you for this topic. I hope this was helpful, hopeful, helpful for you, but also for everybody else who's listening. So I wanna end this episode with a personal note.

John Neral: 16:43

20 years ago today, my father passed away. I lost my father when I was 35 years old. He was in his mid to late 70s when he passed away unexpectedly, and I get my work ethic from my dad. My dad never graduated from college. He managed a service station on the New Jersey Turnpike for the majority of his career and when the company he was working for lost the contract on the New Jersey Turnpike, he was given an opportunity to work in a refinery and I remember coming home from school it was high school and my dad's sitting at the kitchen table and he's looking at all of these blueprints and plans for how the oil was taken from the tanker into the refinery and moved throughout.

John Neral: 17:38

And I was curious about what he was doing. And he said I've got this big interview coming up. I need to get this job. And I said well, dad, what happens if you don't? And he looked at me and he said John, that's not an option. If I don't get this job, we don't have money coming in, we don't have a means to eat and live. He said, yeah, we have some savings and it can last for a little while, but not really long. I need to work, I need to provide for this family. And I watched my dad in his early 50s essentially go back to school in this training program to go for this interview and he crushed it and that's where he stayed for the rest of his career. He retired in his early 60s. I was a junior in college when he retired. So if you're doing the math, you can kind of figure out he had me a little bit later in life. He and my mom were both in their early 40s when they had me.

John Neral: 18:43

And it's on a day like this where, as much as I miss him, as much as I sit there and gosh 20 years of my life here have gone by and my dad has not been physically here with me, and my dad has not been physically here with me. I honor him in so many ways, and one of the ways I do that is by working as hard as I do, working as smartly as I do, but to honor the fact that I love the work I have and I'm grateful for it, and the privilege and the honor and the opportunity to get on this mic every single week to spend some time with you whether you listen to the entire episode or part of it means the world to me. It's part of what I get to do, and so this episode I just simply want to dedicate to my dad, who was truly a wonderful human being, an exceptionally hard worker and did everything he absolutely could for his family. I will always admire and love him for that.

John Neral: 19:47

So if you're coming up on an interview and you're a little worried, you need the job. You need to get the job offer. Your bills are getting tight and everything what I want to offer you, in the words of my dad, is there's no other option. You will get a job. You will find a job that you will be able to do. Somebody needs you, somebody needs your help. Somebody out there is looking for you. You just need to go in and communicate your story as best as possible and communicate how you're gonna help them and the evidence you have had that proves you are the best person for the job. So until next time, my friends, remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day.

John Neral: 20:53

Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform and, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnerrellcom for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Nerrell Coaching. I look. Forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters, thank you.