Mastering Job Interviews with Dylan Bain: Insightful Techniques and Transferable Skills

Hello everyone and welcome to the Curious Ulstroman podcast. The podcast is designed to give you the tools to thrive in adulthood, and we're going to cover a very important topic today, folks, and that is how to do well in a job interview. And I've got a great guest lined up for you today Dylan Bain of the Fiscaly Savage podcast. Dylan has transitioned through two or three big career changes now, and when he went back to university later in life he ended up coaching and mentoring a lot of students on job interviews and professional networking. So I can think of no one better to come on and have a chat about this very important topic. So here is my chat with Dylan Bain. Hello, dylan, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us.

Hey, it's my pleasure to be here. Man, how are you doing?

Oh, I'm loving life and loving Christmas. To be honest, I'm an absolute sucker for Christmas, so my favorite time of year.

Yeah, I didn't, you know. My full confession here is I didn't actually really like Christmas till I had kids. And then, once I like, their excitement carries everything, yeah, and so, like you know, this last weekend we drove from Colorado back to my folks place at 16 hour car ride and the whole time my kids are like are we at grandma's yet? Are we at grandma's yet? So, as I'm talking to you, that's where I'm at. I'm at my parents place, you know, enjoying the Christmas break.

Yeah, absolutely love it, especially in a year like this. We can just appreciate all the family time we can get even more. So that's great. But yeah, the reason we have you on today is to discuss that all important topic of how to do well on a job interview. So we can Google this as much as we like. We can, you know, read all the blogs, but it's always better to actually have a chat with someone who has had to go through the experience a few times and has learned their lesson and a few failures, but also in their triumphs. So I've already given the listeners a brief introduction to you, but if you don't mind, just taking us through your professional career to date.

Yeah, not to worry. So I went I'm one of those people went to university, I was told like, hey, just go and in the job will be waiting for you, and that's a complete lie. So I graduated and I went. I didn't know what to do, so I went into the mortgage industry right before the Great Recession. So you can kind of imagine, you know I did. I did pretty well not as well as I think I could have. Then one day I showed up and just padlocked on the door because everybody went bankrupt overnight. Yeah, so I had to pivot and I pivoted into education, with a brief interlude of how I paid for that as a completely different story. So then I taught for eight years and I taught in one of the bigger cities here in the US and Milwaukee, wisconsin. But then, you know, my, my contracts ended, no one was hiring, so I had to go overseas. So I taught in international schools in Taiwan for a couple years and then I taught, came back to the US so my wife could go to grad school, and then, while she was in graduate school, I kept teaching and realized that I was never going to make enough money to actually make ends meet at the end of the month. There was always too much month at the end of my money and so I quit that job and I went back to school and I got my certified public accountant as a CPA here in the in the United States and I've been working as that since and during that process. You know when I was making the transition from teacher to accountant. That's a that's a pretty solid, difficult track to take, especially when you know I show up at university. I was 35 at the time and I had a professor look me right in the eye and go, don't even think about the big four firms, you're too old, they're not going to handle you. And I just looked at that and was like I'll show you so. So I actually ended up getting a job with the big four, but I had to learn how to do a lot of this interview, resume, prep, networking during that time. And what ended up happening is that while it was at university, like hey, you're really good at this. So I started counting and coaching, counseling and coaching people on interview prep, how to write their resume, how to network effectively and helping them get their jobs. And we had to. We had to gamut everyone from. You know your target audience of 18 to 21 year olds, to people who are coming out of the military, to people who are coming back to school for the first time in 30 years, and I worked with them all and so that's really where you know. That brings you up to present now and that's why I'm at. I'm still working as an accountant, I'm a financial auditor for a fortune one under company and you know I do this on the side with my own podcast and my own business.

Yeah, that's that's amazing and that's it's quite interesting because you have transitioned between some. You know very different career paths and they all require different skill sets and you know employers are looking for different things in different fields. However, my first question to you would be what are the universal qualities, attitudes and attributes that are appealing to employers universally, regardless of profession, and how do you foster these so that you don't just turn up on the day and say you're these things, so you can foster these in your daily habits so that you will know, regardless of what job you turn up to, you're just the employer is going to go. Perhaps you're not the most qualified, but you're the best employee we can teach you. You know you're. You are malleable, so to speak, in this role, and how do you effectively communicate that as well? I feel like sometimes in interviews, you can go in and you know you don't. You don't want to put your best foot forward in a weird way of like coming across as too boastful to arrogant, but at the same time, we we also don't want to be retreating to our shell and turn up and be like, well, I might be the best candidate for this job. I don't know what. What's your taken on those?

Well, you know, I'm going to just address one thing that you said about being boastful. You know so. So here's my question to your audience. I just would encourage everyone to actually think about this what's the difference between conceited and confident? Right, if I come into you and I tell you that I can do X, y or Z, and I can say it with complete confidence, am I conceited or am I confident? And the difference between those two things is can you back up your BS? If you can do what you're saying you're going to do, you're confident. If you're just blowing smoke, you're conceited. And so in a job interview you know a lot of those questions one of the things the interviewers are trying to determine is whether or not you're conceited or you're confident. And so, if you can back up your BS 100%, be as boastful as you want, because you're not being both. Well, you're just telling the truth, and I think one of the big barriers for any job interview candidate is people want to try to have this false humility because they're intimidated by the other person that was out of the table. You don't need to be and you shouldn't, because every interview is a two way street. But, to answer your question. You know, more broadly, if there's one theme for all the interview, you know this whole topic that we're gonna talk about today it's that your interview will be won or lost. Well, before you ever sit down at the table period, the skills that you're bringing to the interview have to be one, have to be honed, have to be learned before you show up. And so you know when you're looking for, you know what's, what's a universal skill? Well, if there's one universal skill that I'm gonna say that every job, no matter what it is, it's gonna be looking for its salesmanship period. Salesmanship, and let me give you an example. I learned salesmanship working in the mortgage industry, and so I had to learn how to handle people's objections to interest rates, mortgage terms. You know my competitors in the market, explaining to them, you know why this is the best fit for them. Well then, how does that transfer into teaching? Right, so when I show up and I want to get a job as a teacher and I say, well, I have all the sales experience. Well, how you know, it doesn't seem obvious until you realize that, as a math teacher, I'm selling mathematics to teenagers and I have to get them to buy it. So, right there. That was the number one thing I said in my interviews for teaching is that I'm a salesman and as a salesman I'm gonna get your students to buy my mathematics. And you know again what's the difference between being conceited and confident. I knew I could do it and my track record showed it. I had two years back to back where a hundred percent of my students passed their exams. That included my students from extreme poverty, my students off the, the Native American reservation that was right next to that school, my students with special needs and disabilities. Every one of them passed the standardized exams. How I sell, so like, if you're looking for one thing that you can point, you hang your hat on, that is a quality that every job, whether you're an engineer, whether you're in sales, whether you're a stockbroker, whether you're a teacher, it's gonna be sales. How can you convince somebody that you're adding value to their organization? And when you're in that interview, that's exactly what you're doing. You're selling yourself to them. So you know, beyond that, you know every employer like stop and think about it like a date. You're showing up or deciding if we want to make a commitment to each other. So what do you look like? What do you look for in that person across the table? You're looking for someone who's enthusiastic, someone who's gung-ho about your goals, somebody who's gonna add value to your life, somebody that you're gonna look at and go. When this person is present, I'm gonna perform at a higher level, and so that's what you're looking, no matter what job you're applying for. That's what you want the employer to walk away with. You know what impression are you looking to leave them with? I wanted everyone to go wow, if I had ten of those guys, we would rule the market, you know and again that goes kind of goes back to that sales. But they're going to be looking for that enthusiasm, being gung-ho, looking to add value. And One phrase and this is a money phrase that everyone can take to every interview is find some way to tell the employer explicitly how you add value to their goals, and If you do that, it's gonna stick in their mind, because all they're hearing is that cash register going in their head when you say that.

Yeah, that that's incredible. I mean I must about when you first said sales, learn out it. You know I was like, okay, I don't get it, but not that you've articulated it that way. That's yeah, that makes total sense. Like, at the end of the day, when a company is asking for potential employees to come in audition, so to speak, it's like who's gonna provide the most value for this company, because you know they are going to spend their valued resources paying you, you know, taking up their time, and that when, if there's someone else who can provide a better quality of service or help project that make that company more valuable and more likely to, you know, resist market shocks or, you know, whatever life throws at it, then yeah, you're gonna be the ideal candidate. That's, that's really good. I've never actually heard a perspective like that. So thanks very much for that.

Yeah, well, and it kind of goes back to that. You know, I was actually talking to my wife, you know, last yesterday, when we were out walking one of the parks here, you know, and one of the things that she brought up and it's totally true is that that sales is part of every job, no matter what. It is right, and it really comes down to that whole transferable skills. When I, you know, I was, I was having a conversation with a guy at work and he was saying you know, we're auditors. Well, how could I possibly get into, you know, another section of the business? Because he doesn't want to be an auditor for life. Right, you know he's a. How can I possibly get into this other section of business? And my wife has got the key right. She says it's all about those transferable skill sets, you know. So in her case, how does being a waitress translate to her being an excellent engineer at a national laboratory, you know, and and so like? And stop and think about what a waitress is doing. Waitress shows up, and this applies to teaching too, if any. If there's any teachers in the audience, they're gonna totally hear exactly what I'm saying. But stop and think what a waitress is doing a waitress is dealing with an environment in which everything goes wrong, everything's on fire, nothing is happening right, and they have to make a whole bunch of people with very different views on how it's supposed to go. Make them all happy. They got to make their bus boys happy. They got to make their cooks happy. They got make the boss happy. And that we're not even into the customers yet, right? These people who are coming in and paying their money to have this experience. And you got a, you know. Did they have kids? Are they out of date? You know? And of course, then that waitress is gonna have to. Okay, so they're on a date. Why should offer a bottle of wine if they got kids? Well, I got to get the crackers right. It's all about that experience and they're all competing for that tip. So now think about how that would translate into the engineering world. I got projects and deadlines, I got different stakeholders, I got limited resources, I got bosses who have different priorities, and you're managing all that. Those same skills you learned on the floor of that restaurant are going to be applicable On the floor of your engineering firm, I promise you. And so, just like sales, transferred right over to education. When I was interviewing as an account you know to be an accountant and remember my professors flat out told me don't even bother applying for the big four, you're too old, they'll never look at you.

So there's four of them.

I got offers from three of them. How? When I walked into every one of those interviews, I told them as a teacher, I learned how to do x, y and z. I learned how to manage my projects, manage limits, limited resources, deal with multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and objectives, and I did so successfully. Look at my track record. I had a hundred percent of my students pass the exam. Now, if you think that they didn't walk out of there going that's our boy, you're wrong, because it clearly did, and so that's all about that transferable skill set. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing right now, you are learning a skill stack that is applicable to a broad of a variety of different things, and in your resume and in your Interview, your job is to make them understand how that skill set is going to serve them.

Yeah, oh, a hundred percent. So, with that skill set being the ideal goal, how do we foster that? What? How do you, rather, rather than going through failure of interview, you know, a field interview after field interview and hard lesson after hard lesson? What daily things or what can we Be proactive within our lives to foster this skill?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, like I said there's. If there's a theme here, it's that the battle for the interview is one before you ever showed up. Yeah, right, so the question I have is how are you interviewing every single day in your life, right? So, you know, put this in perspective. You know I I've now work. You know I went through the big four, did the big four thing. I moved into you know fortune 100 company. I'm an internal auditor for them and so, like day one was figure out what it is, how do I be successful here? Right, celebrate that I'm now here, I'm in this internal audit firm. I'm super happy with it. Day two what's the next job that I want and how I'm interviewing for that today? Right, so I know where I want to go, and so I'm looking at how do I use my current job to hone the skills that that job in the future is going to want to have? Now, if you're 18, you might think, well, I don't know, okay, well, let's go back to that waitressing example. You get, you go get a job at the local restaurant. I just gave you an entire list of skills that you can hone every single day to be ready for that interview. You know, did you do a good job managing your boss? Did you do a good job managing the tables? Did you do a good job with your project management? You know, or or then take that into your life. You know, did you do a good job managing yourself? Did you do a good job managing your, your, your spouse or partner or your roommate or whatever? Did you have a good enough plan for the day that you were effective and you weren't stressed out for the whole day? And that's a great like, that's a great metric. People are like Well, how do I do good at my job? I don't know. How do how are you doing in your life? If you've got, if you can plan for your job and project manage for your job, why are you not project managing for your life? You know, and you know before this I even showed you. I got a notebook sitting here on the table. I'm gonna show it to your audience on YouTube. I've listed out what I'm gonna say, what I want to say, like this is not an accident. These are things and skills that I've learned, but I also practice them in my day-to-day life. I get up in the morning and make a list. How do I get to work. I get to work. I sit down on my desk and make a list of everything I got to do. You know, those are transferable skills that you hone. And then, when it comes time for the interview, again you, I've won that interview. I can say here's my how I work, here's how my process works and this is why it's successful. Look at all the things I've done. You know, and so you know. Again, going back to my experience in interviewing for the big four I had, I had a partner and I walked in in the interview and I sat down and he goes hey, you know, I can tell that you're married. I don't wear a wedding ring right now Just because it bothers my hands, but I was at the time. And he goes you're married. I imagine you got kids. How are you possibly gonna handle an 80 hour a week job With a wife and kids and not end up divorced? I mean, did this partner flat out look me in the eye during the interview and asked me that question? And I looked at him. I said but I've been working 80 hours for that my whole life and I've been successful. I was able to woo this woman, have kids and become a great father while being in poverty, working multiple jobs and Managing everything, and we are happier today than we were when we got married, say you know. But I could say that again with complete confidence, knowing that I had done it. But so how did I prepare that? Because I practiced it every day. There's a transferable set of skills that we practice every day that are applicable to our professional lives, and so, if you're, you're asking me like, well, how do I prepare for this interview? Start preparing with your life, start building that skill stack, start looking at how am I showing up today in preparation for tomorrow.

That is Wow. I've I've never heard like, where is this type of stuff? When I was in school and I was going. You know, you know, I mean I've been very fortunate. I've only ever had one job interview, and for the maritime industry, and I've just been in that ever since, but Certainly with my friends and work colleagues who have now left the company and gone, gone on to other places. You know the job interview market people like, even even if you're not in school, this is, this is essential Skills and an essential habit actually, but it's not intentional habits that we need to Be proactive with every day. Be proactive rather than reactive seems to be the winning philosophy there. So my next question, then, is you've described in your professional life that you've had to transition through various fields, and my question then is what have you learned from various job interviews and what would you do differently if you could do it again?

So to kind of work backwards with your question, I like my life right now. So the question of what would I do differently? I don't know if I would do anything differently because I never stopped moving forward right and that's brought me to a place I like. So if I, looking back at it, I wouldn't want to alter that. So, like, just kind of like on this high philosophy, temporal, to tell you a messing with the timeline type of thing, I would be leery to say that I would do something different. But I can tell you that I've had interviews that have gone horribly, absolutely horribly, where I walked out and was, like you know, living in cardboard boxes. Probably better than ever doing that again. And it comes down to me personally and I learned this in sales early. This goes back to that sales. I Hated, hated getting caught flat-footed. If I was on a sales call and somebody asked me a question, I was flat-footed and I had no answer to it. My dedication I promised to myself was that that was never gonna happen again, and so I would literally sit down and I would figure out how to answer that question. In a way that was just because here's the thing, people who are resistant interviewers. Some interviewers are like this some interviewers are sadistic. They're gonna ask you that gotcha question just because they like to watch you come apart and I just I like to just shatter their little sadistic world by having the perfect answer. And so when I've had interviews where people have to have asked me that gotcha question, like, did I go and have a little pity party and feel bad about myself and beat myself up and maybe had a couple of, you know, too many mozzarella sticks and too many pints to beer? Yes, I did that. And then what I did is I sat down, I wrote down that question and I wrote down every response I possibly could have to it, because the next time that happens I was gonna nail that guy to the wall. And so you know, how do you learn? You gotta have an after-action review. Even if the interview went well, why do you think it went well? How did you feel about it? And it's when you start. You know, and I can tell you, I can tell you all of this stuff. But if you interview a lot, you're gonna start to see it. You'll start to know when you walk out of there whether you got the job or not Because of how they interacted with you. But you don't learn that unless you sit down and reflect on what that interview was and then compare it with a feedback you were getting in the interview to the results at the end. And so, like I can tell you when, if I, when I interviewed for my current job, when I literally I called my wife as I was walking to the car and I said, honey, I got the job and I like what did you they offer you at the table, I said no, but they're gonna offer me more than I asked for, and I knew that because of how they acted in the interview. But I own the reason I did know that is because I constantly went back and looked at it and so this kind of goes to the. You know, if you want to learn how to interview, well, you got to give yourself plenty of opportunities to fail, so you have plenty of opportunities to think back at it. So if any of your audience is at a university I don't care what university it is I promise you there's a career office there. Go find the people in that career office, ask them when now they having mock interviews and then sign up for all of them, even the fields that are not yours, right? So when I was, I knew I went back to school. I knew I was gonna be an accountant. I knew I was going for my CPA. I knew I want to be a financial auditor and I, I I did mock interviews for engineering firms. I did a mock interview to be a general practitioner for a doctor. I did several sales interviews. I did several teaching interviews. I just interviewed for everything in the entire university and I got. I got a couple different responses, people going Well, you shouldn't take those mock interviews with the engineers. Dude, there was an open slot. I'm not gonna just waste this guy's time. I'm gonna take I'm here for me, not for that engineer. And if they didn't get on it, tough for them. Yeah. And what I learned was I had all these opportunities to practice, practice, yeah. And because there's no, there's no, there's nothing on the other end, right, there's no job. This is a pretend interview. I Can just do what I can audition plenty different techniques, I can fall flat-footed and nothing's the bad's gonna happen, and it's that type of opportunity. So now let's say that you're not in university, okay, well, if you're looking for a job, apply for everything, just start applying, even go to job interviews that you have no intention of taking that job and and give it a shot. And if you're sitting there going, well, I don't want to waste this company's time. Look man, I get that. But that company will waste your time without a second thought. You know this whole, this whole thing is transactional. That company does not care about you and if they tell you that we're really a family here, they're probably a toxic family and just plan accordingly. So, like, like, go and take it, this is for you, go interview for you. And I've done that too where I've been in interviews. Be like there is zero percent chance I want to sell insurance. And yet here I am interviewing and giving them the in practicing everything I've said. I'm enthusiastic, I'm telling them how I'm gonna add value and I'm practicing. And then you know that that insurance interview was really funny Because I went in there and I did the whole interview and I tried a whole bunch of stuff. I my goal in that interview was, like, I'm just gonna be the most world's most enthusiastic Amplicit and they offered me a job right at the table. You know, but like, and and that it was. It was a dawned on me like, oh, I was trying to give really polished answers and I came into this one and that was far more authentic, hmm, and that generated it, generated a job offer. Boom, right there. And so you know how do you learn it. You got it. You got to give yourself plenty of opportunities to fail. You got to be okay with that failure and you got to review it. Succeed, win or lose. You got to review it, go back and think about the feedback you got. How did you perform what? What did they do? And here's, here's one of the thing that I would say success in an interview can be a value game, and one thing I've learned is that, okay, you come out with the interview and you're like, hey, this is great, they're gonna get back to me in two weeks. They might not, and why do you want to sit in your hands for two weeks? That interviews done, move to the next one. Keep going until you have a job. And even after you have a job, if you still haven't interviews lined up, go to those ones.

Yeah, that's, that's really good. So just a couple of things I wanted to touch on there, which was the after-action review, which I've never heard for a job before, and Failure. So I think we have this massive phobia of failure. I want to tackle that first and and I think you've already potentially answered the question, so to speak, of you know, don't be afraid of it, but how do you, how do you embrace it, so to speak, and how do you take that, that first step of Getting into a job interview absolutely falling flat in your face? It was a horrific interview, and how do you, how do you make failure your friend, how do you make it a teacher rather than a hard lesson?

So I'm gonna draw him again. This is sales experience, right, like you know, if you want to be a great teacher, you go, go work in commission based sales, because you're gonna have, you're gonna be in the bathroom with the stall shut, crying in the corner, I don't care how big or tough you think you are, that's gonna happen and it's happened to everybody in food service that I know. Right, you know it's. It's like that mean that goes around on Facebook of like due to COVID, and in high volumes. You know, only one cry, you one person crying in the walk-in freezer at a time. I showed it to my wife and she's like that's too real and walked away right. So so you know clearly like stress is part of the game and learning to deal with it. And I'll tell you what, for me, made the difference. And I was really lucky that I had this early on in life, but on some levels I would have figured it out anyway, just because of who I am right the difference between someone successful and someone not. So the successful person keeps doing and then the per, the failure, stops. But I was trying. It was in the mortgage industry and I I Was having, I was having a bald month. I had no deals, nothing. I had nothing and I was a hundred percent commission, which means I didn't have rent payment, food, I had nothing, and you know I had yet to learn how to manage my finances, which means I. So I spent my money as fast as it came in. So I literally had nothing and I was locked up in my office and I was trying to make the perfect flyer for open houses, for the realest. You know, go to these open houses real estate agents are having. Like here's my flyer, please give me busy business. And my sales managers are sat down across the table for me and went Dylan, no one gives you shit how much you failed, they only care how much you succeed, and your successes are in direct proportion to your failures. Mmm and I was, like you know, I'm like almost in tears, so like this high-minded talk didn't, didn't stick. But his point we like he got out of pen and paper and he just said okay, dylan, how many? How much is a yes to you? How much money do you make on a deal? I said, well, I make about the, you know, 1500 bucks. He goes okay. And how many times do you need to be told no before they give you, before you get a yes? I said 20 times. He goes $1,500 divided by 20. And he comes up with the number and goes every no is worth that amount of money to you. Wow, and I went what he goes you need if you want you. He's like I just gave you an equation. He's like you're a math guy. All you have to do is set your income as to what you want it to be and then go back and ask yourself how many noes do I need to get in a day whenever he know is worth 75 bucks? And I just I looked at him and I said I can't do that. I can't handle the rejection and he goes yeah, but can you handle a big paycheck?

Yeah.

And I just I looked at him and he says I don't want to hear it from you, go out there and go get 20 noes a day. And so I did. I actually had a notebook in my pocket and I kept track of how many times. You know that during that time I had a real estate broker threat and called the police. If I ever walked in his office again, I had somebody escort me out of their office because it was terrible. And the next month I made $14,000. Wow, like I had so much business, I had to hire a professional assistant to help me process everything. It was like magic and it dawned like and I've heard this comparison before like I grew up watching Michael Jordan right Cause I'm older than your average audience that, yes, during the United States it's LeBron James, and I don't even know if the audience in the UK would understand what I'm talking about. But, like Michael Jordan, was a basketball player, and he was famous. He was one of the most winning this basketball players in the world, and then, if you look at his shot average, his shooting average is actually pretty bad. The difference, though, is that every time he had the ball, he shot, and so on a points per game. He had more points per game than anybody else because he failed more than anyone else, mm. And then there's and I can't remember what year it was, but he had this game winning shot from half court, won the championship, everybody. It's like the pinnacle moment of his career, but nobody remembers the other 80 times he tried it and missed. Wow, yeah, that's a good answer. So when you're looking, when you're asking me, like how do you embrace failure? I don't want to fail. I want to be on the highlight reel, and the only way the greats got there was to fail a lot. So how much is that failure worth to you?

Wow yeah.

I'm in a position where I've made more money this year than I've ever made. My net worth has increased over the last 12 months by $60,000. And I got there because I was willing to fail and the other people I went to school with who were afraid of failure or working dead-end jobs, not going anywhere, because they're afraid of failure. So I've made myself look like a fool. I was okay with this, but this brought me here.

That's an incredible story and that's also just incredible advice as well. Thanks very much for touching on that. But something I want to touch on again very quickly is the after-action review, if we can touch just quickly on what that actually is and how you actually use that. So I think you already said it as well you have a terrible interview and you go away, have a couple of beers, feel sorry for yourself and you sort of know why the interview didn't go as you would like, but do you really sit down and really think about the strategy and why it went bad or why it went well? But what's this after-action review that you mentioned and why is that an essential part of the interview process?

Yeah, this is life advice. Right, we're talking about interviews. It's a great way to look at it. But this is true with anything right the after-action review has to. It's basically two questions right, what went well and how do I get more of that? And what went bad and how do I get less of that? And with bad interviews, nine times out of 10, the problem is a lack of rehearsal beforehand or an unknown question that you didn't have an answer to. Right. And you'll notice that those two things are kind of related, because if you practice enough, then you're going to come up with your own questions, right, and so, like, the after-action review is well, man, that question. Just I had no answer to it, right? Or I don't think I have the skills. Okay, let me address the skills question. You have the skills. I promise you you have the skills. I don't care who it is, I promise something in your life has imparted to you some level of skills, unless, of course, it's something highly technical. Right, like you have to have a master level of Python knowledge. Like, that's not a skill that someone whose waitressing has, but like, how did you? Here's a very common interview question. Give me a time in which you had conflict with a coworker, how did you resolve it and what was the result? There's an interview question and you have this person who's like well, I love my job, I've never had conflict with a coworker, really, you never had conflict with a coworker. You are a liar, right? And if you are in an interview and you tell me like, oh, I never had conflict with a coworker, the interview is done. As far as I'm concerned, you are no longer trustworthy, right? And so it's asking that question. So what went poorly? Well, I didn't have an answer. So how do I get less of that? I need to make sure I have an answer. So I need to come up with times in which that happened. I need to be self-reflective as to where I failed and where I didn't have the answer. And then, how do I get more of it? Well, what went well? I answered some question, well, that the interviewer was like yeah, that right, how do I get that action out of him? And part of the after-action review is like it's an exercise in humility, really, because you're having to go back and look at your faults and failings, and no one likes that, unless you're really in love with progress, right, and like for me to look back. My wife and I had this conversation a lot, or like she's like how do you look at your faults and failings? It was like, well, because I'm in love with future Dylan and present Dylan needs to do stuff now. And I remember I did this mock interview. I was a guy, from who was he? He was with Vanguard Financial Group and at the end of the interview I asked him it was a mock interview, so again, no job. At the end of it and I said to him I said would you have hired me? And he goes absolutely not. And I was like, okay, I'm like crushed because I have an ego and that ego is fragile. And he just he like he ripped it in the small pieces, lit out in fire and then peed it out. And I'm like holding back tears, why? And he, like he broke down every question in excruciating detail, so like if you fail at an interview you don't get a job, email that interviewer because I guarantee you have their email and say, hey, I'm really disappointed that I can't take advantage of this opportunity at the time. What could I have done to change your mind? And I will tell you that 90% of the time you won't hear anything. And then there'll be that one person who's bored on a Friday and they'll email you back and they'll hand you the keys to the kingdom. But again, this goes back to that willingness to fail, right? And that guy from Vanguard, like man, I just I thought about quitting the program after that Because it was devastating. But I sat down and was like, okay, this is his criticism. I didn't follow the star format. If you go online you can find the star format. A lot of interviewers use it. You know I'm not covering it here because if you're Googling anything you're going to run into it. Yeah Right, you know. So okay, so all of my questions. He's like you have too many stories? Okay, so limit my stories and my examples down to three stories max. That can be applicable to multiple different situations. Right, so I can continue to reference them. And then, of course, that's a technique to to like get something to stick in that interviewer's mind by mentioning the same story multiple times. This guy from Vanguard gave me the keys to the kingdom, so that actually you know in and when. What do I do when it didn't happen? Well, I would go talk to one of the alumni and say, hey, you had. There's a guy, his name was Chris. He got the job I wanted. He was an older student, just like me, and I called him up and I said look, I'm going to drive down to Phoenix and I'm going to. I'll you name the restaurant and you have a blank check. All I want is your time in your brain. You can, I will pay for everything. He was expensive.

Very expensive.

But he told me everything Right and I talked to him about the interviews that I had done and he was like this is why that's a bad question, this is why you did this is how you failed, you know. And so that after action review is is a multifaceted thing, and if you, if your audience, is sitting there thinking, well, wow, that's a lot to do from one interview no, I didn't do this for every interview. I did this bit by bit, piece by piece. I'd made small little votes every time I failed for the person I wanted to be. You know, and I'm giving you the shotgun of here's, here's the whole list, but that whole list took place over five years. Right, that whole list took a long time to put together and I'm way stronger now because of it. But that after action review is a small daily thing you do. That's just building brick by brick.

Yeah, that's. Thanks very much for sharing that. That's, that's incredible. That's definitely. I don't envisage having to do a job interview for some time, thankfully, but but that's something that I've definitely bear in mind when the time comes. So my next question and this is going to be very broad, but it just covered the major parts of it what are, what are the biggest wins and mistakes you can make on a CV? The big, the red flags and the, the absolute gold that an employer looks at and goes yes or no.

So let's start with the biggest mistake. I said I had an ego. I do have an ego, and therefore my biggest mistake is I never asked for help for a long time. Yeah, this is like budgeting Everybody thinks, for some reason, they should be good at making a resume. There is no God given a reason why anybody should be good at this asoteric, bureaucratic, functionary activity. So, you know, just put the ego aside and ask for help, and my resume has got a lot better when I did this. The biggest thing I would say for a resume, though, is that you know I'm going to tell your audience how to build a resume, and then which one to use. Right, you want to sit down with a resume? Sit down, and this would this will take you three to four hours, I promise and list out every, absolutely every skill you can possibly think of on a piece of paper, and give an example for every single one of them. Right, project management I was a waiter and I managed all these tables. Okay, financial, you know. Financial management I've been managing a budget for my church. Right, and just start start handing that out Now. On your, the next section down is your education, of course. Right, you have. You would list out your education, what your GPA was where you got your degree. Whatever, if you have that, if it's trade school, same deal Right. And then go through your jobs and I want you to. You know, in my case, you know I'm in my late 30s, I have multiple. I have like 10 pages of jobs because I've never stopped hustling and for most of my life I've worked multiple jobs at a time. But I list them all out. I list out, you know, my teaching. I list and then I list out everything I did with the teaching putting together curriculums, developing new classes, coaching, wrestling, fundraising, all of it, everything. And you know bouncing. I bounced at a local theater when I was teaching because I, you know, one month I was really, really short of money. One of my students' dads ran the music venue in town. I called him up and said, hey, you know, I had his number from school, which I probably shouldn't have done, right. I was like, hey, I need, I need extra money because you get any work I can do, because I can need an abouncer, okay. So I bounced Terrible job, don't do that I run up on. But the point being is I still put that down right. And what did I learn there? Conflict, de-escalation, you know multiple awareness, attention to detail. You know nothing else. I could show up that. I was willing to show up on time, right. And so once you have this, you're going to have this multi-page document, okay, and all that is is a master resume. That is not what you hand into an employer, that's for you. So everybody tells you to tailor your resume, and this is where people burn out in this constant process. Remember, it's a volume game, right? Apply for everything, even if you're not interested in it. You'll get as much experience as possible. How do you do that without burning yourself out? Well, now I have a master resume. So in every job description they're going to have bullet points of these are the skills we want. Here's the experience we want. Take their bullet points and your bullet points and compare, copy and paste all of the bullet points from your master resume to a new sheet of paper that matches their bullet points and submit that. You know that is how you can take advantage of the volume game over and, over and over again. The other thing I would say is that you know, once you have your master resume, you want to have this as polished as possible because, again, you're just, you're cutting and pasting. You're tailoring based upon what skills they ask for to what skills you have. Go ask a friend for help, right, in my case I went down to. Her name was Wendy. She worked at the career development office at my university when I was going to be an accountant. I handed her my resume and she goes this is terrible and put it in the shredder.

All right.

Like literally, I'm sitting, like I'm horrified, and she goes. The problem is is that this resume tells me nothing. Right, and she went through and she the resume I have is lovely, I'm very proud of it, but she helped me make it and I would never have gotten there on my own if not going to that other person. My caveat is is that there's a lot of crappy advice out on websites and so like a good way to gauge whether or not you're getting good feedback is whether or not you feel terrible afterwards. Your resume is part of your ego. If we didn't actually do the work, you're not going to feel bad. So if you walk out of it, if you hand this to your roommate and your roommate's like, oh this is, I would hire your bro that you feel good by that, don't you? You didn't get good advice. There was no iterative process. It does not feel good to hit new, to go to the gym every day. It should not feel good to continue to work in your resume.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's very interesting. So that's like the the, the hard stuff in that, like putting pen to paper, but something may be a bit more abstract, and I think this is a problem a lot of people have. So my, my question to you is how, how do you become a good communicator? Because I feel like a lot of people walk into the job and they are the most qualified people for this job, but, whether it's nerves on the day or you're just not good at communicating, you know how do you articulate to an employer that you are the best candidate for this job, but how do you, with terrible communication skills, do that? Or if you're like 18 and you're confident you can do this job, whatever that may be, but like how, how do you, how do you foster good communication skills and how do you communicate well on the day and the interview?

So I'm going to answer your question and I guarantee you that someone in your audience is going to tell me that I'm a liar and I'm not Okay. Okay, but I'm going to. I'm going to start in a weird place. Do you watch sports, gentlemen?

Yes, I'm a big rugby fan.

Oh, I love rugby. I absolutely love the world championship. Qualifiers were here and we're in Denver and I got tickets and it was amazing. Oh yeah, so you ever watch rugby practice?

Yes, Believe it or not, for all the size of me, I did play rugby once upon a time. Yes, you poor, poor man, you.

Still in one piece, Right, but stop and think about your rugby practice. You did the fundamentals every single day. They were boring, you didn't like them and they weren't exciting, and nobody comes to watch it, unless they're a hardcore rugby fan. Right, here in the US, you will watch the big baseball players. I'm going to start with a cup of tea. Right? How many times do basketball players just stand there from a particular spot on the court and just shoot 100 shots during practice? Right? You know wrestling. When I wrestled in high school and in college, like we did the same move 100 times. So how do we become great wrestlers? How do we become great ruggers? How do we become great baseball players? You do the basic stuff over and over and over and over again. So when it comes to communication, you've got to do the same thing. Why do we think that there's a different path to this, that somehow, good communication is this natural thing? I will tell you that I've had when I was in university. I was coaching people on how to do the interviews, or even my buddy at work who was like hey, I want to move to a different part of the organization. I don't know what skills I have as an auditor to be able to do this. Well, I work for Power Utility, so we have transmission lines for the electricity and I said, well, but your role as a CPA makes it so that you understand how capital allocation can add value to the company when we build new transmission lines. And he just looks at me and was like that was incredible, how did you do that? Well, I've been practicing for years. And where did I practice? In the mirror. Like the best way to become a communicator is to walk up to a mirror. And this is where people tell me, like you don't actually do this. Yes, I actually do this. This is that I've been doing it for years. You go and stand in front of a mirror, you look yourself in the eye and you say the thing you want to say to somebody else, and this will do a number of different things. Number one that's going to be uncomfortable is all get out. It's going to be like you're on fire. I promise, because I'm an extroverted person, but it's still scary to be.

I still don't like to do it.

And I've been doing it now for almost 20 years, and so you say that and it's going to help you get over those nerves, because if you are your worst critic, you know where all your bodies are buried and you know your own BS, and so when you can deliver it to yourself, you're going to look amazing to everyone else because they don't know all the bad stuff. And the other thing about it is, if you can't look yourself in the eye and say something with conviction, then you yourself don't believe it. No one else will either. So when you're doing your interview questions, get your interview questions and interview to yourself in the mirror. You will know how that person on the other side of the table looks at you, and when you believe you, when you would hire you, then you're ready, wow.

That's yeah, I definitely didn't learn that skill, and you touched on the fact that you actually helped coach people through interviews. What would be the one bit of advice, or what was the one consistent piece of advice that you gave to your students, or if you potentially already covered it in this shot?

I mean, it's one of these things where I've already covered it a bunch, but it's worth saying again. You got to practice, just practice. Yeah, you got to practice. It's time on target. This is a volume game. You have to practice. And how do you practice? Practice at the grocery store. Strike up a conversation with a person behind you and practice your communication skills. Practice your gravity toss. Practice how you're delivering. Practice looking people in the eye. Be nice to the person at the gas station. Say hi to someone on local transit. Go out of your way to say something profound to your partner, roommate or wife. Call up a stranger, a friend you haven't talked through in a while, and just strike up a conversation and practice small talk. A big goal for me this quarter is like I'm an intense person, I'm all business and I know that, and I'm working very hard because I want to be a manager at my company. So I got to learn how to. I got to learn small talk. This is a new place for me, so I'm learning how to talk about sports. I'm learning. But how do I do that? I talk to everybody Right, and so you know, the one reframe that I had for everyone I was coaching for interviews is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice in the mirror, practice with your cat, practice with a rubber duck. Like, once you say it out loud, you'll hear it and you'll get your own feedback. And it sounds crazy. People like why don't it be crazy, man talking to the duck? You're only crazy if the duck talks back. So, like it's low stakes, you'll record yourself. We're talking on Zoom. We have this technology Record yourself and play it back. Do you believe you? Because if not, then they're not going to believe you either.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's really good. So what I would like to do now actually is we do have a question from the audience A big shout out to my brother Robbie for actually coming up with this question. So his question is I'd like to understand tealering a CV interview to the nature of job or job sector, the example being a more HR based TV from university really liked. He submitted a CV to an HR person in university and they loved it, so it was great. However, when he went to an engineering firm while the guys was there, it was very nice and actually reviewed the CV prior to not the company he was actually going to, but another engineering guy reviewed it and said this is terrible. Like this, this CV is made for someone in HR to read and go. This is wonderful. This tells me nothing. Like you need to tailor your. He said you need to tailor your, your, your CV to HR, tailor your CV to engineering. But they wanted to know for the guys in engineering. They wanted to know how can you provide value to them over? We don't care what you do in your spare time. So what's your advice on? What's your experience in this area of tealering CVs?

Your brother's name is Robbie.

Yeah.

Robbie, I love your question, like I, like it's. This is a. This is a wonderful question and I, like I, had to learn this the hard way, going from education to accounting, because that's exactly the the the. The difference between what you're calling an HR resume and your engineering resume is exactly the same difference between education and accounting, and I'm going to answer this question in a broad way that's applicable to everything. The question, how you answer that question is entirely dependent on one thing how does the organization you're trying to be part of do their stuff? Okay, and I noticed I didn't say how they make their money, because not for profits. Governmental organizations don't make money, right that they're not in, they're not profit. So if you're applying for a government job, if you're applying for an education job, like my, school was not out to make a profit, they were out to educate kids. So how did that school do the thing? That school did the thing by interpersonal relationships between the teachers and the students. Okay, and so my ability to connect with the students and connect with the parents and connect with the coworkers, to draw lines between the abstract mathematical concepts to the real world, that was what was valuable to a school, and so my resume for my education has all of my hobbies on it. It has my other interests different traveling things. It tells a more holistic part of who I am as a person so that I can reference those things inside of an interview. For example, I've been scuba diving for years. My parents own a scuba diving shop and that's where I picked this up right, so I have a lot of experience with that. I don't put that on my accounting resume, but I do put it on my education resume. Why? Because I can say I can talk about this real world application for this algebra and connect it to these kids and what might be interesting to them. Right, that's how the school adds its value. My accounting firms do not care. They want to know that I'm good at data analytics. They want to know I'm good at managing projects. They want to know that I'm good at staying under budget and delivering early, because that's how they make their money. Education is about teaching. Accounting is about making money. We do this for the money. So that engineering firm you're talking about is exactly the same thing. They want to know how you can help them do the thing that they want to do. And so if you're looking at how do I tailor my resume. That's the question you have to ask how does this organization do the thing that they want to do, and what type of person would they need to do that? And so the advice you got from the engineers is perfect for what you're looking for. If you are trying to get into a technical field, you got to talk about your technical expertise because that's how they do their thing. If you want to get into a softer field like social work or education, sales, whatever that's all the squishy stuff, right. So you put the squishy stuff in your resume.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Thanks very much for that. We're coming up on to an R here, so that's all I wanted to chat about. But, folks, you will be glad to know that Dylan will be a repeat guest on this podcast In the future. He's going to cover other valuable skills, such as how to professionally network, when is the correct time to change careers, so you can all look forward to that in the future of this podcast. Dylan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to discuss this really, really important topic. Where can the listeners find you if they want to hear more about you or your content?

Yeah, they can come and find me. I run a side hustle on a podcast called Fiscally Savage, so you can check me out at Fiscally Savage on Instagram and Twitter. Find me at any of the podcasting places at Fiscally Savage or go and come and visit me at FiscallySavagecom.

Yeah yeah. I can highly recommend that podcast. Got lots of great content to keep you right in your financials, dylan. Once again, thank you so much. I really appreciated this chat.

Absolutely, it's been my pleasure.

There you have it, folks. That was my discussion with Dylan Behan on how to do well on a job interview. I hope you got a lot of value out of it and if you did, please leave a reading and review. That really goes a long way in helping this podcast grow. And if you would like to see more content from the Curious Ulsterman, please do subscribe to all the various social media at the Curious Ulsterman. So thanks for tuning in today, folks. I really appreciate it and all the best. Bye.