What are Hiring Managers Looking For? | Nail the Interview Process!

Key Takeaways

what's going on everybody welcome back to another video today we're going to be talking about what hiring managers are actually looking for [Music] now we're going to be covering a lot in this video basically the entire interview process but mostly from the hiring manager's perspective back when I was an analytics manager I was the hiring manager myself but even before that I was on a hiring team and so I was the one who conducted the technical interview so I was actually you know asking the person you know here's some questions on SQL tell us what you know kind of digging in to see if their technical skills were good enough to be on our team all that being said I have a pretty good understanding of how this entire process works and I want to share with you from a hiring manager's perspective exactly what they're looking for so let's start at the very beginning of the process when a candidate sends in their resume to try to get a job now to give you a little bit of context to how this works before I get into what a hiring manager is looking for usually a larger company or even a mid-sized company is going to use a recruiting service in order to filter through a lot of those jobs now it doesn't happen everywhere I used to work for a non-profit where we did not do that we would just actually sift through all the resumes ourselves but for most of these companies they are using a recruiting service that uses some type of automated system to filter through a lot of these resumes and applications that they get just to make sure that they have the basic requirements of what they're looking for that just means that they scan your resume they look for specific keywords or parameters that the client or the hiring manager is looking for if you have that you go into the next stage and if you don't they usually just kick your resume out so what are some of these keywords and parameters that hiring managers are looking for well it's going to be very dependent on the actual job itself a really big tip to you is to go and look at the job description see exactly what they're wanting are they wanting SQL Excel power bi Some Cloud platform you know what is it that they want and so those are typically the things that they're going to be searching for when they actually scan that resume now up till now a hiring manager typically has not looked at your resume and they also have not talked to you yet so you've just applied it's kind of scanned through you've gone on to the next round with your actual just resume or application and now most likely a recruiter is going to call you to do a vetting process when I was a hiring manager and working with a recruiting company I would tell them exactly what I need for a minimum qualification and typically that's what the recruiter is going to ask you they're going to say okay do you at least have some experience in this domain do you know SQL do you know this or that and then if you do know those things then they're going to send your resume over to the hiring manager now I know this whole video is what a hiring manager is looking for and I'm going to get to a ton of that in just a little bit but to give you a little bit more context about you know the application process the recruiting call is actually pretty important the recruiter usually works directly with the hiring manager so there is some type of relationship there and if the recruiter gets a really good feeling or vibe from a certain applicant they're going to tell that to the hiring manager so knowing what that recruiter is going to ask and what they're looking for is really important because that may get back to the hiring manager as well so with that first call with the recruiter they're going to do many things the first thing is they're just going to tell you about the position they're going to explain more about it and just make sure that that is what you're looking for otherwise they don't want to waste the next 30 minutes talking to you more about a position that isn't a good fit for you in the first place then they're going to ask you more about your qualifications and your experience and typically they'll have your resume right there in front of them and they'll say I see that you work for this company now can you tell me more about that this is when they're kind of trying to dig in just a little bit more is this person actually a good fit do they have the experience that we're looking for does this person have the bare minimum requirements that my client or the hiring manager wants and then lastly they may also ask you some questions about what kind of culture you like do you like a fast-paced environment do you like working from home do you mind being in person you know these types of things that are pretty important for you and so that's the time for you to say no I don't mind working in person or nope I absolutely want a remote position these are things that you should talk to the recruiter about because if you want a fully remote position and this job is only in person that's not going to be a good fit and so again they're just trying to vet you out make sure that you're a good fit overall for all the things that the hiring manager wants now if you pass all these things that's when they're gonna hand your resume off to the hiring manager give them some feedback and some initial thoughts from that initial call and then they can determine if they want to bring you in for an interview so now we're going to really dig into what the hiring manager themselves are looking for and this is when they actually have your resume in hand or on a computer and they can look at it so what do they actually want to see now it is dependent on the level of role they are hiring for is it an entry-level job a mid-level senior or lead it's very dependent because if it's just an entry level job typically they're just looking for a few key skills and they're not looking for a lot of experience you could be right out of college even but if they're hiring for a mid or a senior level role they're going to be looking for at least two years of experience or more and then a few years of experience in that domain that they have so for the sake of being very specific and not talking in generalities I want to pretend that I'm the hiring manager and I have your resume in front of me and you've taken my data analyst bootcamp so you have all the skills in the boot camp and you don't have any experience and I'm hiring for an entry level role as a data analyst at our company now our company or our fake company we'll use SQL we use Azure we use databricks we use a little bit of power bi but we have other roles that use it more and then we use Excel so a lot of Microsoft applications as well as a few others like python and a few other things now we've put all of these things in the job description so we want somebody who has all of these things but realistically we understand that not everybody's going to have all of them the ones that are really important for us is somebody who has really good SQL experience who just understands databases and then someone who's really good at Excel for all those other skills most likely we'll just train them because things like Azure most beginner level people won't have used so when I'm looking at your resume I'm also looking at seven to ten other resumes determining which ones I want to bring in for in person or over the phone interviews so when I'm looking at your resume I'm looking for just the key characteristics of what I'm looking for before I bring you in so I'm going to take a look at this resume I'm going to say okay yep looks like they have experience in SQL looks like they have some python knowledge that's great oh Tableau project that's really cool they don't have any experience variants but they did some internships and that makes sense because they just graduated college and it looks like they have some projects and a portfolio all of those things looked really good I got good feedback from the recruiter so we're going to bring that person in and I'm going to talk to them myself now that was just for an entry-level role and they might also look for a specific degree as well so if you're in healthcare they might want somebody who has a healthcare background so those are some things to just be you know aware of but that was just for an entry level role what about a mid-level or a senior level role well what I will say is that typically they're going to be a little bit more difficult on those resumes they're going to really look at them and say okay do they have domain experience in this domain do they have at least three to five years experience in this skill this is because they don't want to hire an entry level analyst or the skills of an entry level analyst when they need a senior level analyst it's completely different so that's mainly what they're going to look at in your resume they just want to make sure that you have the experience that you need if any and that you have the skills that they need as well let's say you have most of what the hiring manager is looking for him the hiring manager is going to tell the recruiter they're going to say hey I really like this person I want to get them in for an interview can you schedule a call here's my schedule you know just book the 30 minute slot anytime that I have 30 minutes available up until now it's been mostly about hard skills and experience but the in-person interviews the hiring manager is going to look a lot at these soft skills as well now the hiring manager is typically going to bring anywhere from three to five applicants and he's just going to talk with them get to know a little bit more about them assess their experience their skills and just kind of talk them through with these things as well as let them know a lot more about the position and a little bit more about what their company has to offer now one thing I want to note is that the recruiter call is actually really similar typically to the actual call with the hiring manager because remember the hiring manager was talking with the recruiter saying here's what I want you to ask here's what I want you to vet for so if the recruiter was asking about a specific skill or experience maybe you want to research that a little bit before you actually talk with the hiring manager now the hiring manager of course is going to ask you more about your skills your experience the things that you know you're brought in to do but they're also going to be assessing your personal skills if you have a good personality you know because they're going to be working with you that's important that was really important to me I personally did not like working with kind of negative people or super boring people I typically liked more outgoing happy people those are the people that I gravitated to when I was doing the interviews I was like okay this person I really Vibe with they have the skills we're looking for they may not have all the skills that that person had but that person was a killjoy like I would never want to work with that person so like in complete honesty that's how I looked at it and I've talked with a ton of other hiring managers as well and they have said very similar things now in some instances the hiring manager themselves might be a killjoy or a Debbie Downer whatever you want to say they may not be a fun person to work with so the hiring manager might not care at all about your personality they just want to know if you have the skills to do the job and you know that happens uh I've been in interviews like that where I was the interviewee and I was like this job sounds terrible and I don't want to work here and so that really does happen but from a hiring manager's perspective they really are looking for you know what they want they're looking for the skills they're looking for the personality they're looking for a good fit for their team one other thing that a hiring manager is going to look for either conscious or subconscious is somebody who's motivated somebody who really wants to come in and learn and work hard um and you know they want to have fun they want to enjoy the job and whether that's fair or not that is just the truth right you could be in a details position where it's the most boring job in the world and they still want to hear that you're motivated to do the job it could be like a terrible company or a boring company or whatever they just want to know that you know you're excited for this position that makes a big difference I know for myself I tended to gravitate towards those you know applicants who are really excited to work for this job and yes I know that you know you work to make money I'm aware of that you're aware of that but I wanted to work with somebody who was happy to be around who was a joy to be around and you know maybe I was a little bit selfish on my part but again that's what a lot of hiring managers do they tend to gravitate towards the people who are a lot more motivated and even if one applicant has less technical skills it has a really good personality a really good drive and ambition to be in that job they may choose that person over somebody who has more technical skills based off their personality or based off of you know how motivated they are those things do play a big part that's where those saw skills are really really important and actually I was just checking my notes there's one other thing I wanted to mention which is you know typically if you make it to the hiring manager round they want to make sure you actually know a little bit about that company I have been in interviews where I knew nothing about that company and they're like hey so what do you know about the company I was like you guys do uh Healthcare stuff right and they're like yes you know anything else about us and I didn't and it was horrible and I really quickly learned that I needed to kind of research that company beforehand so don't be like me early on in my career you need to research the company just learn a little bit about what they do what kind of data they might work with what domain they're in as a hiring manager that is a really good sign it's saying okay this person is really interested in this job because they're looking up their company they're seeing what they do and I'm also looking to see are you asking questions about the company are you asking questions about what we do how we do things all goes back to just personality fit motivation a lot of those soft skills I think personally that these soft skills play a much bigger part in the actual hiring process than the hard skills do of course those hard skills are super super important but when you get to the hiring manager stage they already know that you have the hard skills that's not a big deal anymore now they're really seeing are you a good fit after that you may have one or two other interviews and the hiring manager may be there or not but that is what the hiring manager is looking for so don't go into your your interviews like completely blank not knowing what to do not knowing what to expect in this video I've kind of broken down everything that you should be looking for and thinking about before you actually get into that interview so just to recap really fast on your resume you need to have some keywords that are in that job description because they're going to go through that automated process you need to have a really good call with the recruiter make sure it's a good fit but also you know really try to sell yourself in that recruiter call because they're going to talk with the hiring manager most likely the hiring manager is really going to be focused on do they have the right skills that we're looking for do they have the experience and domain knowledge that we're looking for then when you get into the interview it's a lot of soft skills they already know that you have a lot of the hard skills that they're looking for although sometimes there could be some miscommunication between the resume and what you actually meant and they can kind of vet that out themselves but most of the time they're looking for a really good fit with skills experience and those soft skills and culture fit applying and going through that interview process is really difficult been through it way too many times so I know how hard it is but I hope that these things can really help you prepare and be really ready for your next interview so you can just nail it and you can really do super well with that being said thank you guys so much for watching I really appreciate it if you like this video be sure to like And subscribe below and I'll see you in the next video [Music] foreign [Music]