• Life After College in Detroit •

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Employers offer
advice on
how to
interview well:
Be open,
and mean it.

LYNNE MEREDITH COHN

STAFF WRITER

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52

o what gets you the job?
Is it interviewing fi-
nesse, fine monochro-
matic outfits, a dynamic
resume or a combina-
Ms- tion of all?
Professionals in various fields
like to see interviewees who are
put together, both physically and
emotionally. They say a job-seek-
er who asks appropriate, well-re-
searched questions earns major
points. And, of course, experience
and good references are key.
Jerry Ellis, an attorney with
the firm Couzens, Lansky, Fealk,
Ellis, Roeder & Lazar, P.C., in
Farmington Hills, likes to see
"people who come across as
bright and intelligent, alert and
interested. It always impresses
me and most of the people in this
office if somebody can come in
and ask questions about what
you do. Be positive and enthusi-
astic."
Most employers want individ-
uals who are "open" and flexible.
Dr. Steven Spector, a psychol-
ogist and executive co-director at
the Beacon Hill Clinic in Birm-
ingham, looks for "openness, lack
of defensiveness ... but the most
important thing is being verbal,
being approachable, certainly
having the right licensing cre-
dentials."
He stresses the need to have
"passion for what they want to
do. Zeal, passion, excitement ...
the most important thing is their
excitement for the job, their abil-
ity to work hard and to be as-
sertive, to ask appropriate
questions, not being frightened
of working hard."
"It's an increasingly competi-
tive job market and you want
people who are willing to work,
to put in the hours and be su-
pervised, [to] take criticism," he
says.
Dr. Spector suggests picking
up a book that offers tips on how
to interview.
Oftentimes, employers ask an
interviewee to state a few of his
or her strengths and weakness-
es. The well-prepared job-seeker
usually has some ready to rat-

tle off, and chances are the
weaknesses are actually
subtle strengths, such as being
too nice or not being satisfied
with a product until it's perfect.
Dr. Spector says it's important
to be honest about your short-
comings.
"If someone says 'I don't have
any weaknesses,' I'm always wor-
ried," he says.
It's also a bad idea to trash talk
previous employers, "because you
know they're going to do it to you,
if they leave. [I appreciate] the
ability to contain themselves and
not unleash lots of things that
aren't germane to the interview,
stay focused."
While employers like to see a
prospective employee dressed ap-
propriately, exactly what you are
wearing doesn't matter to them.
Ansel Aberly, president of SLC
Recycling Industries Inc. in War-
ren, looks for people "who are
neat, care about their person, be-
cause that tells you how they val-
ue themselves. Neatness of
appearance, how wellkempt they
are, not so much what they're
wearing. Too far-out one way or
another might influence [an em-
ployer's] decision — not to ex-
tremes."
Michael Horowitz, president
of The Selective Companies, real
estate developers and builders,
says, "We want people to be neat.
We certainly don't want people
who look disheveled. While I per-
sonally don't care, why should
anybody have to spend the first
part of an initial impression over-
coming negative impressions to
get to the essence of the person?"
In his industry, Horowitz looks
for education and experience
when hiring for a skill-specific po-
sition.
"In general, we like ... people
who we think are personable be-
cause we have a lot of interaction
with customers ... [people] who
are somewhat self-starters and
who are adaptable to learning."
Sharon Lesnick, a realtor with
Cranbrook Realtors Associates
Inc. in West Bloomfield, says ap-
pearance is important but not the

deciding factor in
her field. The key
there is creden-
tials.
When she applied
to work at Cranbrook
Realtors, she was wearing
shorts. "I just stopped in and [the
employer] signed the back of my
application form and that was it.
He's a friend of mine; a lot of
times it depends on who you
know. Networking's real impor-
tant. I think the biggest draw-
back to a beginning realtor out of
college is you don't have enough
connections."
In real estate, "it's almost like
the employee is interviewing the
company, instead of the other
way around. Anybody who has a
good reputation, has not had any
ethical problems in the past — a
broker wants to fill those desks
and wants people on the phone,"
she says.
"You want to look for a place
that's going to give you good
training, support, advertise your
listings or contribute something
toward the advertising. Really
you're an independent contrac-
tor."
Specific to psychology, Dr.
Spector looks for intuition and
empathy, the desire "to help peo-
ple. The capacity to look at his
own feelings and not let those
feelings interfere with his job,
that [he can] look at his own per-
sonality as to what may be con-
tributing to how he responds to
a case, his capacity for insight."
Mr. Ellis says his law firm
looks at previous work experi-
ence. Mostly they hire individu-
als who have been out of law
school at least a little while. "We
do hire people right out of school
and [with them], we look to see
if, in fact, they've done any clerk-
ing while they were in school,
what they did, how they talk
about it, what they feel about the
experience."
Dr. Spector prizes someone

who "can
stay fo-
cused in the
interview
without becom-
ing tangential
and who has sol-
„
id organizational
skills.
He also advises
interviewees not
to become argu-
mentative in an inter-
view, which he says is
a sure sign of argumen-
tative tendencies on the job.
In business, Mr. Aberly looks
for someone who is "open and
forthright, easy to talk to, some-
body who reacts to the concept of
change well. Most businesses to-
day are in a state of constant
flux."
He wants someone who can
"thrive on chaos," react well to
change, "because if they don't re-
act well to change, they're nev-
er going to make it."
And if you're buying or selling
a product, an employer will want
to see a flexible, nonrigid per-
sonality. "If you need to work
from a list, you're in big trouble,"
Mr. Aberly says. He wants "some-
one who can think on his feet. So
much of our business is conduct-
ed on a handshake — the type of
person whose word is his bond."
Mr. Aberly has begun asking
interviewees for a handwriting
sample, which he submits to a
handwriting expert to analyze.
From a few scribbles on a page,
the expert can tell a lot about that
person.
"She can [glean] a lot of per-
sonality traits from their hand-
writing that might not be evident
— are they rigid, inflexible, how
open is their nature?" ❑

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