Working Strategies: Interviewing for your career-change job

Second Sunday Series – Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh of 12 columns on making a career change which appear the second Sunday of each month, from September through August. Last month’s column discussed launching your job search, while the months before focused on networking; getting experience in your new career; LinkedIn for career-changers; resume strategies; the back-to-school decision; career-change steps in your 60s; 10 ideas for choosing a new career; a sample timeline; and questions to consider when changing careers.

And it’s show time!

If you’ve been following this monthly series on changing careers, you’ve been learning strategies for everything from making training decisions to revising your résumé to launching a job search in your new field.

Now it’s time to finish up this project by meeting with employers — interviewing for a job, that is.

In fundamental ways, interviewing for a career-change job is no different from interviewing for any other position. You’re likely to have some virtual meetings and others in person, for example. You’ll certainly meet with the decision-maker and/or your prospective boss, while also likely talking with an HR recruiter or potential co-workers.

The questions will be similar as well, but with this key difference: Interviewers will want to know about your career change. Their interest will come not from curiosity (mostly) but from a concern about your commitment to the field, your ability to do the work, and whether they should take a bet on hiring you.

You’ll have concerns as well, especially since you’ve invested time and money in making this change. Following are some ideas to help improve your interviews.

Anticipate career change questions: “Why did you change careers?” would be the obvious query, along with, “Do you think you’re ready for this work?” and “What are your goals for this field?”

You don’t need to blurt everything out at once, but setting the tone at the beginning of the interview will help. For example, when asked “Tell us about yourself,” you might balance the answer this way: One-third about your past career, one third on your career-change decision, and the last third highlighting the blend of strengths you’ll bring from both parts of your background.

To avoid going on and on, practice speaking for a minute or less for each section; then you’ll be in the right zone for total length on this answer.

Do your research: As soon as your interview is scheduled, it’s time to call everyone you can who has insight into the company, the industry, and/or this role in particular. With luck, you already have some contacts from your career-change process.

As possible, augment these conversations with online research and a review of your own notes or training materials. Your goal is to familiarize yourself with the language and issues connected to this position so you can sound informed and ready during the interviews.

Ask your own questions: Key questions for a career-changer will focus on the path for growth and training opportunities. In addition, a good way to ensure you’re coming in at the right level is to ask what your work would be focused on for the first 90 days.

Remember to negotiate: Although you may be feeling relief or even gratitude to receive an offer, don’t let those emotions keep you from negotiating.

Unfortunately, if you had been working at a higher level in your past career, your new offer might be lower than your last pay. While that’s not ideal, it’s also not the new company’s “fault.” That is, they’re not bringing you on board based on your former position, but on what they expect from you in this job. And that’s at least partly an untested theory at this point.

Of course you can (and probably should) negotiate the pay. But assuming that won’t go as far as you’d hoped, remember there are other forms of compensation and reward to be considered as well.

For example, do they offer tuition reimbursement, professional memberships, admission to industry trade shows or conferences, or on-the-job training? These are all extremely important for a new entrant to the field and might provide more value to your career than the added pay would have.

Whatever offer you accept, this topic can (and probably should) be revisited once you’ve been on the job awhile. For help with that, come back next month. The final article in this series will discuss tips for settling in and succeeding in your new career-change position.