Sealing the deal: What should you do at the end of a successful interview?

Q: Your final job interview went very well. If a salary offer were attractive, you'd seriously consider taking the job. It seems the employer is impressed with you, too. Now comes the big question. You look the manager in the eye, shake hands firmly and ... what's the last thing you should do to optimize your chance of getting a job offer?

Nick's reply: This is where so many people ruin a perfectly good interview. After the interview process is complete, "What comes next?" is on their minds. They want (naturally) to ask the manager a question at the end of the interview. How long will the manager take to decide? When will they hear back? How many more interviews will the manager conduct? Does the manager need any other information?

This is the classic interview failure. After the interviews are done, the time for questions is over. To close a deal, a candidate must make a commitment. But what should he say?

I'd guess that good candidates fail to get an offer 80 percent of the time because they don't know how to say, "I want the job." Like insecure people in romantic relationships, they don't know how to make a commitment.

Failing to say explicitly that you want the job is a critical mistake. You must say it.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Say it, and say it before you are asked. (Most of the time an employer will not come out and ask whether you want the job.) It makes all the difference in the world.

When I asked my wife to marry me, she said yes. (I got lucky.) Do you think she'd have said yes if I'd never uttered these magic words to her: "I love you"?

People naturally want to hear it. You've got to look the manager in the eye and say the equivalent of I love you. "I want to come work for you. I want to be on your team." If you don't say it, then you have not made a necessary commitment. Another candidate will.

I've had clients tell me they liked a candidate a lot, but they don't make an offer because they have no clear evidence that the candidate wants the job. An employer needs to hear you say, "I want this job."

To job applicants, it might seem obvious: Why would you go on the interview if you weren't interested in the job? But it's not obvious at all. In fact, people go on interviews all the time for jobs they aren't sure they want. Internet job boards create the opportunity for people to apply for hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs at a time just because the jobs are posted. They attend interviews because they are invited -- not because they have a high motivation to work for a company that calls. Savvy managers know this. They want to know, do you love them?

Mind you, I'm not suggesting you should say you want a job when you don't. You need to make a decision during the interview. My rule is this: If your gut tells you there's a better than 50 percent chance you'd take the job if it were offered, then you can legitimately say you want the job. (If you don't really want it, then end the interview, say thank you and move on.)

Of course, it helps if you have other things to say that impress the interviewer ... but that's for another column.

Copyright 2009. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.