Nobody likes to admit it, but the one thing that really, really counts during the job interview is …chemistry. If it isn’t there, no matter how qualified you are, you won’t get the job. If it is, you will. That’s what I call the “dirty little secret.”

The reason I say this is because (and it shouldn’t be a surprise, although most people are surprised by it), by the time you’re asked to come in for an interview, the employer has already determined from your resume and any other contacts with you that you can do the job.

The employer will spend a good deal of time during the interview checking this out, and if you can’t do the job and don’t have the qualifications they thought you had when they asked you in, it’s obvious you won’t get the offer.

The reason that “chemistry” makes the difference is because the odds are that your qualifications are as good as the next candidate’s. Or, worst case, you’ll have six of the seven qualifications they’re looking for, while another candidate (your competition) has a different six of the seven, and a third candidate has still a different six.

This makes sense, because if one candidate had seven of the seven, and you and another person had six out of seven, why would they even bother to invite you in?

So if (1) you can convince them that the qualifications that got you there in the first place are real, and (2) the chemistry is right, the job is almost certainly yours.

On the subject of chemistry, based on what I’ve observed as a job coach, most people think it’s something innate, not subject to modification, just something that they have no control over. It’s something, they think, that you’re born with – you either have it or you don’t.

While some of this is true, I’ve found that people can be coached in techniques to improve the chemistry during their interview. This is an area that most people leave to chance – and it’s at their peril. “We hit it off…” or “We didn’t hit it off…” are the type of comments we’ve heard that indicate the chemistry was a thing left to chance.

There are some very specific things that can be done to help ensure that the chemistry is right.

• For example, channels of communication. It’s important to know and verify what preferred channels of communication – visual, oral, kinesthetic -- an interviewer uses. Knowing this, you can then adapt your communicating style to theirs.
• Pacing. If the interviewer talks fast and hardly takes a breath between sentences, and you respond leisurely, he or she isn’t going to feel comfortable with you. The same holds true if the roles are reversed.
• Mirroring. Putting yourself, more than figuratively, in the interviewer’s shoes so that you both feel in synch with one another.

These take understanding and require practice. They have to be assimilated so that you utilize them smoothly. But they’re well worth while learning and mastering in the scheme of things, so that, in so far as you have control over it, the “chemistry is right” -- especially if you really want the job.

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