I get an email from a client. To her surprise, she’s invited for a second interview with an employer who was lukewarm if not disinterested during her first interview. The body language and expressions of the interviewers was tepid. Disengaged. There were uncomfortable moments of silence.
She felt a no. She let go of the option.
They called her back.
Now what. Does she take the next interview or does she say no?
I have a phone call with a potential client. It seems like we have good rapport. After twenty minutes of conversation, I give an overview of my services and my fees. The line is silent. Okay, almost dead. (I don’t charge that much!) I have to figure that the silence is holding a no even if I don’t know the why. I find a way to wrap up the call and move on with my day.
What if she calls me back to say she wants to work with me? Is this client a yes for me?
You may be saying that there’s more to each story, that with the limited information you can’t say whether the second job interview or the new client is a yes or a no. But maybe it’s very simple.
Either YOU FEEL a Yes or you feel a No.
Either you SENSE their Yes or their No.
And, when you are considering a working arrangement with someone, don’t you want to feel their YES? a spark of interest or enthusiasm, especially as the conversation-interview ensues? Don’t you want to feel like they’re warming up to you not cooling off or going dead-quiet?
Most of us have had the experience of feeling “dropped” whether on a date or interview, with a salesperson or contractor. We know the very young childhood experience of not being wanted (an experience that can be terribly hurtful and disappointing).
But in the job-client seeking sphere in particular we may question our intuitive sense of yes and no because we are in a contrived situation. We are selling but trying not to be sales-y, we are judging and but trying to remember no one is perfect, we are telling stories that fit a model showing our outcomes and impact. We wouldn’t tell stories like that with our friends! We’d be more relaxed and conversational! We’d probably be more humble too.
For my client, I’d say it feels very close to a clear no- don’t take the second interview. She didn’t like their vibe. She didn’t see glimmers of recognition or interest. She didn’t feel drawn to work WITH them; they didn’t communicate interest in engaging WITH her. Those are all no, no, no.
The doubt comes from having empathy for the interviewers. Maybe they are uncomfortable with interviewing. Maybe they’re reading from a script of questions or looking for certain buzzwords in her responses. I also wonder if they were told to be implacable (a weird, off-putting technique), perhaps in the spirit of objectivity. For these reasons, I think she could decide to give them the benefit of the doubt based on what she knows of the company culture and the reasons they might be deadpan.
Or she could just decide no because they didn’t communicate real, human interest.
As for me and the client prospect, I have hovered around a yes before even when the line went dead. I know money can put a damper on a conversation. I did feel energy and enthusiasm in her and in myself before fee structure came up. I did experience rapport and connection, which is the heart of a coach-client relationship. Unlike my job seeking client, the tepid part of the conversation was clearly bounded.
We spend our lives making decisions about whether there’s a match with someone else. Often, we know the no from our gut.
I leave you with a question, if you don’t feel a YES from them, what helps you find a YES in it for you?