Customer Reviews

Acing the Interview: How to Ask and Answer the Questions That Will Get You the Job

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

He claims he's been a salesman of people for the past 30 years or so. He claims his ideas work 95% of the time. I interview hundreds of students per year for graduate positions. If anyone gave me the attitude or responses that this guys suggests, I'd hang up on them, or end the interview right then. His suggestions are over-cocky and overtly manipulative and pushy. I can summarize the book in a few sentences.

1. Call high-up people during work hours and demand an interview. If they don't take your call, keep calling as long as it takes without regard for annoying them.
2. When they pick up, say "I'm smart, hard working, confident, team player...." I hear that all the time. Everyone says it. It doesn't work. Tell me something about yourself, rather than throwing adjectives at me.
3. Immediately say "Should we meet tomorrow morning at 10am or is tomorrow afternoon at 3pm better?" If someone said this to me, I'd hang up. I don't need a new hire being so pushy and manipulative. I want someone that's going to do the job, not someone that's going to try to manipulate others to do the job for them.

There are some practice questions, but the suggested answers are very general, and suggest you to say positive things about yourself.

As I'm trying to switch careers, I spent some of my limited savings and time on this book. Fail. He's a pushy salesman, plain and simple.

The author spends a great deal of time coaching job seekers to push VERY hard for a piece of a potential employer's time, even if the person in question is not currently seeking an employee. He claims that this has met with great success in all his many years as a head-hunter.

That may be true for certain fields, where being pushy to the point of obnoxiousness is viewed as a virtue (sales, for instance), but in the research/medical field this behavior is a fast ticket to a slammed door in your face. No surgeon, doctor, or lab director that I know would take kindly to these sorts of tactics, and to be sure, they would be counter-productive for the unfortunate job-seeker who used them.

I pitched the book in the trash, wrote brief and informational letters to potential employers, followed up with ONE polite phone call, and landed 2 jobs with in 6 weeks. Neither of my new employers was actively seeking a candidate, by the way.

Respect and politeness pays.

By Marilee Johnson

Interesting book. I jumped on the first job offer after college but was burnt out in less than a year. I like reading and was strolling through Barnes & Nobles when I came across a number of books on how to get a job. I started thinking about changing jobs and ended up going on a few interviews. It was very frustrating. One part of me wanted to just quit and stay at that same lousy job but the rest of me knew I was too young to give up.

Then I saw Dr. Beshara on the Dr. Phil show. Something in his energy and sincerity made me know that what he was saying was true. If he could get that loser Dr. Phil threw at him a job, he could get me one. I bought the Job Search Solution and couldn't put it down.

Have you ever seen those TV shows that reveal how magic tricks are performed? That's what this book is like. There's no rabbit in the hat, the lady really isn't floating in mid air, employers hide behind a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Yet if you look closely, like Tony teaches you, it all makes sense.

It's crazy, but there really is a method to the madness - just as Tony tells you. The key is working your plan and staying motivated.

WARNING: don't skip past his chapters on personal motivation. You may think you're pumped up at first, but finding a good job takes time and you have to stay pumped.

I got a good job. I did interview for a couple of others that seemed even better, but they couldn't get their act together so I think they probably weren't really that good. After reading Dr. Beshara's book it all made sense. Buy this book - it'll be the best career choice you ever made.

First, I'm highly suspicious of the 5 star reviews as being shills; especially since they all sound similarly canned and the reviewers have reviewed nothing else. So, do you want to be a used car salesman? By all means, read this book. That's about the only job following the author's "tips" will get you. I gave up reading the book past page 100/300, because it's just constant repetition of "hard sell, hard sell, hard sell!!!!". The other 1 and 2 star reviews on this book are quite accurate. Encouragement to harass every single person you know for a job and use cold calling (sorry...the author prefers to call it "warm" calling) aren't going to lead to much success. Common sense says that annoying someone isn't the path to employment. The scripts provided are something you might expect to be given to door to door salesman who just can't take no for an answer. "You don't want to hire me, well let me tell you some more features about myself that will blow you away!"

Some of the advice given is useful in a general way, but trying to follow this book to the letter in applying for anything but a sales position is going to turn off a ton of employers. My guess is that the author has no experience getting people technical jobs.

Here's a representative example from the book. Would you hire someone who gives the author's suggested response?:

Interviewer Question:"Have you ever "failed" in a job?"

Author's Suggested Response: "Well, I'm like a ballplayer that never really lost--he just ran out of time."

As others have noted, I was put off by the frequent misspellings, poor grammar and rambling nature of the author's first 40 or so pages. He lost me for good when he began to provide scripts with over-the-top unprofessional language asserting a candidates' qualifications and demanding an interview. I can't see how this ever worked in any industry or at any time in history. I am a "hiring authority" myself and would hang up on anyone who called me with one of these scripts and not give it a moment's thought as to what I might have missed.

I bought this book as I was preparing to go on my first round of interviews as a medical resident searching for my first real job as an independent physician. I think the book is clearly (and understandably) geared more towards those in a business-like profession--e.g. marketing, advertising, finance, consulting, etc. I think the most helpful part of the book is the beginning that talks about how transient we have all become in the job market, the personalities of the types of people you may interview with and how to "wow" them and what they have at stake in hiring (or not hiring) you, different types of interviews (panel interviews, series of interviews, etc.), how to be aggressive in pursuing opportunities in the discovery and actual interviewing phases, etc. I think the book was particularly good at how to address "rough spots" in your work history with honesty and grace. I also think the book is helpful in teaching you to think from the interviewer's perspective. I think everyone who is interviewing for a new job could benefit by spending some time with this book as clearly most of us do not interview frequently and can always use some brushing up on how to approach various interviewers and situations, how to address difficult questions, and to review some of the types of questions that may be asked in order to brainstorm some good answers before the fact--especially in this economy and brutal job market we all need to make the most of each potential job possibility.

The title Acing the Interview doesn't really describe the breadth of knowledge Tony Beshara communicates in his latest book. If one does not venture to the Table of Contents, the book's cover tagline stating its inclusion of "450 Sample Questions" sounds very much like a dozen other self-help books for job seekers. But make no mistake, Tony is not pandering to the insecurities of those suffering from interview phobia with a warmed over collection of typical interview questions. As in his first book, "The Job Search Solution," Tony wants you to look inside yourself, and to question the common precepts about the job search process. Tony's "questions" include those you ask yourself and those you ask the employer, in addition to the questions asked of you in the interview.

Tony leverages his experience from interviewing more than 24,000 candidates in a 30-year career to make you understand that `acing the interview' is more about the research, planning, and practice you execute before the interview than it is about regurgitating rote answers in the interview.

Acing the Interview is a very strong sophomore performance from the acknowledged King of Recruiters. Those who viewed any of Tony's appearances on the Dr. Phil Show will recognize his conversational tone and sincere passionate concern for matching employers to employees. Not many recruiters can claim more than 6,700 placements in their career. Unlike most authors in this genre, who have very little, if any, real world experience in getting a job - Tony has done it, and is still doing it, every day.

Wow! Tony Beshara's book is a godsend for job-seekers going through the emotional, sometimes defeating process of looking for the right job. Beshara obviously has many years of real world experience at dealing with employers and candidates. This book provides realistic scenarios of how the candidate should prepare for the interview and what they can expect when they walk into the employer's office. Beshara helps you step into the interviewer's shoes and forces you to take a hard look at yourself, your presentation and your experience. He provides dozens of questions that you should ask and be prepared to answer. Concrete, no-nonsense interviewing tips from a pro.

I used the techniques in this book, and they just didn't work. People aren't used to interviewees having a 'sales pitch' for themselves, which is ultimately what this book advocates. A lot of people I was interviewed by were not in HR, they were inexperienced in passing judgements, and by using techniques in this book they found me pushy. I have never been called pushy in my life! In fact I am a very shy person. I smiled politely in the interview and was courteous but when asked if I could have a business card for following up the interview (i.e. to give my summary of the interview itself) I was looked at strangely and they were apprehensive to share that information with me. In other situations I was not given an opportunity to start into my 'sales pitch' and my whole interview was thrown off whack. It was interesting to see this perspective of interviewing but ultimately I would rarely use it unless prompted, I would not go in full blast myself and start spouting about why I'm the best for the job. This puts people off, especially if they feel that you are too 'pushy' or confident to be lead by them and usually in my cases it is the team leader that does the interviewing.

The advice itself in the book seems good, but when the first 13 pages have 6 typos in them it is hard to take the author seriously. This trend follows through the rest of the book and I would say on average I encountered 1 mistake every 3 pages or so. If reading a book with tons of typos, spelling errors and omitted words distracts you from the content, don't even bother with this book because it will drive you crazy.