“It took me 9 years to come up with enough recipes where I was comfortable publishing it as its own cookbook for everything before the 2-Hour Job Search, in terms of figuring out what you want to do and getting a resume together and writing cover letters, and on the back end, after you get the interview, how to answer certain questions, negotiate your offer, and how to get off to the right start.”

Steve Dalton, a senior career consultant and program director at Duke University’s Fuqua School, shares time-saving techniques for choosing a career and acing common interview questions from his new book, The Job Closer. Having worked in MBA career services for over 16 years, Steve also shares what MBA employers are looking for, how Covid-19 has changed recruiting, and one of his favorite exercises for helping MBAs make difficult career decisions.

Questions

• Introducing Steve (0:00)
• Why Steve wrote The Job Closer and hates tips (5:00)
• Choosing a career in 63 minutes (15:00)
• Answering the “tell me about yourself (TMAY)” interview question with “FIT” (21:15)
• Can Steve’s recipes be too formulaic? (33:30)
• What MBA employers are looking for (36:35)
• Building rapport online with recruiters (41:00)
• The “Sleep On It” exercise for making difficult decisions (44:20)
• Inner vs. outer ring careers (51:30)

About Steve

Steve Dalton is the author of The 2-Hour Job Search and The Job Closer, founder of the corporate training firm Contact2Colleague, and a senior career consultant and program director at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he got his MBA in 2004. Steve lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Show Notes

• The Job Closer
• The 2-Hour Job Search
• Contact2Colleague
• Follow Steve on Twitter
• The 2-Hour Job Search & the Job Closer – Q&A Forum on LinkedIn
• #46 Steve Dalton’s The 2 Hour Job Search: The 80/20 Formula to Target Employers & Secure First Interviews

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