Career Warrior Podcast #317) Sam Owens: How to NOT Hate Your Next Job Interview

Episode Transcript

Sam Owens 0:00
This is what I make. And I’m not going to move on this and making more of course, you would understand that. But sometimes it’s like, you know what, I’m not really making as much as I as I want. And so I’m going to really focus on my qualifications and what I want and not really mentioned my current salary

Chris Villanueva 0:16
Welcome to the Let’s Eat Grandma, Career Warrior Podcast. And welcome to the Let’s Eat Grandma, Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. Today we talk about how not to hate your next job interview, plus some tips to overcome those difficult interview questions.

Interviews, whether you can’t stand them or you actually oddly enjoy them. Being good at interviews is still a crucial skill to have if you want to snag the good jobs. If you think you rocket interviewing, hold on just a moment, do yourself a favor and take a step back. In a survey encompassing over 2,000 responses from our own clients at Let’s Eat, Grandma, the vast majority gave themselves either a four or perfect five out of five for their interviewing skills. It seems that many are too competent when it comes to interviews. After all of everyone views themselves as above average, we’d end up with a lopsided bell curve. The reality is that most folks are just average at interviewing.

However, for you, the Career Warriors listening to this podcast, those who are gunning for these top positions, I want you to level up and become above average here. So consider this episode as a moment to humble yourself and to be receptive to picking up a thing or two about those interviews you may or may not hate. Today I brought on the charismatic and witty Sam Owens. Sam Owens is the founder of Sam’s Career Talk where he provides career coaching services and helps people land their dream jobs and thrive in them. He is the author of “I HATE JOB INTERVIEWS” an exciting book that will be released by HarperCollins in June of 2024. He is also a Chief Marketing Officer who has worked for three multibillion dollar companies in the consumer packaged goods industry and now runs marketing for freezing point the makers of frazzle. So let’s launch right into this informative episode. I’m so excited to talk to you about interviews today and bring on Sam, this is our episode about interviews for the career for your podcast. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Owens 2:27
Hey, thanks for having me. And thanks for calling me charismatic and witty!

Chris Villanueva 2:31
I had to think of something that you were honest to you that I’ve been following your LinkedIn content for some time. Thank you for joining and bringing your gifts sir, I appreciate it.

Sam Owens 2:41
Love the podcast. I’m super excited to be here.

Chris Villanueva 2:44
Awesome. So opening with an interesting question here. Why do so many interviews suck? And if you have any funny stories in your earlier, Sam, live from years past about your own interview experience, I’d love to use that as a primer. But why are interviews so painful?

Sam Owens 3:00
I think there’s a few reasons. The first is that the stakes are so high. You know, I often talk about the job interview potentially being the most important hour of your career. Not that you’re going to do your best work in that interview. But it’s the hour that makes all other hours possible. That interview goes well, you get to go to the company and you work there maybe months, years decades, doesn’t go well. And you don’t go to work for that company. So the stakes are incredibly high. I think you also feel like an outsider.

I remember speaking of stories, one of my interviews I did, I was asked to come and interview this. So just so you know, it’s going to be at a little bit of a different location. I go in and it’s at a Boondocks play place where they’re having like a company off site, and they put me in like the little kids party room. And people kind of walked in and out to interview me. So I’m sitting there by like, you know, whatever the balloons and the confetti in some tiny little seat in a suit. And you’re kind of an outsider, they’re just kind of here, go in this room. And we’ll come in and talk to you and then we’ll leave and talk about you and we’ll go in. So there’s this feeling of little bit of loneliness isolation. But I think the most important reason why interviews suck is that that you can’t 100% dictate how it’s going to go. You can prepare for a lot of things, but you don’t know exactly what the personality is going to be like of the interviewer or the exact questions you’re going to be asked and I just think that gives a lot of people anxiety.

Chris Villanueva 4:30
That makes a lot of sense and definitely relate to the outsider kind of feeling in Italian. I did get an interview. I remember an interview one time where in the middle of the interview the person just told me told me straight up is like you didn’t get it. I’m sorry, this is not going just immediately Yeah, this by the way, do you want to find out more about my company that you’re interviewing for? I was like pretending to still be interested in like holding back just my upsetness

Sam Owens 4:59
It exactly happened to me. I got a tough question. I thought the interview is going great. I got a case question. I rambled for a few minutes. And afterwards, she just said, we’re not going to continue. You’re not going to get the job. Yeah. And that was it. And, and so, you know, those are the moments that you really remember in a job interview, and you say to yourself, I swear, that’s never gonna happen again. Yeah, it makes sure I understand those questions. So you can be healthy in a way, even though it’s painful.

Chris Villanueva 5:24
I remember reading something about that was part of your motivation behind the book. It’s like, I don’t want this to happen again, and kind of that that fire, which is awesome, right?

Sam Owens 5:31 
That’s right. That’s exactly right. I think there’s a way to circumvent some of this stuff, and to learn from what other people have experienced through learning and training and stuff like that. That is the primary reason for the book. Yeah.

Chris Villanueva 5:45
So speak to the person right now, who says I feel already pretty decent, pretty good about my ability to interview I’m good at talking with people in general, I’m a natural. So why can I not just step into an interview, and feel confident that it will go my way?

Sam Owens 6:01
If this person I’m speaking to and say, Sam, if I have a good interview, will I get the job? My answer will be maybe. They say, well, same way. It’s like, what if I have a great interview? And will I get the job? My answer will be maybe the Sam, what if I have an excellent interview? Will I get the job? Maybe? The only thing that would make me say yes, is if they say what if I interview the best out of all my competition? I’ll say yes, then you’re gonna get the job. Yeah. And so an interview might be perfectly adequate. And you might get the job if it weren’t to comp, a competition, but it is. And so you have to interview the best out of all of your competition, which is why typically adequate is kind of maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but you really need to be the best interviewer of all your competition.

Chris Villanueva 6:49
Getting to the next level, I think people kind of just walk into it sometimes thinking, Oh, my gosh, like, this is gonna go great. And then it does go well, and they’re confused as to why they didn’t land the job. It’s frustrating.

Sam Owens 7:00
It’s super frustrating. And it’s kind of like, you know, one of my my favorite movies is hitch, if the Will Smith, Kevin James, there’s a scene in there where you know, hitches the date Doctor trying to help Kevin James out with this girl. And he says, Hey, I, you know, I want to see what you think about your dancing. I want to see how good you are at your dancing. And he’s like, Oh, don’t worry about that. I got that. And Will Smith is like, wait, what do you mean, you got to show me? And that’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie, because dancing is a total disaster. Yeah. And I think, you know, Hey, Kevin, James had good rhythm, he couldn’t really dance. And that’s the difference between being charismatic, and being likable and a good conversationalist. Oh, yeah, I should be fine in the interview, well, interviews, it’s not just about having good rhythm, so to speak, it’s knowing the actual steps to something, the steps to the walls is very different from having good rhythms. And being likable is very different from knowing how to interview and answer the questions they’re asking you.

Chris Villanueva 7:55
So let’s talk about how not to hate your next job interview. And in a second, I think we can go into some of these models that you’ve spoken about. But just a couple of primary questions that I think people want to hear. First of all, what are some top mistakes that you see job seekers are making in the interview? And then I’ll transition to I think, like, waste of time for job interview prep. But yeah, what are some mistakes, let’s talk about the negative stuff.

Sam Owens 8:19
In the interview. In the actual interview, I would say there’s a couple big ones that stick out.

The first would be to not take advantage of your opening statement. And what I mean by that is when an interviewer starts the interview, they get your resume, and they say, can you tell me about yourself or walk me through your experiences? A lot of interviews, just kind of take that as like a warm up question. Oh, sure. I did this and this and this. And I’m really excited to be here. Now let’s get to the meat. That’s actually not what the interviewer is asking. The interviewer is asking, can you just tell me why you’re the perfect person for this job, and why I should stop my search right now and hire you. Because that’s all I want to do. I don’t want to interview 20 other people, I want to hire someone really good. So just tell me why that’s you. And so when someone says, “tell me about yourself” candidates should look at this as an opportunity to show them that you’re qualified through their experiences, to show them through their experiences that they get results, and then to tell them that they’re super interested in this company by the story that they weave together in that opening statement. So they shouldn’t take 30 seconds. Joe, I did this and that they should take a solid three minutes to prove those things. So that by the end the interviewers like, Dang, this person brought their A game. That’s a big one. It’s so important not to waste that opener.

Second thing that I see is on behavioral based questions, which typically are the meat of most interviews, which is like, Tell me about a time when you did this. A lot of times people when asked for a specific story, don’t give a specific story. You know, they don’t answer the question directly. They say tell me about a time when you were a great leader. They’ll say oh, you know, leadership is really important. And I’d been given feedback that I’m a great leader, I have an open door policy, I care about my people, which is all fine and good. But that didn’t answer the question. You know, the way to answer that question is sure. Last week, I had a situation where I had an employee that was whatever. And let me tell you exactly what I did to solve that problem and the result that came of it. That is how you answer that question. To being very specific. You’re asked for a specific example, give a specific example.

Chris Villanueva 10:28
It’s funny you mentioned stories, I think about things that are memorable. Just in general, if someone’s giving a talk or presentation a lecture, sometimes the only thing I’ll remember from the entire hour, whatever are just the stories like those two impactful stories that were told.

Sam Owens 10:43
So it makes such a difference. I mean, stories are irrefutable facts and figures are debatable. Stories are memorable. Facts and figures are forgettable. Everything about stories is just perfect for the job interview. I mean, it proved people say how do I not brag in an interview, it’s like, tell the story. Let the story you’re telling do the bragging. And you don’t have to say I’m great. I’m amazing. Just tell them what you did. That was great and amazing. And then they’ll draw their own conclusions about you being great and amazing.

Chris Villanueva 11:10
So top mistakes, I guess, time wasters Do you think job seekers are making when it comes to preparing for the interview? I think people can most people can get on board with just put some time into it. But yeah, what have you seen in terms of like how people are not spending the time?

Sam Owens 11:26
Well, I guess probably a lot of people who have listened to Hamilton the musical, there’s a scene where Aaron Burr tells Hamilton to talk less smile more, right? This is a scene where he does that, I would say actually read less, talk more. And what I mean by that is a lot of people try to prepare, by continuing to read and study up on the company, they go online, and they try to, you know, do everything to understand the company. And they fail to actually practice their responses. And to actually talk out loud what their responses are.

It actually baffles me, Chris, that, you know, people will practice, they’ll have their kids practice three hours a day of football, which will probably get them nowhere. But, but they will practice for more than a half hour their job interview, you know, it’s just crazy to me, you know, this is the rest of your life doing Potentially, yes. And then the failure to practice is just crazy. And I get it, it’s uncomfortable role playing is the worst. I hate it. I don’t want to roleplay it feels awkward, I feel stupid, cheesy, or whatever. But in my coaching is the first thing I’ll do is I’ll do mock interviews, because the improvement is so dramatic between zero mock interviews and one in between one and two, it’s probably worth 20 hours of sitting there reading about the company online just a couple hours.

Chris Villanueva 12:45
Because of the stakes, as you mentioned at the very beginning, why people hate interviews so much, because it’s just like, oh, everything kind of rides on this, well, maybe kind of treat it that way a little bit more by putting some time into it in the very beginning, even though it’s uncomfortable. People feel like it may not be a good use of their time sometimes. But it really is.

Sam Owens 13:03
Yeah, it’s painful and can’t remember the common denominator of success doing things that other people don’t want to do. Like people don’t want to do these mock interviews, but those that endure the pain and make the improvements, get the jobs.

Chris Villanueva 13:15
Yeah. Love that. Remind me I’m gonna ask book, right? You’d be a good person to ask for book recommendations. So perhaps I’ll remember to do that at the end of this here. Yeah, yeah, great. Let’s dive into the model thing. I think models be really powerful for this. We’ve all heard of like car technique, you know, challenge action results, STAR technique, things like that. But I’m curious what your take is on these models, or if you have something different you would recommend?

Sam Owens 13:41
Yeah, models, I think are extraordinarily valuable in job interviewing, because they provide shorthand like shortcuts for you to be able to answer questions instead of trying to prepare 1000 responses to 1000 potential questions models helps you break things into question types. And then if you put a model against those question types, then you have a framework to where you can tweak your power stories or the stories you use to these models, that I think the star model is a solid model for behavioral based questions.

I call it the SPAR model, because I think it should be Situation, Problem, Action, Result, it could even be par problem action result, to create tension. I think that the way you use the model is the most important part. So if you look at spar, for example, situation problem action result, you could take that I was once working for a manufacturing facility, I was asked to do this and I did this and here’s the result. Or you can take the opportunity and say okay, this model is going to help me craft like a Disney movie here, where I am the hero, and there was a serious crisis and the things I did land in a great result. And so models are important. The way you use the models is what really matters.

Chris Villanueva 14:59
I think so way that you use the models is, is really important. Can we sort of go through one of these things you get put me in the hot seat, you know, to workshop one of these, I think people would love to hear that. And then kind of do this in action.

Sam Owens 15:11
Yeah, let’s talk about so each question type could have a little bit of a different model. Let’s take a question that makes people pretty nervous. Right? Yeah. Tell me what one of your greatest strengths is? What’s your greatest strength? You know, people get nervous about this, because it’s like, oh, my gosh, am I gonna brag? Yeah, what is my greatest strength? How should I do this? So, you know, if you were to say, Chris, let’s put you on the hot seat. What’s the strength of yours? What would you say?

Chris Villanueva 15:37
I would say it is charismatic communication. Perfect.

Sam Owens 15:40
Okay, great. So there’s a model for this, I call it the C model S II, which is statement, which is exactly what you did. So you answer this perfect boom, you just answer the question right away, you don’t hem and haw, explanation. And then example. And so for example, you could say one of my greatest strengths is charismatic, would you say charismatic? communication? Communication? That’s the statement. Now you go to the explanation, and you just explain a little bit. What do you mean by that? How are you a charismatic communicator? What do you mean by that? Not an example. It is what do you mean?

Chris Villanueva 16:17
So what I mean by that is my ability to convey a message across in perhaps with some emotionally charged rhetoric, but in a way to get people genuinely excited, I think about the message, whereas before, they might have found something uninspiring, boring?

Sam Owens 16:34
Well, you’re doing an amazing job, by the way, because this a lot of times takes a lot of prep. So great. You did the statement, you did the explanation. Now, this one might be hard for you, because it does take and this one is example. For example, you know, there was a time when and I don’t know if you can think of one now. It’s, it’s okay, if you can’t, okay. You know, there’s an example that you have, for example, when I did this, I need to do a very brief, I did this thing, and it worked out really well.

Chris Villanueva 16:58
Okay. So for example, I was speaking to somebody who had a mediocre resume, and they felt like their resume was in decent shape. So what I did was I took the time to analyze what I believed was wrong with the resume and some areas of improvement, and communicated to them the opportunity and what opportunities existed if they were able to make these tweaks and improvements to the resume. And I sent them a five minute video, basically, with just this emotionally charged, but also very honest and accurate feedback on the resume and got a very long positive response with all caps. And just I could tell genuinely that they were excited in my message came across that perfect, great.

Sam Owens 17:43
Okay, so that was a very easy, simple way you did well, you did a statement, this is my strength. Okay, answer the question, you will elaborate a little bit on it by the explanation. And then he gave a quick example. same thing would apply if you said, hey, you know, what’s your greatest weakness? Or, you know, other questions about you tell him the What’s your philosophy as a leader, those would all work. So that’s an example.

Chris Villanueva 18:09
And if I could let me get into one more model, and so I’m imagining this is so like, this is a model that I would run through in my head and rehearse all together. So this is like a response that isn’t prompted, I’m just, I’m using this as if they asked that question, I just run through the model in my head and deliver.

Sam Owens 18:25
What’s great about this is all these models that I kind of lay out in the book, and I use with coaching, you don’t need separate stories for these model, what you need is 10 Power Stories are 10 reasons. You’re awesome. And you can bucket it into what’s listed on the job description. Okay, I need I need some good leadership stories. I need some good analytical ability stories. For example, I need some good working well with others. And depending on how they ask the question, you can tweak your story a little bit to fit that question. So the example you just gave me, Chris, about this charismatic communication, you know, this, the way you communicate, if someone said, Tell me about a time when you had to communicate something, you could have taken that and use that resume story you just gave, and you could have put that into the SPAR model and told that exact same thing. And the benefit of that is, number one, both would be great answers, and you knock it out of the park. But that also means you don’t have to create 50,000 separate stories for different types of questions. You use the exact same, same thing you just did. And you just learned how to reframe it based on the model.

Chris Villanueva 19:32
Love that. Thank you. This is great.

Sam Owens 19:35
Okay, so let’s let’s go a little deeper here. Let’s talk about what I call the SPAR model. So this is an example that I have in the book. But if someone were to say, can you tell me about a time when you had to solve a complicated problem? If I were to walk through the model, and I’ll kind of give you the points here and talk to you about what I’m doing? You start with a situation and it’s very brief. Okay. It’s like hot dogs, right? No one wants to know too much. Spend how it’s made, right, just get to the meat, right? Like, the situation should be quick, right?

Most recently, I was an account manager for a digital marketing agency, and I was responsible for a big portfolio of client relationships, boom, that’s all you need to do in the setup, it can be quick. Now you create the problem. The key to the problem is you create tension, you make them interested in wanting to listen more. Yeah, a few months into the job, I was asked to evaluate all of our clients to determine which were most valuable to our company. Now, if this were a task, I could stop there. But I want to create a problem to where they’re gonna go, Oh, gee, so I add, this was a real challenge, because it had never been done before. And there was no clear guidelines on how to do this. And I was a junior level person. And now it’s like, oh, geez, Okay, how’s he going to solve this? Now the stakes are raised, and there’s tension. So that’s all it has to be. It’s quick. Now I focus on the action. And the action is where you should spend 70% of your time on this, because now you’re proving why you’re a rockstar, I like to do what I call the rule of threes, I move in sequence about specific actions I take, you could do two, you can do four. But the point is you talk about a sequential list of actions. So I can say, the first thing I did was to understand the value of our clients, I created a scorecard of measures that define value. The first was top line revenue. The second was bottom line profits, and I kind of tabulated it, okay, boom, that’s one. The second thing, you know I did was, I layered on a measure of how many hours per month we spent dealing with each client. And so I could determine a ratio of how valuable the client was to how much time we were spending with the client. Okay, that’s two. Now three, I created a presentation for our executives, after crunching the numbers.

And some of our findings were very surprising. For example, we often found that we were spending way too much time with certain clients that we weren’t making any money on. And even though we were providing a lot of work for them, and it also showed that we had a lot of upside to grow business with clients who were very profitable, but actually didn’t require very much time. So that’s kind of how you talk through the actions of actually take them through steps of exactly what you did. And they’re thinking, man, okay, this person knows how to think knows how to solve problems. And then this would be a third thing that I would say people forget, they forget to give a result. So on this one, the last part, you say, as a result of this analysis, we shifted our strategy to focus on higher impact clients. And we were able to grow our portfolio over the next year by 25%. That is how you would dig into a model like this. Again, it’s how you use the model. If you just think the situation was this, the task was this. But if you can practice enough to where you’re weaving it into a very cohesive story, where people are engaged, you’re going to nail it, you’re going to knit.

Chris Villanueva 22:59
And I love I’m almost using this as like a memory device like spar, I’m thinking like the martial arts, like how we spar with people to kind of fight. But yeah, this it brings the problem. And you’re kind of like how showing how you fought the problem, it brings in some action, some drama, like you would do in sparring. So that’s true. I love that. And that’s awesome. I love that. I’m going to ask you about the Hot Seat question kind of like the really tough questions that job seekers get asked in a moment here. But first, I know just as a follow up to prepping the interview and how to come up with these stories. We don’t really have like crystal balls in front of our hands. And we don’t really know what the interviewer is going to ask. I can tell you I mean, they’re the common ones such as you know, tell me more about yourself your greatest strengths, greatest weakness, things like that we can prepare for. But what about perhaps questions that are not as commonly asked? How do we prepare for those sorts of questions that I’ve been brought up the Power Stories kind of example, maybe I can draw from the Power Stories, but how do we prepare for the unexpected?

Sam Owens 24:04

Yeah, it’s great. What’s helpful in these situations is to bucket the questions by question type. Because while you can be asked a ton of different questions, you’re not going to be asked, there’s only so many question types. So there’s the introductory question. There’s behavioral questions. There’s case or scenario questions. There’s questions about you. And there’s trap questions. If you can know at least how to handle those types of questions. You’ll be able to handle most everything that’s thrown at you in an interview. And so when I think about a tough question, like, you know, why are you leaving your current job? Right? It’s like, oh, man, that’s actually a trap question. It’s a trap question because it has the potential for you to go negative, and get yourself into a spot where now you’re trash talking the employer, and there’s a lot of questions that are trapped questions like that. And the common theme of a trap question is its potential to go negative.

And so you need to have a framework in your mind on what if I’m being baited into going negative? How do I think about that? So particularly when it comes to this question, why you leaving your current job, you want to structure it in a way that talks about the positive things that you’re getting from his current job. But then talk about the amazing things that you’re going to get with this new opportunity that you’re not going to be able to get at this current job. Yeah, as an example, that’s a way to keep it positive. That’s a way to keep it focused on the job.

Chris Villanueva 25:32
And that’s really a way to avoid that trap question, so to speak, is what is your greatest weakness? Another trap question

Sam Owens 25:36
It can be, it’s kind of a blend of questions about you, and attract question. And let’s just cover real quick because I think there’s a lot of people who are just interested in that talent even harder than what’s your greatest strength? Because, you know, there’s two extremes to this question, right? One is you can give a, a kind of a pseudo like, you know, like, oh, I work too hard, or I care too much. Or, you know, you can kind of get one of these Bs answers that people don’t believe in, it kind of comes off as disingenuous, or you could go the other way, and give them like a really egregious weakness, that’s like, Hey, I don’t ever want to come into the office, don’t expect me, you know, whatever it is. So what you want to do in this type of circumstance is you want to highlight a reasonable weakness, and then talk about the things you’re doing or already had done to start to improve on that weakness.

So one example could be, you know, I have a bias for action as a leader. And part of that bias for action makes it so I can get a little bit impatient, when a lot of the team wants to really make sure we got all the details buttoned down, I want to go, that bias for action can be really good. But at times, it can cause me to maybe miss a couple of details. And so I’ve noticed that about me. And what I’ve done is surrounded myself with people who are more a little bit more risk averse, and a little bit more into the details in any time I’m about to make a big decision or milestone on a project, I know who those people are, I’ll give them a call and ask, you know, hey, how does this sound and almost every time they’ll point to two or three things that make the decision better? Yeah. And so that’s something I continue to work on, and continue to try to surround myself with people to be able to handle that.

Chris Villanueva 27:20
I love that. And one thing I liked about that is in hearing your response, which was brilliant, I felt like there was this ratio of how much of that response was focused on the positive it felt like 80 to 90% of it was on the positive such as this is the bright side is my weakness, and also the things that you’re doing to improve upon the weakness and you barely kind of focused on the problem. And I love that I think it made it just sounded nice. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Owens 27:46
And I think one of the things that a lot of interviewees believe when they get asked that question is that depending on the weakness, they choose, that they’re going to be like eliminated from their candidacy will be eliminated or something like that. It’s actually not at all what they’re looking for. They’re looking for hyper self awareness. They’re looking for someone who understand themselves pretty well, and take steps to improve themselves. They’re not looking Oh, well, he said, analytics is his weakness. So yeah, he’s asked or she’s asked, it’s not that they’re looking for someone who’s self aware. So that’s what you’re trying to demonstrate when he answered that question.

Chris Villanueva 28:19
Great. Great. So let’s round out with money. Everyone’s favorite topic here.

Sam Owens 28:24
Let’s talk money.

Chris Villanueva 28:24
So in this may be more of like an application level questions. Sometimes it’s the form fields for applications, but like, how much are you looking to make with us? That kind of thing? How do you tackle the question about how much what your salary expectations are?

Sam Owens 28:39
Great question. So you have a couple of options. Depending on the situation, I have, in my book, the 10 laws of salary negotiations, which applied to offers and apply, I think, to people who are working, and just want to get promoted or make more money, do your best negotiating leverage is after you have an offer. That’s basically the best time to talk about money. So when someone asks you about money in the interview, it can be a really difficult situation, because it makes you feel like they’re judging whether or not they’re gonna give you the job based on what you say in terms of money. So if at all possible, I like to first say, at least as one option, hey, I’m really excited about this opportunity. And I really want to make sure this is a good fit for me and a good fit for you. And I’m confident we can figure out something that works. Should you want to move forward with me. You know, you can fully punt. That’s one option.

Chris Villanueva 29:28
That’s what I would do that. Yeah, yeah. Just letting ya know.

Sam Owens 29:33
Another option is if you’re pretty confident in your base salary, and you’re like, look, I gotta be making x more than my base salary. I mean, you can, yeah, we can. We can talk this now. Here’s what I’m making. Here’s what I need to be making, or I want to be making in this new role in order to make a switch. If you feel like you have that kind of leverage. I’ve had those conversations before to like, hey, just right up front. Let’s not waste our time here. Let’s just kind of talk it that’s an option that definitely works. for you, but in those times, a lot of times I speak in ranges still, because I don’t want to fully negotiate until there is an offer on the table and in writing that I can actually really evaluate, okay, when I’m speaking.