With Thanksgiving here, I decided to get festive in my interview analogies by introducing the Turducken as a model for job seekers to consider the next time they sit down for an interview. For those you who have never heard of the Turducken, it is a partially deboned Turkey that is stuffed with a deboned duck that itself has been stuffed with deboned chicken. But that's not it. There's more stuff inside. The minds who invented this culinary delight go further by filling all of the gaps and cavities with other stuffings. Just thinking about eating it is intimidating to me. Talk about more than "meats" the eye.

When I heard about the Turducken just recently, my mind went straight to the thought that like this meal, there's always more to people than what is on the surface. So keeping with the whole Thanksgiving theme, I thought that it would be a good idea for people on the job market to think about what they are grateful for--the gifts, skills, and talents that they have honed over the years. Think about what kind of services you can provide to an organization--all of the things that you possess on the inside that are not made visible by a resume or online profile. The next time you present yourself, be the Turducken.

This may sound like a strange analogy at first, but just imagine that someone asks you to cut the Thanksgiving "bird" and to your surprise you find a duck and then in that duck, you find a chicken. If that's the first time you've seen such a thing, you won't soon forget it. And, more than that you are going to tell others about it. That's what candidates need to go for when they interview. You want to pleasantly surprise the first interviewer so that they will tell the next person in line and on and on until the whole company gets to know you. We'll be talking more about this approach to the interview process in our upcoming webinar, The Anatomy of the Interview Process on December 9, 2009 at 12PM. In the meantime, I suggest candidates take time this holiday season to focus on what cannot be seen and working with others on how to share that with others. If you can get one person talking on your behalf, you may be pleasantly surprised.