Of all the job interview advice you will learn about on this site, the single most important piece of advice for preparing for a job interview is about making an excellent first impression. There’s lots of job interview advice that will tell you how to handle questions, and what types of interview answers you should give, but making a powerful first impression is crucial.
Research suggests that the result of many interviews is decided by interviewers within the first two or three minutes in an interview and that these decisions are made at an intuitive level and depend on the rapport that builds up between selector and candidate. If this is true, then it means that those early aspects of non-verbal communication – smile, handshake and general demeanor – are very important.
There is no mystery to this and the same rules of courtesy and common sense apply as with any other aspect of life. What is different is that you probably think about it a great deal more than you would on other occasions. It is dangerous to become paranoid about these aspects of your interview, to worry about whether you have just blown your chances because your handshake wasn’t quite right or that you sat down in your chair a nanosecond too soon. So long as you remain friendly, warm and enthusiastic you can’t go far wrong.
After making that lasting first impression, my second best piece of job interview advice is to listen carefully before you say anything at all. Most of the job interview advice asks you to think about the answers that you should give to interview questions and to anticipate, as best you can, all the likely questions in the various forms in which they arise. Before you can answer any question you must make sure that you have really listened to what is being asked.
An interviewer is not going to base his or her decision on whether to make you a job offer on what other applications you have in the pipeline, but examining your job hunting strategy is another way of assessing some of your planning, decision-making and analytical skills.
If they are impressed with you at interview, it will be of interest to them that other people may be making you offers and that they could lose out. Don’t take any unwise gambles on this one though, like saying you have had other offers if you haven’t: if you are level-pegging with another candidate (and this can happen, especially where several staff are being taken on at the same time), they may decide you are a lost cause.
Job Interview Advice For Answering Questions
When answering the interviewer’s questions, for your answers to be really effective, my advice for preparing for a job interview is don’t use the model interview answers that you can get from books or websites like a script to be learned. If you try to use them in this way they will sound false, the answer won’t apply to you 100 per cent and trying to memorize material will only generate additional pre-interview stress. Use your skills and knowledge to adapt the answers so they work well for you.
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