Your job interview preparation guide. That often quoted motto ‘be prepared’ is far more than a tired cliche when you have been invited to an interview.
The keys to making a brilliant impact at any interview are researching appropriate information, preparing yourself mentally, anticipating the questions you are likely to be asked and working out the best possible answers to these questions.
This article is about considering the questions you could be asked along with job interview preparation tips for preparing concise, effective, persuasive answers that will help you to stand out from the crowd. You will have to prepare for every eventuality, so you are unlikely to be asked everything for which you have prepared, but it does not have to be like a written examination where you have revised the wrong bits of the syllabus, it is possible to prepare for whatever is in your interviewer’s armory.
When going through your job interview preparation, remind yourself that almost all the questions you will be asked are designed to find out more about you, and, above everything else, your suitability for a particular position and the likelihood of you fitting in well with the organization, its ethos, its staff and its work style.
Whatever range of questions you encounter and in whatever form they are asked, all interviewers are seeking the answers to three absolutely basic questions.
Can you do the job? Do you have the appropriate mix of qualifications and/or experience to provide you with the basic skills and knowledge to do the job?
Will you do the job? A quite different question from ‘can you’ – this question is all about your willingness to do the work. Are you keen and eager, how can you demonstrate your motivation?
Will you fit in? This is all about your suitability to work in that particular set up. Part of the answer to this question is hard to put into formal questions and answers; it is something you put over and the interviewer takes in at a more intuitive level. There are, however, whole sets of questions that do relate to this area – those questions about team work, dealing with difficult situations with other members of staff, being adaptable, flexible and friendly.
Don’t waste time working out which of these three themes your interviewer is exploring as he or she questions you; simply be aware that you want them to be thinking ‘yes, yes, yes’ to these fundamental questions as you prepare and deliver all your answers.
Given that the interviewer wants to know about you, make sure this is a subject with which you are happy, familiar and enthusiastic. You may have come to take yourself for granted by now, so take time to really sit down and think about what your qualities and your strengths are. As you go through your job interview preparation, be aware of any weak spots that an interviewer may pick up on. Beware of doing yourself down. Many people are far quicker at listing their drawbacks than their assets.
It is essential that you think about your skills as part of your job interview preparation. It is true that different jobs require different portfolios of skills and experience, but there is a hard core of skills and abilities that feature in many job adverts and on many job descriptions, regardless of the position. Your own common sense and knowledge of the particular field of employment concerned will help you work out what combination of these skills is most important for the kind of work for which you are applying. A psychotherapist probably needs greater listening skills than a chartered accountant, for example, and the creativity of someone writing a catchy advertising slogan is not the same as the creativity of a food technologist developing a smoothie recipe.
Comments on this entry are closed.