Ace your interview: Proven strategies for job interview preparation
Interviews are windows of opportunity, in that they’re often the deciding factor in a recruitment cycle. If you’ve made it to the interview stage, you should know and believe that there’s a chance it’ll be you who gets the job. At this point, it’s all up to you to turn that chance into certainty. To do that, you’ll need to be well-prepared. Which is something this blog post can help you with. Keep reading to find out what you should know about preparing for a job interview.
Think about your narrative
From your education to employment history, you have made choices that have determined your career path and may continue to impact its future. Your interviewer will be seeking to understand the reasons behind those choices. Those reasons are often perceived to be more important than the choices themselves. This is because they provide insight into your ability to make decisions and navigate a broad range of situations with clarity. For this, you must be able to understand your narrative in terms of what has happened and what it is that you see happening for your career path.
“A clear justification and vision for your past and future choices, respectively, can help you stand out from the crowd.”
Look up commonly asked questions
An effective practice before every interview is to learn about and prepare for the different questions that are asked in most interviews. A quick search on the internet will reveal many links advertising precisely such content. You can take a step further and try to find out the kind of questions that are usually asked in your area of work and of a person in your role. This way you’ll be able to produce clear and confident responses during the interview.
Plan out what to ask your interviewer
An interview shouldn’t simply be seen as an occasion wherein your interviewer is the only one that gets to ask questions. Even though it’s them that’s interviewing you, you’ll also be given a chance to ask them some questions. It’s best to have thought of those beforehand so you don’t spend time doing that during a time-sensitive interview. For example, you could ask your interviewer about their daily work experiences or what new projects the company is involved in or what its long-term plan is. Basically, it could be anything that may help you understand if you would in fact like to work there, even something like asking to be shown around the office.
“If you ask questions, it also demonstrates initiative and active interest. It’s what an experienced interviewer looks for.”
Boost your confidence level
To state the obvious, how you perform in an interview is heavily dependent on your level of confidence. And interviews, being rather high-stakes situations, tend to make nervous Nellies of us all. To be calm and confident on the day of and during your interview, try to do something that you know will make you feel good about yourself. In other words, something that will make you feel accomplished and confident. It could be as simple as going for a run, reading a book, writing in your journal, or even speaking to a motivating friend.
Alternatively, you could also practise power poses. This has been known to help people’s performances in extraordinary ways in high-pressure situations.
Remember, the more prepared you are, the more confident you will be and the better you will do in every interview. If you’re willing to go the distance to prepare yourself, then there’s nothing like the following courses to help you do so.