Don't Sweat The Interview
Thursday January 22, 2009
Your career search cannot be successful unless you learn how to interview effectively. It really isn't that hard to be great in interviews. There are just a few simple principles to remember that you can extrapolate everything you need to know from. These principles are: immediate impressions, knowing yourself, and following the interviewer.
Immediate impressions
While how you act in your entire interview will make a difference to your success, you must be sure that the very first impression you make on the interviewer is a positive one. A negative initial impression will poison the rest of the interview and keep you on your career search for longer. Many people have remained on a career search for far longer than they have needed to simply because they have a bad habit that tends to cause a negative reaction in interviewers. Dress well, smell pleasant (or don't smell at all!), and be polite and respectful in your manner. Being too cocky or too deferential will both often rub interviewers the wrong way.
Knowing yourself
If you know your background exceptionally well, then you should have no problem in your career search and interviews. By knowing yourself you will write better resumes and cover letters, be able to answer questions more confidently, and will just generally feel better about your prospects on your career search. By mixing this with the next principle, you are almost guaranteed to do well in interviews on your career search.
Following the interviewer
Just as you tailor your resume and cover letter to the job you apply for, tailor your interview responses to the interviewer. If you notice that the interviewer seems particularly enthusiastic about a specific area of the business or a project, be sure to relate your abilities to how they could help with this area of business focus. Also, asking questions about the areas that the interviewer seems interested in can start the interviewer planning with you how you would start working with the business on that area. Essentially, people like to hear about what they are interested in, and this definitely applies in an interview.
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