Advice for Interviews: 5 Things You Need to "Be" a Success!Here are five crucial pieces of advice for interviews that can help you to stay on track to winning your dream job. These can be simply summed up as 1) Be concise, 2) Be yourself, 3) Be relaxed, 4) Be resilient and 5) Be happy!. Advice for Interviews Part 1: Only Discuss What’s Essential Employers are very busy. We can show respect for them by remaining aware of their needs. It’s important to put yourself in the employer’s shoes when attending your job interview, just like when writing your cover letter, resume and thank you letter and attending various networking events. Keep in mind or even assume the main idea that the human resources staff who conduct your interview may have already seen several people for interviews that very same day or week. Perhaps they’re dreading seeing yet another candidate that day. It’s nothing personal against you in particular – they’re just tired and want to go home! :-) This is especially true if the interview is held late in the day or late in the week (Friday afternoon being the worst possible time). You don’t want to keep the interviewers “hostage” any longer than absolutely necessary. :-) You don’t want them to feel dead tired just as the interview ends and you say your goodbyes. I remember one personal experience of attending a large panel interview for a career counselling position. Unfortunately, it was scheduled for 4:30 pm, one of a consecutive series of perhaps 6 interviews held that day that started bright and early at 8 am. By 4:30 the whole hiring committee looked dead tired, making my task of getting them excited about me and my qualifications that much harder. When you’re faced with a similar situation, how can you make life easier for the interviewers, and make them deeply appreciate the high-value content of your well-rehearsed answers? Make Every Word Count More important advice for interviews: You can most help the employer by being efficient, concise, succinct; as brief as possible, while still including all of the essential points you need to make to show that you’re the best candidate. Make every word powerful, meaningful and relevant - make every word count! I give employers what they need – just that and nothing more, nothing less. Just as with your cover letter, there’s no need to share every last detail about your career thus far in your interview answers – only the key highlights of your experience, education and specialized knowledge along with how you are inspired to help the employer meet client or customer needs. Don’t speak anything over and above the essentials, what things they absolutely need to know about: The "Big 4" issues of merit that I outlined above. Keep Your Answers Between 2 and 3 Minutes in Length Keep your answer as short as possible, again while also ensuring that you include all of the essential points to get full marks for each. A 2 to 3 minute answer is often ideal for all but the simplest questions, not 1 minute and definitely not more than 4 minutes. 2-3 minutes worth allows you to provide the right amount of content and detail to maintain the interviewer’s undivided attention. Advice for Interviews Part 2: Be Yourself! Interviewers very much appreciate honesty and openness, and a well-trained interviewer can sense pretense and ego inflation quite easily. On the other hand, the only way that you and the employer can tell if there’s a good “fit” between is if you can be your true, natural self. The moment that we try to be more or less than we are at any particular moment - more confident, more knowledgeable, more skilled, more like our partner, mother, sibling or best friend - we lose our ability to relate to others. We lose our knack for building a genuine, solid and positive relationship with the interviewers and we give up our power to them. Trust that if you can be your true and honest self that things will work out for you – that you’ll find the right employer at the right time in the right place. It’s a waste of your time to get hired with the wrong employer as a result of not being yourself in the interview. This applies equally to all job search activities before and after your interview as well. Advice for Interviews Part 3: It's Okay to Be Nervous A related piece of advice for interviews is that it’s okay to be nervous – and denying it just makes it worse! So I recommend to my clients that they admit that they’re nervous to the interviewers during an interview, but in a way that comes off sounding positive and eager to build a relationship with them. You might say something like this if you’re feeling full of anxiety during a big interview: “I just wanted to say – you can probably tell – that I’m very excited about being here today, meeting you and getting the opportunity to apply for this position! Okay, please continue with your questions.” This is actually quite true, because nervousness is just anxiety, which is excitement in disguise, excitement that has been partially affected by fear. On the other hand, don’t ever look to the interviewers for emotional support, or expect that admitting your nervousness-excitement will encourage them to give it to you. That’s not their role, and it weakens your standing with them. Just talk about your excitement and leave it at that. It might help you to feel more relaxed and centred for the remainder of the interview. Advice for Interviews Part 4: If you Fall Down, Demonstrate Your Resilience If you do happen to “fall flat on your face” during an interview, know that what counts the most in such situations is how fast you get back up again and double-back towards your goal of winning the position. Resilience is key to a successful interview. Employers aren’t looking for super-human candidates. Rather, they’re looking for real human beings who are resilient – who can bounce back from adversity and be stronger for it. They’re looking for people with strong character, and you can demonstrate that strong character during the interview by not giving up when you find yourself a little off track. Advice for Interviews Part 5: Smile Smile! My number one favourite piece of advice for interviews is to smile. Smile frequently. Not all the time, not too much, but genuinely smile whenever it’s appropriate during the interview. People who genuinely smile are happy people who will bring greater harmony and goodwill to even the most time-crunched, stress-bound workplace. All but the most crabby people enjoy being around smiling people. If you’re a “smiler,” employers want you. Smiling can be hard for us more introverted types, as well as anyone when we get nervous. Somehow, we need to keep on smiling though, in order to put our best foot forward. This applies to people of every profession including accountants, information technology specialists and skilled tradespeople – not just people in the helping professions and service sector. One of the secrets of good interviewing on your part is to leave the interviewers with more energy, a better mood, a more promising outlook on life than they had before shaking your hand. And the easiest way to make this happen is to smile. Interviewers try hard to be objective and fair with all of the applicants they interview, and as a result may not acknowledge your attempts to be friendly or gently humorous. Don’t take it personally and don’t change your behaviour to match theirs or you may well lose yourself during the interview. "Keep on keeping on", and remain genuine and true to yourself.
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