There is nothing more important in job hunting process as interview. Everything up to now, networking, finding the best jobs, researching companies, writing cover letters and resumes, posting on web sites, and answering ads, it’s all (1. ____) to get in an interview. Now you have the interview and what do you do? There are three things that you must do:
1. You must have the strategy
2. You must prepare for the interview
3. You must how to conduct yourself in the interview
We will discuss points 2 and 3 in the future videos. But, in this video, we will discuss interview strategy. The interview is your opportunity to sell yourself by convincing the interviewer that you have the skills, experience, and qualification that the company wants to meet. The best way to do this is to have the interviewer remember you, (2. _____). Everything you do in the interview should be focused on being remembered more than other candidates. The more you are remembered, the greater your chances are in the employer’s mind when come to decision time. In order to execute the strategy properly, you need to understand two things about the interview.
First, it’s all about the equal exchange of information in the interview. Many people go into the interview and spend 95% of time to answering their questions. If you spend most of your time talking, you hurt yourself in two ways: first, you spent all the time in answering their questions without getting much data to help you get better answers. Second, you’ll loose great opportunity to impress the interviewer with the quality of questions that you ask. I’ve always been much more interested in candidates when they ask me well (3. _____) and relevant questions. I certainly remember them later.
The second thing about the interview that you need to understand what the interviewer is looking for. First, can you do the job? That means that you have the ability to execute the specific job functions. The interviewers are looking for evidence that your experiences, skills, and confidences match their position requirements. Second, can you do the job at that company? The culture of every company is different. In the company the culture is the way people communicate, the things that they value, and the way things get done. The interviewer’s looking for your accomplishments at other jobs to be compatible to have things get done in their company.
Third, do you fit? You know, we’ve discussed many times that your success will be based largely on your ability to work well with other people. In the same manner, during the interview, the interviewer wants to see how your interpersonal skills match those of others you meet in the interview process. This chemistry will determine if they like you and they can work well with you.
In our next video on interviewing, we will discuss the most important part of any interview: thus, “the preparation”, but for now this is Rich Alexander, and thanks so much for watching.