Tag: interview prep

Interview Tip #4

Interview Tip: Assess the fit of the position for your goals as well as selling your potential to the employer.

Interview Tip: Assess the fit of the position for your goals as well as selling your potential to the employer.

Landing the right job is the goal.  A job that is a poor fit may hurt your career in the long run.  Assess the job for its match to your goals, abilities and interests. In each interview, you are interviewing the employer as they are interviewing you.

If you are having trouble determining the type of job you want to pursue, consider working with a career development specialist.  Futures in Motion is a career coaching firm with a number of great resources and services to help job seekers select the right career.

Interview Tip #3

Interview Tip: Focus on how you will benefit the company, showing your key skills and the value they provide an employer.

Interview Tip: Focus on how you will benefit the company, showing your key skills and the value they provide an employer.

Your potential to grow into a new job is important, but you also need to demonstrate your key skills. Usually, a company will expect you to add value almost immediately after starting. Showing how you can do this will improve the impression you make in an interview.

 

 

Interview Tip #2

Interview Tip: Prepare to discuss how you stay organized and meet deadline.

Interview Tip:  Prepare to discuss how you stay organized and meet deadlines.

Virtually all jobs require organization and a sense of urgency.  It is important in an interview to be able to address your organization and time management skills.  Being organized will not get you hired, but projecting disorganization and unreliability will cause you to be rejected.

 

Why You Need to Prepare for Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral interviews are a type of interview that asks the candidate to describe specific situations from their experience. This interview type is becoming more common with many companies. If you want to be prepared for every interview, working on behavioral interview techniques is one element your should include in your interview preparation.

Behavioral interviews are a type of interview that asks the candidate to describe specific situations from their experience. This interview type is becoming more common with many companies. If you want to be prepared for every interview, working on behavioral interview techniques is one element you should include in your interview preparation.

It is very difficult to excel in a behavioral interview if you haven’t prepared for this specific type. The interview style requires you to tell very specific stories from your background. Trying to select and tell the best story, emphasizing your strongest skills and showing how you will succeed, is extremely difficult on the fly. You may nail one or two questions, but it’s likely you will bomb a few too. If you are competing against a candidate that has prepared thoroughly, you will be at a distinct disadvantage.

Although being prepared for a common interview type should be enough motivation to work on behavioral interview preparation, there is another important reason you should improve your behavioral interviewing skills:

Behavioral interview techniques can be applied to non-behavioral interviews.

At its core, behavioral interviewing emphasizes storytelling. You will be asked to describe times when you encountered situations similar to the situations in the job you are seeking. The stories you prepare should show your skills, experience, attitude and character. All of these elements are important in every interview. Learning to provide examples that demonstrate your performance will help set you apart in any interview.

The better you get at showing an interviewer how you have performed, the more effective your interviews will be. Hiring managers want to know what they are going to get when they hire someone. Despite this, many job seekers are vague in their presentations. Every job seeker is going to claim to be hard working, a good communicator, good with people, knowledgeable in their field and successful in their career. If you make the same assertions as everyone else, you will look like everyone else.

Using behavioral interview techniques allows you to show the interviewer how you have performed in the past. You can make a strong, memorable impression by describing, very clearly, what you did and what the results were.

Get our book on behavioral interviewing.

Interview Tip #1

Interviewing tip from Palladian. Get expert coaching to improve your interview skills.

Interview Tip:  During your interview prep, focus on how you communicate the contributions you have made in the past and the the value you will provide to an employer.

At the end of an interview, you want the interviewer having a clear idea how you will perform in their organization.  To do this, you need to focus on their needs – the goals, objectives and challenges that they must meet, and show how you have performed in similar situations in the past.