The key to a good impression at the interview is good preparation. This article will guide you on how to plan your interview preparation for getting success or meeting the expectation of your prospective employer.
Some of us experience anxiety before the interview. A well thought out interview preparation planning can help us to get over the stress of the interview. The preparation will give you the self-confidence to talk to any interviewers and answer their questions with ease.
What to Focus For Interview Preparation
The interview preparation needs to cover the following areas
- Note down all the relevant information related to the job, function, and the company;
- Physically and psychologically prepare for the interview;
- Creating a list of commonly frequently asked questions; and
- Preparing the answers to those questions.
- Practicing those Q&A with a buddy or video recording your answer to improve the performance.
This series of articles is all about creating a list of those commonly asked FAQs. You have to present your answers to show that you are confident and more competent than other candidates. Your response to the interview questions needs to assure prospective employers to hire you as their team members. The interview preparation will focus on preparing the answers to all parts of your life relevant to the job. You have to prepare answers to the questions related to your education, present, and past jobs, professional behaviors, future goals, personal strengths, and weaknesses.
Please do not expect to get more than twenty questions requiring you to answer in detail. You can also expect to get similar queries in most of the interviews. Your interviewers will have limited time to judge you based on detailed questions. You are not likely to get all the FAQs during your interview which may not stretch more than 45 minutes. But you will have most of the questions and their answers for preparation. Your job as a candidate is to understand the FAQ, suggested responses, and prepare your answers.
It is crucial that you practice the answers using your real-life experience from the jobs to the relevant questions. The frequent preparation will help you in memorizing the facts and figures related to the business problems and your contribution to finding the solutions. The regular practice will help you to get a grip on the answers to those commonly asked FAQ and will increase your self-confidence to face any interview.
What An Employer Want To Know
You know that those questions are to get in-depth information from you. The interviewers would like to find out more about you, and, most important of all, your viability for the advertised position and the likelihood of your getting well with your colleagues, your boss, your customers, your clients, your company, co-workers from another department, and organization culture. All employers will like to find out their observations on three primary questions: ‘are you confident about the job?’ ‘are you competent for the job?’ What is your willingness to work with their organization? , and ‘your cultural fit for the organization?’
- Are you confident and competent for the job? Do you have the appropriate mix of qualifications and/or experience to provide you with the basic skills and knowledge to do the job?
- What is your interest level to work with their organization? This is quite a different question from ‘can you’ – this question is all about your willingness to do the work. Are you keen and eager, how can you demonstrate your motivation?
- Are you culturally fit for the organization?
- Will you feel comfortable working with them?
This is all about your suitability to work in that particular set up. Some of those questions can have open-ended answers. Your answer can look for flexibility as per the problem faced by the organization. You have to respond with your examples and learning from the events. It will depend on the interviewers to interpret it. There are, however, whole sets of questions that do relate to this area – those questions about teamwork, dealing with difficult situations with other members of staff, being adaptable, flexible, and friendly. The interviewer will look for precise answers to their questions and logical steps to your approach.
Your objective during the interview is to influence them through your answers. They should agree to your answers to these fundamental questions as you prepare and deliver all your answers. Given that the interviewer wants to know about you, make sure this is a subject with which you are happy, familiar, and enthusiastic. You may have come to take yourself for granted by now, so take time to sit down and work out what your qualities and strengths are. Be aware of any weak spots that an interviewer may home in on, but beware of doing yourself down. Many of us are far quicker at listing our drawbacks than our assets. Part of your preparation should be reminding yourself of your skills.
Get To Know Yourself
This short questionnaire will help you to be clear about your main selling points. Of course, different jobs require different portfolios of skills and experience, but there is a core of skills and attributes that feature in many job adverts and on many job descriptions, regardless of the position on offer. Your observations, knowledge, and/ or experience of the particular field of employment relevant to you will help you work out what combination of these skills is most important for the kind of work for which you are applying. A psychotherapist probably needs greater listening skills than a chartered accountant, for example, and the creativity of someone writing a catchy advertising slogan is not the same as the creativity of a food technologist developing a smoothie recipe.
Now lets focus on the transferable skills that you can highlight during your interview. You will find a list of skills down below and be honest in ranking the expertise in the skills for your consumption. Do not stress too much on skills which you do not have any good hold. Sometime we worry too much on our weakness and lose focus on our strength. Your responsibility is to sale yourself on your strength.
Go through the following list and add ranking against each skills. You can add A as absence of skills, G as you have some expertise and E where you have high level of expertise.
Ranking
A(Absence)= Do not have the skills.
G (Good) = Have some skills and used it on the job.
E(Excellent) = You have used it often and very good at it.
You can find the complete list of the transferable skills set here. Try to be as objective as possible and you can go through the list after few days to reevaluate your response. Once you are done with your ranking then group all the skills with ‘E’ Rank.
Your Strong Skills Are Your Selling Points
Now you have the list of your most valuable skills. The next step is to prepare the notes on each job where you have used those skills with ‘E’ ranking. Now you have to prepare short paragraph on each skills and how you have used the skills in that job to achieve a positive results. Be conscious of your effort where you tried to use the skill but not able to get the desired result and what have you learned from that experience.
The effort in collecting and building the examples will help you in responding to queries from the interviewers. You have to present your answers like a story because people love stories and it keeps them engage with you. Please go through our article on how to show your confidence and competency for the job to know more about the structure of your answers.
It may take some effort to prepare the first draft of the answers. You can improve the answers as you go through your interview preparation. Keep it as a living document and you can refine it with more relevant and interesting examples.