Critical Interviewing Tips: Key Job Interview Advice -- #7

Q-Tips: Critical Interviewing Tips
Key Job Interview Advice -- #7

These job interviewing related tips -- preparing for job interviews, tips for handling tricky interview questions, and more -- have been gathered from numerous sources throughout Quintessential Careers and organized here for your convenience.

Consider conducting mock interviews with a variety of people to get some different perspectives. If you've been doing them with career professionals, add friends to the mix and vice versa. Your friends may be more honest with you about any shortcomings they see in your interview performance. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Job interviewers are sometimes subjected to the Bad Interviewer, one of the 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them that Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen write about. Not every professional who conducts job interviews with candidates knows how to conduct an interview effectively. In fact some are downright lousy at it. A bad interviewer might be unfocused, disinterested, unprepared. He or she might dominate the interview by doing all the talking or might ask inappropriate and illegal questions. The unfocused, unprepared interviewer probably hasn't read your resume and maybe can't even find a copy. This hapless soul doesn't even know what to ask you. Be sure to offer this disorganized interviewer a copy of your resume while asking, "May I take you through some highlights of my career?" While the bigmouth interviewer is holding forth, make as many mental notes as you can (or jot them down if you've brought a small notepad). Don't show your exasperation; instead be an attentive listener and hang on the interviewer's every word. Try to get a word in edgewise by leaning forward and opening your mouth slightly, advises Anne Kadet on Smartmoney.com. If that doesn't work, even a nonstop talker will likely eventually ask if you have any questions. At that point, you can ask questions or describe your fit with the company and the position based on the mental notes you've been making.

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A common objection that employers bring up in job interviews is: "We really like you but are just not sure where you fit."

The good news about this objection is that you have won half the battle because the employer likes you and wants to hire you, but is simply unsure of how to best utilize your skills. The key to your response has to be having the confidence in yourself and the knowledge about the employer to explain clearly why you are a fit for the position you are interviewing for. Read more in our article, Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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The key to any interview, particularly if it's for a new field or new job, is to make the connection between your unique abilities and related situations in the new field through your success stories, writes Frank Traditi in our article, Demonstrate Your Problem-Solving Skills in the Interview. Although it may be a new industry or job you are pursuing, there are many similarities to the day-to-day challenges and opportunities. Your career success stories bridge the gap.

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The stress interviewing technique is typically used only for positions in which the job-seeker will be facing stress on the job, and the interviewer wants to see how well you can handle the pressure, notes Dr. Randall Hansen in our article, Situational Interviews and Stress Interviews: What to Make of Them and How to Succeed in Them. The key to surviving stress interviews is to remain calm, keep a sense of humor, and avoid getting angry or defensive.

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The "Tell Me about Yourself" Question is one of the 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them that Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen write about. Of course, this question is not a question at all but a request for a command performance. It's the most commonly asked interview question, yet it frequently still rattles interviewees. The trick is to make your response a succinct summary of information that is specifically targeted to the job you're interviewing for. (Sell yourself!) For example:

"My background to date has been centered around preparing myself to become the very best financial consultant I can become. Let me tell you specifically how I've prepared myself. I am an undergraduate student in finance and accounting at ___________ University. My past experience has been in retail and higher education. Both aspects have prepared me well for this career."

The interviewer is not looking for your autobiography and probably is not interested in your personal life unless aspects of it are relevant to the job you're interviewing for.

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A question that underlies a common concern that employers have in job interviews is: "Were you fired from your last job?"

Unless the employer has inside information about you -- or you are currently unemployed while job-hunting -- this should not be a common objection. However, if you have been downsized or fired from your last job, you should at least anticipate this objection. It's pretty common to be defensive about the subject since no one likes being fired -- even if you were let go simply because your job was eliminated -- so you need to put that behind you when responding to this objection. Learn more in this article: Getting Fired: An Opportunity for Change and Growth.

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Mock interviews provide especially valuable preparation if you can have them videotaped. A videotaped mock interview that focuses on the non-verbal aspects of your performance -- smile, enthusiasm, energy level, personality, confidence, voice, attire, posture, hand gestures, inappropriate body language -- can be particularly worthwhile because many people exhibit behaviors while interviewing that they're not even aware of. I once had a student who had no idea during a mock interview that he kept swishing his hand back and forth across the tabletop, as though he were brushing crumbs away. Another sniffed loudly and rhythmically throughout the interview. Both were nervous habits that the interviewees had no awareness of. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Remember that the most important thing job-seekers can do to succeed in job interviews is prepare, notes Dr. Randall Hansen in our article, Situational Interviews and Stress Interviews: What to Make of Them and How to Succeed in Them. And preparation begins with conducting research so that you know what type(s) of interview styles you will be facing. Preparation also includes reviewing common questions you may face as a job-seeker and preparing narratives that illustrate a key point that each question is seeking.

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The "Weakness" Question is one of the 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them that Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen write about. The conventional wisdom about responding to "What are your weaknesses?" used to be that the candidate should spin a weakness into a strength. For example: "I'm a perfectionist and don't believe anyone can do the job as well as I can, so I sometimes have a hard time delegating." That type of response has, however, worn out its welcome with interviewers. Other approaches include offering a weakness that is inconsequential to the job (such as being a poor speller and relying on spellcheck) or denying that you have any weaknesses that would stand in the way of your performing the job effectively. The former approach may work but be seen as shallow, while the latter sometimes lacks credibility. After all, everyone has a weakness. An approach that seems to work well is to talk about an area that was once a weakness but that you have worked to improve. Here's how you could frame the perfectionist example above in terms of professional growth: "I tend to be a perfectionist who has had trouble delegating tasks to others, but I've come to see that teamwork and capitalizing on everyone's strengths is a much more effective way to get the job done than trying to do it all myself."

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After a videotaped interview with a career professional, the pro will generally play the tape back so you can both watch and constructively review how you did. Yes, you may cringe at your blunders, but you will learn from them. After all, you may have little time in a real interview to make the right impression. The research of a University of Toledo psychology professor has shown that the interview outcome is determined in the first 30 seconds. "What makes the lasting impression are the silent signals, the facial expressions, the cut of the suit, and the beauty of the speaker," writes Jenni Laidman in describing the research. Observing yourself on tape will help you deal with vocal issues, such as a heavy accent, a baby-soft voice, failure to articulate clearly, speaking too quickly or too slowly, and talking through your nose. An important key while reviewing the videotaped interview is to put yourself inside the employer's head and note how you come across to the viewer. Are you conveying the demeanor and message you want to? As you watch the tape, note the length of your responses, which should be two to three minutes. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Questions about Reasons for Leaving a Current Job are among the 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them that Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen write about. Responses about lack of fit with the company and differing views from your supervisor can work here, but remember never to trash a current employer. Always speak positively about past and present employers even if your experience has not been positive with them. Another good response in this situation is to say that you determined you had grown as much as you could in that job and you are ready for new challenges.

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Practice will help you reduce interview anxiety, improve your interview skills, and in many cases, gain important feedback about how you interview. It will also help you sharpen your communication skills -- and poor communication skills were the No. 1 turn-off for hiring managers, according to a Society of Human Resource Management survey. Our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews describes several ways to practice before a job interview:

Mock interviews
Videotaped mock interviews
Interview simulations
Rehearsal
Informational interviews

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Once you have made your salient points about how you are the perfect candidate for the position and overcome any objections from the interviewer, your final step is closing the sale. How aggressive you are in this step is sometimes the difference between an offer and nothing, but it is up to you to decide how strongly you want to close the interview. At a minimum, you should ask about the next step in the process, how many other candidates there are, and an estimate of the timetable for completing the process -- what some marketers might call the trial close, where you are feeling out the interviewer. However, if you truly feel the interview was a good one, that you are a great fit for the position, and that you have overcome all the interviewer's objections, you should ask for the job. Best case, you'll get the offer; worst case, you'll be told you need to wait. Find more tips for closing the sale in this article: Closing the Interview and read Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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Interview preparation is critical to successful job-hunting, says The Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen. You can't anticipate every interview question, but there are many sources for finding the common questions employers ask -- and all job-seekers should at least have a handle on how to respond to those. I just heard from one of my alums, who has still not found a job, that the employer did not have a complete copy of her resume during her recent job interview, so the interview was awkward. What was her big mistake? Even though she had been told many times to always bring extra copies of her resume to the interview, she actually did not even bring one! If you really have any interest in a job, be sure to prepare for the interview.

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Simulated interviews are generally computer-based, enabling you to practice interviewing, but with a virtual interviewer instead of a real person. You also must largely self-assess your performance instead of getting feedback another person. Such simulations are usually offered by career professionals, especially at colleges. Some universities, for example, offer Perfect Interview, a multimedia software package with 1,500+ interview questions, answers, and hints on digital video. After logging on, the user specifies the type and length of interview that he or she wants to practice. The interview begins, and the questions appear on the computer screen in full-motion video and sound. The user must answer on the spot, just as in a real interview. A video capture feature allows the user to record and playback answers to each interview question. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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In attempting to overcome employers' objections in job intervierws, remember to not dwell on the objection, but instead, once you are sure you understand it, turn it around to overcome it. If you do have a weakness that the interviewer has uncovered, find a way to turn it into a strength. For example, if you have been fired from your last job, find a way to showcase how the experience has given you new insight into making sure your boss knows the contributions you are making. Read more in our article, Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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Questions about the Future are among the 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them that Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen write about. Interviewees are often asked, "Where do you see yourself in five (or 10) years?" Strike a delicate balance when responding to this kind of question, with just the right mix of honesty, ambition, and your desire to be working at this company long-term. Avoid responses such as starting your own business, running for Congress, which suggest that you don't plan to stay with the company. It's not totally inappropriate to mention the personal (marriage, family), but focus mainly on professional goals. Mention your career and company goals first, and tack on any mention of marriage and family at the end. Your response could be:

"I'm here to let you know that I am the best person for the job. If in the future you feel I would be a candidate for a higher level position, I know I wouldn't be passed up."

OR:

"I hope to stay at the company and expect that in five years, I'll make a significant advance in the organization."

OR:

"I would like to become the very best ______________ your company has."

And then there's my personal favorite, which a student told me a friend had used. Asked by the interviewer, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" The response:

"Celebrating the five-year anniversary of your asking me this question!"

(While the response probably made the interviewer laugh, it's probably not the best answer.)

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Written rehearsal is an effective technique for preparing for job interviews. Composing and then practicing responses to likely interview questions will yield greater security during the real interview. Read more.

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If you do not have experience in sales, one piece of warning regarding the applicability of closing the sale to job interviewing: While it is helpful to think of the interview as a sales call, do be careful not to overdo it -- to not oversell yourself to the point where you actually turn the interviewer off about your candidacy. You need to walk the line between being too modest about your accomplishments and fit with the organization and talking too much about yourself. Read more in our article, Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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Perhaps you're a new entrant into the job market who is lacking experience in job interviewing. Or perhaps you're a job-market veteran whose resumes and cover letters yield loads of interviews -- but you never seem to get the job offer. While these two groups may have the greatest need to polish interview skills, anyone actively interviewing for jobs can benefit from practicing interview skills. A study by the Society of Human Resources Management proved this point when it revealed that a candidate's background and qualifications were far less influential in their hiring decisions than interview performance and professionalism. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Interview rehearsal is so closely related to mock interviewing that mock interviewing could be considered a subset of rehearsal. But rehearsal also includes the concepts of verbally rehearsing solo for an interview, as well as mentally rehearsing and rehearsing in writing. Experts frequently cite rehearsal's positive effect on the interviewee's self-assurance. Seitz and Cohen write that "through mental rehearsal, job seekers can practice interviews with a successful outcome until the unconscious mind believes it has already happened." Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Job-seekers need to think of each interview question as an opportunity to showcase an accomplishment or strength, write Drs. Randall and Katharine Hansen in our article, 10 Sticky Job Interview Situations and How to Handle Them. Every response should build momentum toward convincing the interviewer that you deserve to advance to the next level, whether that level is another round of interviews or a job offer.

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A good job-interview prep technique is to rehearse these responses aloud by yourself, enabling you to hear how your answers sound and adjust your verbiage as needed. Recording these rehearsals and then listening to the recordings from the employer's perspective can help the prospective interviewee refine and polish substandard responses. You can also try rehearsing in front of a mirror to check out your nonverbal mannerisms. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Always remember that the interview really is a conversation between two parties who are both trying to showcase their best points. Your goal is to leave the interview knowing you did your best to sell your unique mix of skills and accomplishments while overcoming any objections raised by the interviewer. Read more in our article, Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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Rehearsal as a technique for successful interview preparation is the entire premise behind The Interview Rehearsal Book by Deb Gottesman and Buzz Mauro. They advise practice in telling stories about, for example, accomplishments, but caution against memorization, which will result in the candidate's sounding "stilted and mechanical" in interviews. "Instead, ad-lib from your memory of what you've written," the authors recommend. Research on memory has stressed the role of rehearsal and repetition. Read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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Mental rehearsal, for many years espoused by sports psychologists and practiced by athletes to relieve anxiety, contains the important element of visualizing success. Peak-performance expert Peter Murphy, who notes that rehearsal's success in preparing interviewees is based on neuro-linguistic programming, recommends that you mentally rehearse both from the interviewer's perspective and your own. "In your imagination," Murphy writes, "visualize yourself at the interview comfortable and at ease meeting people, feeling relaxed and confident." Positive self-talk will help ward off any self-doubt that may creep in during the rehearsal. For more details on procedures for mental rehearsal, see: Mental Rehearsal And read more in our article, Best Bet for Interview Prep: Rehearsed, Mock, and Videotaped Interviews.

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The best job-hunters understand the power of marketing in the job-search, and comparing the job interview to a sales call is vital to achieving greater success -- in obtaining the job offers you seek. But the burden is not all on the job-seeker, because the employer also sees the job interview as a sales call -- and just as much as you are selling yourself as the product to be purchased by the employer, the hiring manager is also selling the employer's value to you. Read more in our article, Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

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An unexpected technique to help prepare for job interviews is informational interviewing. An informational interview is NOT a job interview, but you can use an informational interview to inquire of your interviewee: "I know this isn't a job interview, but do you observe anything about my demeanor or communication skills that you think might present a problem in a job interview?" Informational interviews are also good prep simply because you can build confidence and gain experience in a one-on-one interview situation. Find out how to conduct informational interviews.

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A common objection that employers bring up in job interviews is: "I'm not sure we can pay you the salary you are seeking."

Employers are always concerned about salary -- and hiring employees that best fit their budgets -- so there may be interest in you, but the nagging question is whether they can afford you. In this case, it's important to defuse the objection without giving away too much information so that you still have leverage if you do get the job offer. Learn more in our Salary Negotiation Tutorial and Closing the Sale and Overcoming Objections in the Job Interview.

Find even more job interviewing tips in Critical Interviewing Tips: Key Job Interview Advice -- #8.

Check out all of our Quick and Quintessential Job-Search Interviewing Tips.

Review all our Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life.

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Q-Tips: Critical Interviewing Tips Key Job Interview Advice -- #7

These job interviewing related tips -- preparing for job interviews, tips for handling tricky interview questions, and more -- have been gathered from numerous sources throughout Quintessential Careers and organized here for your convenience.

Check out all of our Quick and Quintessential Job-Search Interviewing Tips.

Review all our Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life.

Maximize your career and job-search knowledge and skills! Take advantage of The Quintessential Careers Content Index, which enables site visitors to locate articles, tutorials, quizzes, and worksheets in 35 career, college, job-search topic areas.

Q-Tips: Critical Interviewing Tips
Key Job Interview Advice -- #7