I wrote an article several years ago about job searching, featuring stuff I had learned the hard way. Here's the section on interviewing. Hope it helps!
Brad
Read books about interviewing, especially those that cover the questions you will hear and the answers you should give. Currently there is no one book I can recommend in this area, so just review a bunch of them and then apply your own good judgment as to the quality of their advice.
Be totally honest in your answers to any question, but don?t volunteer any negative information you don?t have to give.
It will do you absolutely no good, indeed it will hurt you, in the long run if you lie your way into a job that you can?t do.
Conversely, recognize that the interviewer is screening your responses through a mental process that divides your stated strengths by two and multiplies your stated weakness by two. If you say, for example, that you have problems spelling, the interviewer is going to conclude you are illiterate. If you say you won a writing award in college, he?ll conclude you can spell.
You should follow a similar ?rule of two? for the responses you get to your questions in an interview.
As an example, the interviewer asks you how you handle stress. You say you have done some of your best work under stressful conditions. He concludes you can handle stress as well as the next person. You conclude that this job may be unusually stressful and make a mental note to find out more about this before you accept.
You have both just been honest and acted properly within the rules of the game, and accurate communication has just taken place. (If you can?t handle stress at all, though, tell him that. Otherwise, your career is about to run into a brick wall and you will be back to reading this advice again!)
You will find that most search people are professional interviewers with highly developed skills. You will also find that most employers are not very good at interviewing. They don't do it often enough to keep their skills sharp. They may have a reticence about asking probing questions. They often will shift into more familiar territory where they are just chatting with you or, worse yet, giving you a lecture about their company. If you allow this to happen, you will leave the interview without the interviewer having any good idea about why they should hire you instead of any of the other nice people the company interviewed.
If the interview isn't turning out to be 80% about you and your qualifications for the job, you need to take command of the interview without appearing to be so assertive and self-centered that they are scared of working with you in the future. You can learn more about them later, after you have captured their interest with clear facts about your potential contribution to their company.
You'll need to learn how to "interview yourself" in front of the typical employer interviewer. The best way to do this is to use the "that reminds me of the time I" approach. Look for opportunities to break in with an example of how you have accomplished the kinds of things that they are going to need you to accomplish for them. You'll be amazed at the number of times you have to take this approach, and at how many job opportunities you lose until you develop this skill.
Reply With Quote