A job interview is always a stressful experience for everyone. Fortunately, there are some effective interview techniques to get you prepared.
A job interview is a key aspect when it comes to you landing the job or getting a rejection from the hiring manager. No CV or cover letter will replace live communication with a candidate for a vacant position. For this reason, it’s important to know and use interview techniques to increase your chances of getting the job.
The hiring manager is a human being. It means that regardless of what is written in your resume, they will make a decision based on how you hold yourself and how you answer their tricky questions. Therefore, it is important that you make a good first impression that will help you land the job of your dreams.
Mental preparation for a job interview is about recognizing the interview techniques of the hiring manager along with the prospective pitfalls. Being psychologically ready means staying in a sober mind during the job interview managing your emotions and worries.
In today’s post, we would like to give you the top 5 interview techniques you can leverage to get your dream job. Let us get started!
1. Understand that you need them as much as they need you
A job interview is not a battlefield where you have to either defeat the opponent or surrender to the winner’s mercy. This is a very wrong thought! You want to find a suitable job while the employer wants to find a suitable specialist for a certain position. Otherwise, what would this be all about?
Therefore, you need to treat a job interview as an ordinary meeting. Both sides just try to find a common language and establish potential cooperation.
2. Treat the prospective interview questions properly
Most often, the person who invited you for a job interview is not a member of the team you will be working on. They probably are an authorized person who will ask you a wide variety of questions. It may be questions about your professional experience or personality traits.
It is important to understand that the purpose of these questions is to filter out the most capable candidates. Keep in mind that the hiring manager is asking you all these questions not for the purpose of humiliating you nor out of idle curiosity. They must give an account of your previous performance to your future boss.
This means that you need to be yourself and willingly answer all their questions. You should answer them even if they do not specialize in your immediate domain (for example, marketing or IT). Also, it is important to communicate in a language that the hiring manager would understand.
A little patience and you will definitely get to the second round of the interview. This is where you will get a chance to communicate with your immediate superior or the team members. This means that they will most probably be on the same wavelength as you.
3. Be mindful that there is no right answer to tricky questions
It is important to understand that there is no right answer to any job interview question! Therefore, your task is to show your skills and personality traits when answering certain questions, as well as everything that your hiring manager would like to hear.
Put yourself in the employer’s shoes and think about what kind of employee they are looking for. Why do they require that the candidate have a particular skill set? The employer should be positive that you are able to do the job and will be a loyal employee of the company.
During a job interview, the hiring manager may be rude, ask intimate questions and show complete disrespect. Your task is to recognize the reason for these actions.
Perhaps this is another test in which the employer tries to get you out of your comfort zone. How will you be able to communicate with a troublesome client? How do you solve conflicts? Can you cope with tough situations?
4. Practice before the job interview
The practice is one of the most important stages in preparation for a job interview. Be sure to practice answering tricky questions with your family and friends. In case you are applying for more than one company, we recommend you go first to a less interesting vacancy. Thus, you will use the first interview as a practice.
To make sure that you will be invited for a job interview, you can use a special resume builder. According to statistics, employers prefer to invite candidates with high-professional and qualitative resume.
5. Understand what you are truly good at to gain confidence
During a job interview, one way or another, the hiring manager will ask you about the achievements and strengths of yours. It is better to prepare for the question in advance, especially if you had to leave your previous job feeling frustrated. Set a goal: find the three best qualities or skills to boost your confidence.
Ask your relatives or friends about what they think your best traits are. To help you, you can also recall some problematic issues at your previous job and how you dealt with them. If you say something like responsibility, stress resistance, ability to negotiate, these are important for businesses.
However, to convince the hiring manager, it is necessary not simply to enumerate them but to prove by example. For instance, you can tell the hiring manager how you helped the trainees, discovered a problem and helped solve it, worked well with colleagues and received a reward for something.
Everyone has some prior experience, but it takes time to remember things. However, it is better to devote an extra hour to have the answers ready than ponder these questions for a minute or two during the real job interview.
We hope that these interview techniques prove useful next time you go to a job interview. Hopefully, you will now be able to change your mindset regarding job interviews.
