Three Key Aspects of the Interview – Preparation

OK, so you’ve done the hard part and secured an interview.

Now for the easy part and getting the job!

Once you’ve secured the interview the first thing you must do is prepare

It is hard to believe it (unless you’ve spent a lot of time interviewing) but 80% of candidates do little or no preparation before an interview! No prizes for guessing how successful they are!

You can almost guarantee that the first question you will get asked in an interview is “What do you know about our company”. If you respond with anything other than a concise, intelligent summary of their business you are not going to be successful in this interview!

It is the least you can do, it breaks the ice, relaxes you and gets you off to a good start in the interview (the other questions will be tell me about yourself, and what do you know about the job – again very straightforward questions and by the time you’ve answered them you should be in your stride and ready to tackle the tougher questions!)

One of the challenges in an interview is engaging with the interviewer. If you have prepared effectively you should have discovered a couple of facts that make this a little easier:

OK, so how to prepare

• First port of call has got to be the company website. Print a couple of pages and take it to the interview (this shows that you’ve prepared!) Look at the news pages, find out what they are saying about themselves. Look at any case studies and print them, if there’s anything you don’t understand that could be a good question (far better than “how many days holiday do I get”!)
• Google! Obvious yes but don’t just look at their website, look at the news on the company, try searching for the person who is interviewing, they may have given a presentation or written an article recently, something you could use to break the ice! Depending on time to interview setup Google news alerts and get the latest information emailed to you
• Social Media, search on LinkedIn, there is a huge amount of information available, it tells you who works there, what they do, what events are coming up, and it gives recommendations. LinkedIn tends to be social media for business. Don’t limit your research to this though, do they have a Facebook page (have their customers set up pages, good or bad!), what’s on YouTube about them, what are people saying on Twitter. How about forums? What are their customers saying
• Networking. Do you know someone who works there? How about someone you know who knows someone that works there! Starts to get a bit complicated but again LinkedIn does this for you. Don’t just make connections use them!
• The recruiter. Doesn’t replace any of the above as you must do your own research and preparation but the recruiter will know the client, they should understand the business, they should be able to tell you about the interviewers, their style, and the types of questions they ask. If they don’t offer this information then ask them, if they don’t know ask them to find out!

So that gives you background on the company.

Now think about the questions you might be asked.

You can’t control the questions that you will be asked but you can still prepare

• If you were interviewing you, what would you ask?
• What is it about you that is most relevant to this job, where can you add real value? Think about these things and bring them into answers to the questions
• If it’s on the CV be prepared to talk about and expand on it. This is all the interviewer knows about you and it will often form the structure of the interview
• Think of scenarios you have been in and give real examples of situations you’ve been in, how you dealt with it and the outcome. (Once you’ve got 3 or 4 of these they can be tailored to be the answer to almost any question)

Whatever anyone says, everybody is nervous before an interview. If you have prepared thoroughly it helps!

I started this post by saying that 80% of candidates do not prepare for interviews, 95% of people wouldn’t have done all of the above – I wonder who’s got the best chance of getting the job!

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

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