Congratulations ! You have been invited for an
interview! Remember that the interview is your only chance to convince the
employer that the job should be yours! Take a look at this article and
see how you can improve your interview skills.
Secrets of successful Interview
You may have the skills. You may be the right
person for the job. However, you have less than one hour to convince the
individual across the desk that the position should be yours. There are many
unwritten rules for a successful interview, and I think it's best to understand
what the hiring manager wants before discussing how to prepare and deliver the
performance that will get you that role.
The Buyer
Firstly, the buyer has choice. You are not
going to be the only person applying for this role. Therefore, you need to
understand what is going to make you stand out from your competition. Here are
a few things the interviewer is weighing up when deciding if they want to hire
you:
· First
impressions. I can’t reinforce this enough: be smartly dressed and, more
importantly, smile at the interviewer and maintain good eye contact. People
tend to make their mind up in the first five minutes if they like someone, and
this is an important part of their decision making, particularly if they are
going to be working with you over the next several years.
· Enthusiasm.
Show passion and genuine pride in your field. The hiring manager won’t want you
if they think everything they ask you to do is a chore and that you only do it
for the pay-cheque. The top firms want someone who shows a desire to innovate
and be world class.
· Flexibility. The
interviewer may test your EQ to see how you adapt to difficult or ambiguous
questions or situations. This is to test your real-world skills to see how you
might perform in a meeting with other senior stakeholders or clients
· Motivation to
move. This is a tightrope: you don’t want to appear like a mercenary who
will leave when the next higher bidder comes along; however, you don’t want to
appear to be wanting to move for the sake of it. You need to have genuinely
good reasons for why this opportunity attracts you.
Research
· Review their
company website and history. There will tend to be a vision statement that can
be useful to ask about during an interview. If appropriate, look for any white
papers on the area of the business that you are applying to join.
Framing your experience
Try to help the interviewer build a mental picture of your previous roles, the
companies that you worked for and how the experience in those environments will
benefit their company and department. You don’t want to get into a situation
where the interviewer is going through your experience point-by-point and
having to drag the information from you. Try talking about your experience in
bite-size chunks (two-three minutes high-level overviews) incorporating most of
the following aspects:
Review the projects/roles: (Focus on the last
5 years)
· What
was the business area and needs. What were the benefits?
· Who
were the stakeholders?
· What
were the key metrics (people, users, budgets, sales, etc)?
· What
was the process for planning the projects? What were the solutions developed?
· What
was the scale (time and people)? What was the cost?
· What
was your role/impact?
· Were
there any business changes? How were the changes risk-managed?
· Was
the project delivered successfully? Did you achieve your goals?
· Final
key metrics summary, customer numbers, group spend, profits, efficiency
improvements or margin improvements, budget for delivering
change.
You may be surprised to learn that you can get
this type of detail for each role into a two-three minute summary. However,
doing so will allow the interviewer to focus less on your competency for the
role and more on discussing what you would do should you be employed. This is
where the real decisions are made.
Things to do during the interview
· Give a
high-level overview: does the interviewer know who your
previous employers
are? If they do not, explain the size of the company, the geographical
reach, the nature of the business and the sectors that it covers.
· Give a lower-level
overview: what did your business unit do? What was your role within the team?
· Be flexible.
Don’t expect them to go through each project, but maybe choose one or two
projects that are applicable to their type of environment.
· Be concise and
offer to expand if they want to know more detail.
· Allow them the
opportunity to ask buying questions. Try to answer questions with specific
examples of delivery (when I was at x, we delivered y).
· Ask them what
they think are the biggest challenges in the role.
· Try to add or
demonstrate synergistic examples of how your past experience can directly
benefit the role for which you are being interviewed.
· Try to build a
professional rapport with the interviewer. Attempt to find common
ground/viewpoints.
· Ask selling
questions about the culture of the company and why they like working there.
· When asked why are you
applying for this role you can say things like, “this is one of the most
prestigious brands in the world” and “you have an excellent reputation with
your people and clients” and “I’m not looking; I was headhunted. However, it
seemed too interesting an opportunity to not to speak with you.”
Things to be careful of during the interview
· Don’t use abbreviations
unless you describe what the abbreviation means before commencing.
· Watch out for
the interviewer's body language. If they look confused or bored, try asking
them a qualifying question.
· Beware of your
own negative body language, like folding your arms or scratching your ear/nose.
Maintain eye contact most of the time, and smile now and again.
· Don’t let them
do all the talking. It is your job to sell yourself. Try to latch onto things
that they are discussing and draw direct experience from your career that is
relevant to that subject
· Try to avoid
abstract conversation which can be easily misinterpreted by the interviewer.
Stick to the facts.
· When asked
about career and company moves, give short, objective professional statements
of no more than a couple of sentences. Do not get emotional about things like
redundancy, bad bosses etc. Try to use positive statements like “I took it as
far as I could and it was time to move to the next stage in my career”.
In summary: research the company, understand the buying behaviours of the
interviewer, summarise your experience in bite-sized chunks, use your emotional
intelligence to bond with the interviewer, smile, keep good eye contact, be
genuine and have realistic expectations about the role and the salary. If you
do all of these, you may find that you have just landed a great new role with a
fantastic company.
