Secrets of successful interview

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.

Article found on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917110637-738931-secrets-of-a-successful-interview 

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