4 Useful Tips for Job Interview Success:
By Cham Posted Date: September 26, 2016
Job Interviews don’t have to be a nerve wracking daunting experience. The most important part of a job interview is the preparation you do, the more prepared you are – the more likely you will succeed in impressing the interviewer. Below we discuss some useful tips to help you be prepared and nail that job interview:
- Body Language: Sometimes forgetting about specific body language techniques and trying to portray a certain body language can appear to be pre-planned or like you are acting and out of place. One of the best ways of taking care of body language is to make yourself relaxed, as this will remove any appearance you have of being nervous. Being relaxed and taking a confident approach is the best way to portray positive body language that will be accepted. Things you can do to relax include simple breathing techniques like taking slow deep breaths. When people feel anxious the blood flows away from the brain, so this breathing technique essentially improves oxygen flow to your brain and will help you think more clearly.
- Strength & Weaknesses: Being aware of your own strengths and weaknesses are a key part of being successful at job interviews. Carefully go through job descriptions to identify key words and phrases in order to figure out which of your strengths tally. Then at the interview it’s just a matter of using this information to convince the interviewers that you are the best candidate for the job. It’s important to think about what your unique selling points are and what makes you stand out from the other prospective candidates.
Knowing your weaknesses is also considered a strength, when employers ask this question they are generally testing your self-awareness. The most important thing to remember when answering this question is, for whatever weakness you choose to share, be sure to mention a strategy to manage it. - Do a mock interview: Anyone you speak to would tell you that preparation is a undeniably key aspect to interview success. Keep practicing your answers and stories you want to describe to demonstrate your accomplishments, know them by heart and say it with confidence. Prepare your answers to common questions and rehearse them thoroughly. A good idea is to run a few mock interviews with friends or family (and if possible with people you don’t know too well) in order to improve confidence in your answers. As they say, practice makes perfect.
- No generic answers: It is always better to provide more specific and tangible answers that demonstrate you have the experience required rather than providing a generic response to certain questions. Giving generic answers would not make you stand out from the rest of the applicants. A great way not to sound generic is using specific examples of how you added value while making sure it is very relevant to the skills the interviewer is in search of.