Winning Interviews: What can you do to prepare and practice for your job interview? Here are some ideas that will help you.
Give yourself an edge over the competition with interview preparation. ~ www.jaywren.com
What You Can Anticipate in an Interview
No one can know with any certainty what questions to expect in an interview. However, interview questions tend to fit into categories. For the most part, these questions fit into a range of questions.
Essentially, interview preparation come under four categories:
- Everything about you
- Everything about the hiring company
These points will become clearer in the discussion below. Here are examples of questions under these two categories.
Everything About You
Workplace Relationships: Keep your answers positive. The interviewer is trying to understand how well you work with others.
- How would you describe your workplace relationships?
- Who was the best supervisor you have ever had?
- Tell me about the worst supervisor you ever had?
- How would your peers describe you?
- Tell me about a conflict you faced at work and how you dealt with it.
- What do you expect out of your team/co-workers?
- describe your expectations of your future manager?
- What qualities to you seek in building a team?
YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY
Your Character and Emotional Intelligence: These questions help the interviewer understand your individual professional and personal qualities.
- What is your management style?
- Have you ever told a lie?
- What motivates you? Whom do you most admire?
- Tell me about yourself?
- How do you deal with stress?
- To what do you attribute your success?
- How do you describe your perfect day?
Qualifications: In asking questions about your qualifications, the interviewer is looking for specifically skills and experience that qualify you for their job opening and your potential for long-term success with their company. Here are some sample questions.
- What is your greatest strength?
- Describe your greatest achievement?
- How do your qualifications make you the best fit for our job?
Your Growth Potential: In this case, the interviewer is examining how well you can grow short-term and create long-term value to the company.
- What are your long-term goals?
- Describe the things you do you do to grow professionally?
- What are your career passions?
- When you were a growing up, what did you want to become?
- Can you describe your typical day?
- Tell me about your greatest weakness?
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- Are you willing to relocate?
Questions about Why You are Making a Job Change:
- Why are you leaving your current job?
- Were you laid off?
- What are you looking for in your next job?
Everything about the Hiring Company
Taking all of the questions above, you should direct your preparation on how your answers to those questions show why the company should hire. You must show that understand the opportunity. Additionally, you must know the company’s products, distribution channels,
Putting your knowledge of the opportunity together with your knowledge of company, you must show how you fit the company’s short-term and long-term goals and needs.
The answers should show, based on your knowledge of the job opportunity and the conditions at the company, that you are the companies best possible hire.
Here are some sample questions.
- Why do you want to work for [insert company name]?
- What is your dream job? Should indicate why you the hiring company is the place where you want to work?
- Could you describe your plan for the first 90 days on the job at our company?
Mental Attitude and Interview Practice
Interview practice will help you think more clearly. Furthermore, the practice will strengthen your ability to think on your feet. Interview role playing with another person and in front of a mirror will help you feel more poised.
Winning Interviews: Going to the Interview
Interviews are like batting in baseball. Who knows what pitch is coming next? Often the pitcher does not know where the next pitch is going until it gets there. As professional baseball players do, take a deep breath. Stay loose. Trust yourself.
