For most people who are looking for a job, no matter how many experiences you have, you still feel nervous and don’t know how to prepare for it. Thus, interview preparation can be separated into three pieces. Let’s see how we should prepare before a job interview.
Read the interview information meticulously.
If you are a person who gets nervous easily, reading the interview information carefully is a good way to relieve your nervousness. For example, how long will the interview take, is it an individual interview or a group interview or is there any dress code or clothing expectation for that job? As we know more information about the interview, we will feel more confident and calm in any unknown situation.
Get familiar with your resume and prepare some supported documents.
Sometimes people will alter tiny details in their resume to better fit the job, especially when we are applying for multiple jobs at the same time. Or, we might say something which is not applying to the resume we provided.
Plus, although the interviewers have already received our resumes, it is recommended to prepare multiple pieces for any situation. If the job you are applying for is online marketing, planner or designer, we might need to show interviewers some portfolios that we’ve done. We can bring our own laptops or the physical portfolios to the interview to better show our work (in case the interviewers use a different system with you).
Know the company and the job better.
After knowing your resume well, the next step is to know the company and job well. You can search the company’s name on Google or follow their social media to see what they are currently doing. You can also visit some blogs to see what people think about that company and what they recommend for us to prepare for the interview. By browsing what their hiring goals and duties are, you can prepare for the interview better.
Predict what questions will be asked.
Predicting and preparing for the questions that will most likely be asked during the interview can make us feel less nervous and feel more prepared. The interviewers like to ask: your strengths and weaknesses, the reasons for you to apply for this job, the reasons for hiring you and your expectations of this job.
On the day of the interview, you prepared everything but you are still nervous. How to feel comfortable and reply to the interviewers as well as we’ve been practicing?
Fully understand the questions.
When you are being asked questions, you can give them a short reply first, then give out the final reply with fully understanding the questions. Answering questions without completely understanding it might make the interviewers be worried about your comprehensive and critical thinking skills. You can control the tempo of the interview. Take your time!
Ask some appropriate questions.
Interviewing is not only about being asked by the interviewers, you can also ask some great questions about the job. Prevent yes/no questions and demonstrate as much interest you have in this job as you can. The interviewers are usually professional about this job, so you can ask some deep questions. For example, you can ask how can we be successful in this job, how can I better balance work and school or what is the working environment like.
Stay focus on the topic of the interview.
The questions that interviewers ask you probably have some other meanings to better test if you are the best person they are hiring. Imagine there is a circle outside of the topic. Try your best to focus on the topic and the positions you are applying for, so the interviewers can know that you are the right person they are hiring.
After your interview, good job! But we also need to do something to improve ourselves and have more chances to be hired. You can write down your thoughts about the interview. Are we doing well? What are things that I can improve on? How can I do better next time? These thoughts allow us to improve and grow next time. You can also write a thank you letter for the interviewers, expressing how thankful you are that you had the chance to be interviewed. Then, write down something that you forgot to mention in the interview. Maybe you’ll get the job because of this letter!
Those are the preparation and some reminders about a job interview, and I hope these can help you for an interview. The art of job interviews is not about the job and the interviewers, it is also about our confidence and a sense of who you are. So, the best way to impress is to be the best version of yourself. Good luck!