Learning you haven’t got the job you wanted so badly, or not even being notified, is never hard to take. Particularly when you thought you aced the interview and were a perfect fit for the role.
The thing is, though, as staged meetings that are filled with tension (on both sides of the table), interviews are incredibly tough to get right. And with our increasingly technological world and high pressure to not just land a job but get the perfect one for you, it’s no wonder candidates often fail to hit the mark.
It makes sense, then, to be prepared and do you homework before an interview. This means not just stocking up on interview techniques and self-esteem tips; but rather understandinghow to better interact with other people and broadening your perspective to how interviewers see you.
After all, the world of work has changed a lot over recent years, but people are still people. With that in mind, here’s our six winning interview tips to boost your chances of getting hired.
1. Interview Yourself
Whereas we may walk out of an interview thinking it went great and we were the perfect candidate, if we were to interview ourselves, we would quickly discover someone would have to be crazy to hire us.
When we’re preparing for an interview and under pressure, we often get stuck in our heads and forget how we will come across to other people. We can disrupt this cycle by, instead of just learning more and more winning interview tips and going over our lines internally, putting ourselves in the shoes of the interviewer and asking ourselves the questions they might ask.
When we take the role of interviewer first, we become better able see what responses sound good and which are trash. We uncover holes in our thinking and come up with answers that take into account their needs and how we can bring value to the company, rather than focusing on ourselves.
2. Put Them At Ease
In an interview, you may think you’re under pressure, but think about the recruiter’s job — pleasing their managers by picking the best person for a whole company who won’t mess up and leave a few months down the line.
Interviewing people is stressful, so interviewers appreciate when you don’t make it any harder than it needs to be. Go out of your way to recognise their position and put them at ease by making the interview enjoyable — starting with a casual conversation, asking questions about them and their day, being normal — and they are much more likely to look back on your interview in a positive light.
3. Address Your Weaknesses
There’ll always be doubts about your experience and gaps in your skillset that you’ll be unsure how to deal with in an interview. Often we try to brush over them or focus on other areas of expertise and the requirements, but this doesn’t help but hinder our chances of getting hired.
A better approach is to show recruiters you’ve thought about your weaknesses and talk about how you’ve managed to learn new skills and overcome such challenges in the past. Describe a situation in which you proved your ability without having experience to demonstrate you have the right attitude and mentality — something that’s highly valued by employers.
4. Tell Them A Story
People are wired to engage when they hear the typical narrative of a story — that is, a sequence of events that follow a plot through a beginning, middle, and to reach a conclusion at the end.
But telling a story in an interview can often come across as scripted and egotistical. The important thing to remember is that it should be relatable and natural. That means dropping the front that you’re perfect and talking about your life as a normal, fallible person.
Once you do this, you can then introduce an event — something meaningful that disrupted your life — and effortlessly take the interviewers through a narrative of twists and challenges to finally show how you came through it successfully.