Are you preparing for an interview?
There are thousands of interview advice articles / publications / guides, etc.... However, many of them are not practical and most of them give you a hundreds of usually abstract things to do, hence job seekers feel overwhelmed, confused and don't follow any of them.
If you are a business professional - (finance, accounting, marketing, MIS, general business management & operations, HR and etc...) and have an interview coming up - just follow these 5 concrete points of interview advice and the job is yours:
1) Spend 30-45 minutes on the company website the night before your interview. Read through their recent publications, news about the company, new products, R&D, etc... (Don't go crazy with this, you do not need to memorize everything...)
2) Print out the job description, then go through each job requirement one by one - next to each bullet point hand write how your previous experience relates to that specific requirement. This interview prep task really does wonders for getting your thoughts organized for the interview. You will be amazed as to how easy your answers will flow during the interview if you do this. (WARNING: Do not try to do this task in your head, it must be done in the written fashion we have spelled out above...trust us on this one.)
3) Make sure your resume is fully tailored toward the job you are interviewing for. As you do the 2nd task above and realize that your resume does not reflect all of specific experience you hand wrote next to each job requirement bullet point - go back and add this specific experience to your resume accordingly. You should then e-mail this updated copy of your resume to the company before you get there and also bring enough copies for every interviewer in case they do not have enough time to print out the updated resume.
This is also important to do, because hardly any interviewer take good notes, consequently when they are discussing your candidacy a couple of days later they will be looking over your resume again. You want to make sure it contains the qualifications they are looking for in a candidate.
4) Prepare questions for each interviewer. Questions = "You are interested and prepared". Don't be boring and generic. You should prepare about 4-5 questions for each interviewer. During the interview conversation about 2-3 of them will get answered, which will leave you with 2-3 questions to ask at the end.
My personal favorite interview question is: "Why do you enjoy working for this company?". It gives you insight into what the company culture is all about and the interview may open up to you a bit more on the personal level - this equals personal connection = they will remember you after the interview when they are selecting finalists or making an offer.
5) Get a good night sleep and have lots of energy during the interview. Get a coffee if you have to! Energy and enthusiasm is half the battle. (Keep in Mind: You must show this energy to every interviewer)
For example: If you have a line up of 6 interviewers, who let's say they are Finance or Marketing senior managers and directors - you have to impress each one of them. Don't get tired on the last one or two, chances are their questions are going to be the same as the first four, but you have to fight your urge to take shortcuts on your answers just because you just answered the same exact question 4 times. This sounds easy, but its not! After the interview - these 6 hiring managers are going to have a round table discussion about your candidacy - in order to move on to the next round or get the job you must get a "thumbs up" from all 6 interviewers.
Now take a deep breath, relax and start preparing.
Good Luck!
www.BusinessResumeWriting.com
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