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How To Do A Good Interview

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Ask Your Network For Opinions

Video Interview Tips: What to Wear, How to Prepare, and Example Questions

Seek opinions from trusted, reliable friends and associates. After youve done your research, discuss what youve learned with your network. Ask people you know for the inside scoop on their own companys culture and if there are opportunities. If youre a recent college graduate building your network from scratch, ask university advisors for names of alumni working at your target companies. Consider reaching out to these people for a quick coffee.

Prepare And Research In Advance

I don’t usually prepare a list of questions, although I’ll usually have a list of topics to cover. I also like to look up the interviewee on LinkedIn and Google as this can reveal interesting angles for questions and common ground to build rapport.

I have an interview template in OneNote and I usually set this up before the interview with all the contact information and some initial thoughts and topics for the interview.

Choose Your Interview Attire

The day before your interview, choose what you intend to wear so you don’t feel rushed. Make sure your clothes are free of wrinkles and stains and they fit correctly. If you’re unsure of the dress code at the company, it’s best to dress more professionally to make a good impression. You can also call or email the person you’ve been communicating with to get more information about the dress code.

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What Are Your Strengths

A simple list of four attributes is not what the interviewer is looking for with this question. You need to flesh each of these attributes out â preferably with compelling, relevant anecdotes. Instead of just saying âIâm a good listener,â tell a story about how you caught something important a client had said during a meeting that none of your other colleagues had heard. These are the stories the interviewer will remember when they think back to the interview.

Perform Research On The Company And Role

How do you make a good impression at a job interview ...

Researching the company youre applying to is an important part of preparing for an interview. Not only will it help provide context for your interview conversations, but it will also help you when preparing thoughtful questions for your interviewers.

Researching the company and role as much as possible will give you an edge over the competition. Not only that, but fully preparing for an interview will help you remain calm so that you can be at your best. Here are a few things you should know before you walk into your interview:

Research the product or service:Even if the role isn’t directly related to the company’s product or service, you’re still looking to be part of the team. It’s important to learn all you can about the product or service the company produces and promotes. You don’t necessarily need to understand each and every detail, especially if it’s a technical product, and you’re interviewing for a non-technical position, but you should have a basic understanding of the main products or services the company offers.

If possible, request a sample of the product to familiarize yourself with the customers perspective. The more you can tell them about the product from both a company and customer standpoint, the better you’ll perform in your interview.

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Look For Companies That Share Your Values

Other than pay and benefits, 43% of candidates say they are attracted to a new job because of meaningful work. ¹ By researching a companys core mission, youre not only ensuring they have clear goals, but ones that resonate with your interests and passions.

If you value social causes, diversity initiatives or innovation, choose a company that aligns with these. Indeed Company Pages offer detailed information on companies around the world. Read reviews from past and present employees covering areas like company culture, salary, job advancement and work/life balance.

Job Interview Tips: How To Make A Great Impression

Related video: Ultimate Job Interview Guide – What to Expect Plus Top 6 Tips

You have your job interview scheduledcongratulations! Now its time to prepare, and weve got you covered. Below, we provide an overview of how to succeed in an interview along with a detailed discussion surrounding each point.

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Wasting Time During An Interview Can Cost You More Money Than You Might Think Use This Guide To Improve Your Interviewing Technique And Avoid Making Hiring Mistakes

At first blush, the job interview can seem like a simple enough meeting to conduct: shake hands, make small talk, ask questions, and compare the candidates. But how do you keep from hiring someone whose best skill is coming off well in a job interview?

“There’s actually a lot of preparation that goes into a good professional interview,” says Janis Whitaker, the author of Interviewing by Example. “Most people can’t wing it off of the top of their heads.”

The cost of a bad hire is steep, and it’s not just the wasted salary that’s expensive. Severance payments, training time, potential customer problems, and recruiting a replacement are all items that you’d prefer to leave out of your budget. Many experts estimate that the cost of a bad hire exceeds the annual salary of a position.

To prevent your company from making an expensive hiring mistake, it’s important to have an intentional process for conducting interviews. Here’s how to formulate questions and develop a process that will give you the most information for selecting a new employee.

“It is important that everyone on the team is on the same page with what the objective is and what the job entails,” says Jim Sullivan, the president of an executive recruiting firm called Galaxy Management Group. ” a candidate will come in to interview with one person and then be asked completely different questions by the second person because the second person thinks the job is about something else completely.”

How Can You Become A Better Interviewer

How to Ace an Interview: 5 Tips from a Harvard Career Advisor

Interviewing is an art.

If you want to be a good interviewer, you need to learn how to select the best candidates not only for the job but also for the company. You need to ask the right questions in the right way, maintain the right demeanor and read your candidates body language.

Good interviewers are those who know how to select the best candidates AND provide a great candidate experience.

Being a good interviewer requires a lot of knowledge and practice. In this guide, I will share useful tips and tricks to help you conduct great interviews.

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What Are The Benefits Of Interviews

Holding interviews allows you to get a full sense of what the candidate is actually like. In face-to-face interviews, you can get a better impression of the candidate’s personality, behavior, and poise in the context of discussing business and the type of work the candidate needs to be able to perform.

Be Punctual And Prepared

Arrive to your interview location early. Never keep an interviewer waiting for you to show up. Find out the exact location of the interview ahead of time so there are no surprises. Call ahead to confirm the directions and get a description of the building, if necessary. Use online mapping software to get directions even if you have a GPS. Bring several copies of your resume, and any documentation you need, or notes you want to refer to.

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Your Reasons For Wanting The Job

Ask yourself why you want this job because youll likely be asked this on the day. If youre switching from academia to industry or vice versa, make sure you can explain why. Only you know the answer and you need to make it a good one. Just needing a job isnt a good enough reason for someone to hire you.

Ask yourself what you actually know about the lab/company. Are you interested in a long-term career or is this simply a stopgap for you? The panel might ask you where you see yourself in 6 months or 5 years time how will you answer this? Is this the next step on the path to becoming an independent scientist, or are you leaving academia for a new challenge in industry? Make sure you can explain your motivations.

A Bag Briefcase Or Portfolio That Neatly Contains All Your Items

How to Do Well on a Telephone Interview

Once you have the things you need to bring to the interview, you should decide how youll organize and carry them. The goal is to look put together and unburdened. Choose a handbag, briefcase, messenger bag or portfolio that can hold everything and looks professional. Backpacks are appropriate for some settings but not for others. Use your best judgment based on the company research youve done and what you know about their culture.

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How To Conduct An Effective Job Interview

The virtual stack of resumes in your inbox is winnowed and certain candidates have passed the phone screen. Next step: in-person interviews. How should you use the relatively brief time to get to know and assess a near stranger? How many people at your firm should be involved? How can you tell if a candidate will be a good fit? And finally, should you really ask questions like: Whats your greatest weakness?

What the Experts Say As the employment market improves and candidates have more options, hiring the right person for the job has become increasingly difficult. Pipelines are depleted and more companies are competing for top talent, says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and author of Its Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best. Applicants also have more information about each companys selection process than ever before. Career websites like Glassdoor have taken the mystique and mystery out of interviews, says John Sullivan, an HR expert, professor of management at San Francisco State University, and author of 1000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent. If your organizations interview process turns candidates off, they will roll their eyes and find other opportunities, he warns. Your job is to assess candidates but also to convince the best ones to stay. Heres how to make the interview process work for you and for them.

Further Reading

Dont:

Define Your Career Goal

Your career goal or objective should be clear in your mind. Frame the answer to this question so it is ready if asked. Do not leave it general or vague as it can show lack of ambition and clarity. Instead, talk about how you expect to grow in your field.

Related: How to answer the question ‘what are your short-term and long-term goals’?

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Directions On How To Get To The Interview

After all your careful preparation, dont let a late arrival undermine your chances of getting the job. You should plan to arrive 1015 minutes early, and you should study your route to the interview beforehand. If youre using public transportation, add extra time to account for delays or unexpected interruptions. If youre driving, be sure you have information about parkingif youre working with a recruiter, you can ask them to provide these details.

If after all this preparation you are still running late, call the office or recruiter you are working with and let them know. More often than not they will be understanding, but it is important to be respectful of their time.

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What Good Interviewers Do After An Interview

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Many good interviewers I know say that the hardest part of their work starts after they have conducted job interviews with all candidates. This is because in this phase interviewers need to make an actual about who you are going to hire. Interviewers also need to let all other great candidates youve met and interviewed that they didnt get the job.

Here is how good interviewers go about this process:

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Ask The Right Questions

The interviewer may ask you if you have any questions. Here, do not hesitate to bring up whatever concerns you. However, ask only relevant questions. These can be about attributes of the specific job and the department. Any random questions can be dealt with later.

Related: Questions to ask in an interview

There Are Some Things You Can Do To Make The Transition Easier:

  • Group the questions according to topic. For example, if you want to ask about writing skills, list all these questions together. Then, if a candidate answering one question touches on another question in your list, you can easily say Actually, I was planning to ask you about that. Tell me more about. This applies to similar skills as well for example, list organizational interview questions and leadership interview questions one after the other.
  • Ask prompting questions. Candidates will use their experiences, knowledge and thoughts to back up their answers. Most of the time, youll have something to ask about those thats relevant to the role. For instance, you can say something like You mentioned that you did this project with a team of designers. We actually have a great team here that youll be working closely with should you be hired. How would you feel about this?
  • React like you would in a social situation. If somebody told you at a party that theyre currently working on a cutting-edge face recognition program, how would you react? You might say something like That sounds fascinating. Tell me more or Whats the program like? Its OK to respond this way during an interview, as long as you make sure the conversation doesnt stray from the job youre hiring for.

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Make Natural Transitions Between Questions

Having a list of interview questions to ask is good practice, but it has an inherent difficulty: it might make the interview seem more robotic and inflexible.

For example, imagine youre listening to a candidates answer. When they finish talking, you may suddenly feel awkward, so you nod and say something akin to OK, interesting and then you move on to the next question. This isnt how a natural conversation would flow, and it might make the experience less pleasant for the candidate .

Sample Answer #: Software Engineer

How do I Make a Good Impression at My New Job?

I am interested in working at Amazon because I want to help this division of Alexa develop new business opportunities in the realm of voice recognition. This is a topic that excites me on a personal and professional level. In fact, I did my Masters research thesis on new uses of Big Data in voice recognition software. Thats why I was drawn to this role specifically.

More broadly, I am attracted to Amazons culture of diving deep and taking ownership. I see a lot of value in taking projects seriously and trying to find clever ways to improve results as a team. These are some of the values I implement in my work, and Id like to join a team that is already reaching for those standards.

I think that Amazon is at a very unique and interesting place in the market, and the resources Amazon has makes it possible to explore ideas with a good chance of success. Voice recognition is huge right now, but Amazon offers tools and metrics that make it unique, as compared to other big names, which draws me to the company.

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Treat Everyone With Respect

You’ll most likely meet multiple before your interview, and it’s important to treat everyone with respect to make a positive impression overall. If the hiring manager asks for feedback about you from other employees, you can be confident knowing you were friendly and professional in all of your interactions.

Resist Adding A Virtual Background

Although you might be tempted, it’s best to not use this feature during a video interviews. You’ll want to stay as professional as possible, and the focus should be on you and the interviewer not whatever’s in the background. If your background is incredibly cluttered and you have no other option, look for a simple Zoom background, like a classic bookcase or a tidy office.

If you plan to use this feature, make sure you create a Zoom account and enable the virtual background set-up on your profile. Practice with it so you know it’ll look good.

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The Evening Before The Interview

Im not going to say try to relax the evening before because you wont. If you really want the job, youll be pretty nervous. Thats natural and thats the best advice anyone can give, to just be natural and be yourself. Thats the person theyre looking for. Good luck!

Let us know if you have any horror stories about life sciences interviews going badly or what you did to nail that postdoc or biotech job. Wed love to hear

Originally published May 4, 2011. Reviewed and updated on December 16, 2020.

Has this helped you? Then please share with your network.

Tips For During The Interview

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After youve spent time preparing, you can be successful on interview day by practicing these tips:

9. Plan your interview attire the night before. If youre speaking to a recruiter before the interview, you can ask them about the dress code in the workplace and choose your outfit accordingly. If you dont have someone to ask, research the company to learn whats appropriate.

10. Bring copies of your resume, a notebook and pen. Take at least five copies of your printed resume on clean paper in case of multiple interviewers. Highlight specific accomplishments on your copy that you can easily refer to and discuss. Bring a pen and a small notebook. Prepare to take notes, but not on your smartphone or another electronic device. Write information down so that you can refer to these details in your follow-up thank-you notes. Maintain eye contact as much as possible. For more, visit What to Bring to the Interview.

11. Plan your schedule so that you can arrive 1015 minutes early. Map out your route to the interview location so you can be sure to arrive on time. Consider doing a practice run. If youre taking public transportation, identify a backup plan if there are delays or closures.

Tip: When you arrive early, use the extra minutes to observe workplace dynamics.

18. Keep your answers concise and focused. Your time with each interviewer is limited so be mindful of rambling. Practicing your answers beforehand can help keep you focused.

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