Know Who Will Be Calling You
In many cases, youll be interviewing a recruiter, hiring manager or your direct supervisor. Do an online search to determine your interviewers role at the company. If youre interviewing with a recruiter, youll get more general questions regarding your experience. An interview with your direct supervisor, however, means youll get in-depth questions related to your industry and role.
Set A Professional Voicemail
In the event you cant answer the phone when they initially call, leave a good impression by having a professional and friendly voicemail. For example, Hi, youve reached Jane. Im sorry I missed your call. Please leave a detailed message and a call back number, and Ill get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.
Be Upfront And Use Clear Language
Dont use vague language and dodge their questions. And dont lie. Theyll usually know. Hiring managers interview a lot of people and have a great sense for this.
If you lie and get caught, there is no way theyre going to hire you.
And if you seem like youre trying to hide information, they wont trust you and wont hire you either.
Hiring managers arent just evaluating your skill theyre evaluating your character. If youre going to be joining their team, they need to see what type of person you are. And no hiring manager wants someone who is dishonest on their team.
What do they want? Someone who stands up and takes responsibility when things go wrong, who can learn from past mistakes, who is honest if theres a problem, and who isnt afraid to tell the truth.
The interview is where they test this before hiring you. So just remember that while theyre judging your experience and skills, theyre also judging these character traits.
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Act Interested But Not Desperate While Waiting For Feedback
Sometimes you wont hear from the employer for many days after your interview.
They might need to meet more candidates, or might need time to finalize their decision.
Id recommend wrapping up your interview by asking when you can expect to hear feedback. That way, you wont be too anxious waiting at home.
If that time passes, its okay to follow up with the employer to get an update from them. But be patient and never sound needy/desperate. Delays happen.
If they tell you, sorry, things are taking longer than we expected and we are still making our decision, the worst thing you can do is act frustrated or upset. This isnt going to help you get hired!
The best thing you can do is keep applying for jobs while you wait. Its never smart to wait around for one single employer because so many unexpected things can cost you the job or cause a delay in the process.
So thats another one of my favorite interview tips when you finish one interview, try to get more lined up! Dont stop interviewing for jobs until youve signed a job offer.
I: Job Interview Preparation
Each step below will prepare you for the actual interview. None of this is very time consuming but it will set you apart from everyone else applying for the job, making it easy for the company to decide who to hire
Here are the basic interview preparation steps to remember. Ive put the estimated time next to each one.
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How To Pass A Job Interview
This article was co-authored by Emily Silva Hockstra. Emily Silva Hockstra is a Certified Life Coach and Career Coach with over 10 years of coaching and management experience with various corporations. She specializes in career transitions, leadership development, and relationship management. Emily is also the author of “Moonlight Gratitude” and “Find Your Glow, Feed Your Soul: A Guide for Cultivating a Vibrant Life of Peace & Purpose.” She received her Spiritual Life Coaching certification from the Life Purpose Institute and a Reiki I Practitioner certification from Integrative Bodywork. She has a BA in History from California State University, Chico.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 24 testimonials and 82% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 578,516 times.
Interviews are sometimes your one and only chance at making a good first impression and sell yourself as a viable candidate for a job. Spending a bit of time and effort preparing for the interview can be the deciding factor in whether or not you make it to the next round, or get the job. Learn to plan for success, approach the interview properly, and avoid common mistakes in job interviews to give yourself the best chance of getting a fresh start.
Phone Interview Tips To Get You To The Next Round
This article has been approved by an Indeed Career Coach.
What is a phone interview and what role does it play in the hiring process? Many companies use phone calls with candidates who look good on paper to determine if those applicants are ready to move to longer, more in-depth interviews. This is sometimes called a phone screen.
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Prepare To Talk About Specific Accomplishments
Most people go into their interview and make general statements and talk in very general terms. To set yourself apart, you want to prepare specific examples and talk about DETAILS. Facts, numbers and real accomplishments.
Hint: this is true on your resume also. Youll get far more interviews if you cram your resume with facts, figures and statistics instead of general statements like responsible for handling customer requests.
So when the hiring manager asks what you accomplished in your last job, or what you do each day, you should be ready to impress! This is not the time to hesitate or be unsure. Prepare ahead of time for this.
If youre looking for your first job without any work experience, then think about accomplishments in your academic career classes youve taken, projects youve completed, etc. Thats your most relevant experience!
Consider Your Salary Expectations
Many employers ask about your salary expectations. Research the average salary in your industry when considering what youd like to get paid, but be reasonable. Its also wise to offer them a salary range within $5,000. For example, Im hoping to make between $60,000 and $65,000. This will let your interviewer know that you are flexible.
Read more: Interview Question: What Are Your Salary Expectations?
Also Check: What Is A Technical Screening For Interviews
Ask Your Own Questions At The End
You should ask a lot of questions after the interviewer has finished their own questions. How are you going to decide if you want the job if you dont find out any info? The best job candidates are evaluating a company, not just trying to get a job in the first company that wants them. Once a company realizes this, theyll treat you like a top-notch candidate and try to sway you to join them.
If you arent sure what to ask, heres a mega-list of the best questions to ask.
And here are 5 great questions to ask recruiters in particular .
Use these lists to come up with questions to ask each person youll be meeting. If you interview with 4 people, you should ask questions to all of them. Its okay to repeat a question, but dont tell the last person, so-and-so already answered all my questions. Ive done this in the past and wasnt offered the job. Lesson learned.
Some of the best questions are opinion-based questions because you can ask the exact same question to as many people as you want. Example: Whats your favorite part about working here? What is the biggest challenge/difficulty you face here?
Prepare Questions You Want To Ask
Interviewers want to know youre interested in the position youre applying for. Display your interest by asking insightful questions at the end of the interview. Some questions you could ask include:
- What will my daily responsibilities include?
- What is the workplace environment like?
- What is your favorite part of working for the company?
Read more: 17 Best Questions to Ask Your Interviwer
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Find A Quiet Environment
Find a quiet space where youll be able to hear the interviewer loud and clear. This will make sure you listen to everything they have to say and that you get all of the information you need.Turn off the television or music, and close the door to the space youre using for your interview. Remove any background noise and interview in a quiet space to demonstrate your professional courtesy and let your interviewer know youre taking this job interview seriously.
Use These Tips For How To Pass An Interview And Get More Job Offers
If youve followed these job interview tips, youre in great shape to pass your next interview and get the job offer.
Dont forget: Motivation, interest, and how you explain yourself and the reason youre interviewing are just as important as your actual resume/skillset. I cant stress this enough in terms of important job interview tips to remember!
Reading this article wont change your professional skills. But it can change something far more powerful- how you come across in the interview room.
You can beat out somebody with more experience and a more impressive resume because job interviewing is a separate skill that youve spent time mastering.
Do you have a question or comment about one of these strategies? Or do you have another interview tip to share? Leave a comment below.
UPDATE:
If you have interviews coming up and dont want to leave anything to chance, Ive created a new guide where you can copy my exact step-by-step method for getting job offers. You can get more details here.
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Explain Why Youre Interested In Interviewing With Them
After walking them through your resume, youll probably be asked why youre looking to make a job change, and/or why youre interested in their company in particular. This is where the research youve done pays off. You should already have two specific reasons for wanting to interview with their company.
When explaining your reason for job searching in general, I mentioned one example of how to turn a negative into a positive in Part I. Here are 2 more examples:
If your current company has no room for upward growth, say that youre looking for a job with more room for upward growth. If you dont like your coworkers, say youre hoping to find a team thats more collaborative. See the difference? Youre saying the same thing without sounding negative.
Whatever you say youre looking for, be prepared for them to ask why you cant get that in your current company. Just answer by saying that you dont think theres an opportunity to get this, and you considered this before starting to look externally. Simple and easy. That should end the line of questioning.
Learn The Interviewers Name And Use It
Im horrible at remembering names. I always have been. So if I can do this, you can too
When you hear someones name, repeat it to yourself in your head once or twice IMMEDIATELY after you shake hands. This helps you remember it.
Most of the time, if you forget someones name, its because you never really got it. Immediately after you heard it, you forgot. So this is how to remember.
Then, use it in the conversation within the first 5-10 minutes of the interview. Now youll never forget it.
Theres another benefit to this too using someones name helps you build a bond with them and build trust. Studies have shown you seem more confident, competent and impressive when you say someones name when talking to them.
Go talk to the CEO in your company, and I bet theyll use your name in the conversation. Leaders do this. Successful people do this.
This is a very under-rated tip for interview success that anyone can do. It just takes effort.
You will build a stronger bond/rapport with the interviewer if you do this, and theyll be more likely to remember you favorably and hire you.
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Be An Active Listener
Be attentive, ask insightful questions and engage with the recruiter. This will show that youre taking the interview seriously and that you genuinely care about what they have to say. Practicing with friends or family could be greatly beneficial. Make sure youre listening to every word, and follow-up with questions that show you were actively listening to what they were saying.
Related: Active Listening Skills: Definition and Examples
Make Everything About Them
Heres a little secret: The interview isnt really about you.
If you want to start getting a TON of job offers from your interviews, you need to start thinking about what the company wants. Make yourself seem like a solution to their problems.
How can you help them make money, save money, save time, etc.?
How will you make the hiring managers life easier if he or she hires you?
Figure out how to show this, start thinking about their needs and answering their questions with this mindset and you will be in the top 10% of job seekers.
Same goes for writing your resume. If you want to stand out, start thinking of your resume as being about THEM. Its a document that should be tailored to the employers needs, showing them how your qualifications and past work will help you step into *their* job and be successful in their organization.
Thats the general idea, and its true for resumes, cover letters, and interviews.
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Get Familiar With Your Resume
This is one of the more important interview preparation tips, and one of the easiest. Glance over your resume if you havent in a while. Be ready to explain past job changes in a positive light. If you left a job because your manager was horrible, say that you went to an organization that had more supportive management. Its all about how you phrase it. Well look at more examples of how to deliver this in Part II coming up.
Also think of a couple of challenges and accomplishments in your last 1-2 positions. Interviewers love specific examples of accomplishments.
Thats it, youre done with Part I. At this point youve already done more than 80% of job applicants, and you have good answers prepared for some of the most common interview questions. Lets move on
Prepare To Describe Your Work History Briefly
Most interviewers will ask you to give a quick walkthrough of your background at the start of the interview. Thats why I mentioned reviewing your resume beforehand. Its a pretty commonly overlooked but its one of my favorite job interview tips and its so easy to do!
If youve prepared a good, brief narrative of your career, you can impress them right off the bat. What got you interested in this field? What have you accomplished recently?
But it has to be concise. Nobody wants to hire somebody that rambles on or sounds scattered, and thats the biggest mistake people make with this relatively open-ended question.
Spend most of your time on the recent portion of your career. Go through the beginning rather quickly. 2-3 minutes total should be your target.
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Always Act Like You Want The Job
You have one goal in any interview: Convince them that youre the best candidate for the job and get invited to the next round.
So you should be selling yourself in the interview, not deciding if the job is desirable.
Then you can go digest the info and make a decision once you get home. If you start using this approach youll have a big advantage throughout the entire interview because youll have one single thing to focus on. Other applicants will be juggling everything at once.
Look Over The Job Description
Understanding what the employer is looking for in an employee and what your responsibilities will be can help you tailor your answers to various interview questions. If theyre looking for an employee with certain design software skills and who has experience creating graphics for B2B companies, youll want to mention this during your interview.
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The Different Types Of Interview I Encountered
If you prepare and perform well enough in the preliminary phone screens, youll be given the opportunity to come on site and conduct full days worth of interviews. These interviews will typically last four to six hours depending on the company for which youre interviewing with.
During my trip to Silicon Valley, I managed to line up seven on-site interviews in total. This gave me a unique perspective of the current landscape for interviewing.
Typically, an on-site will cover three main subjects: algorithm, architecture design, and behavioral, which is what I had studied and prepared for. However, there are some companies which seem to be bucking this trend and expanding their interviews to cover more practical skills.
Ill briefly go over each of the topics I encountered.
Algorithm Interviews
The most common type of interview you will encounter. The interviewer will ask you to solve a problem on a whiteboard which will assess your knowledge of data structures, sorting algorithms, recursion, time/space complexity analysis as well as pattern and edge-case recognition. In this interview, you will most typically come up with a brute-force solution, and then try to improve upon that solution and discuss the tradeoffs, if there are any, with the different solutions you propose.
Architecture Design Interviews
Behavioral Interviews
Culture Fit
Pair Programming
Finding and Patching Bugs
Testing Domain Knowledge
Understanding Operating Systems
Think Of An Explanation For Why Youre Job Searching
Companies will often choose someone less talented if they also seem less risky or if their motivations make more sense. Ive seen it first-hand.
Dont lose out on a job to somebody with less skill than you. Prepare some legitimate reasons why you want to make a move . Here are some examples:
- Youve accomplished ____ in your current role and youre ready for a new challenge
- Your companys direction has shifted and you feel its time to join a new organization
- Youre interested in a different type of product/service
- Youre looking for a larger or smaller organization
You can get more specific based on your situation. These are general ideas. If you do a good job with this you can beat out applicants that have more experience than yourself, because theyre not using these strategies most likely.
And if youre unemployed right now, here are 20 good explanations for why you chose to leave your last job.
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