5 Tips Before the Interview

Just been called for an interview?

Here is five tips that might help you before the big day!

1. Learn more about the company

Before you go to any inter­view it´s impor­tant that you know your part about your future “employer”. Since you have prob­a­bly writ­ten a resume before been called up to the inter­view, you should already have some ideas about what you might work with, but that is far from enough. Don’t for­get you are com­pet­ing with well qual­i­fied can­di­dates, so make sure you exploit every chance that you pos­si­ble can.Get a deeper knowl­edge of the com­pany. Start with their web­sites and other chan­nels they might use and learn as much as pos­si­ble. Find out how the com­pany are built up and how they are orga­nized, their clients etc. Find out when the com­pany was founded, and how it has devel­oped since then. Knowl­edge such as this, is some­times what sep­a­rates a good can­di­date from the suc­cess­ful one. When you arrive for the inter­view, you should look like an employee.

2. Pre­pare your inter­view outfit

This is a point many actu­ally don’t gives much thought to, but it could destroy your whole inter­view if you mess up your look. Once while I was still a rookie in the job mar­ket, I went to a job-interview wear­ing an out­fit like I was going to the gro­cery store. That was a total dis­as­ter. What you should wear depends on the type of job. If you apply for a bank job, you should be look­ing very good. If it´s a shop store you should not wear a well-tailored dress. Any­how you should always look clean. Use your com­mon sense and make sure your choice of out­fit doesn´t put a halt to your job dream.

3. Build up your con­fi­dence instead of get­ting nervous

Being called up for an inter­view might get you ner­vous. What you might for­get is that this state of anx­i­ety will fol­low you to the inter­view day. So what should you do? Well try the oppo­site. Be pos­i­tive and start build­ing up your con­fi­dence instead. You prob­a­bly have around a week or so before an inter­view, so use this time to pre­pare your mind and do it in a pos­i­tive way. Get your­self into a interview-mode. Find some­one in the fam­ily or a friend and do some inter­view prac­tice.
Make sure you are in a good con­fi­dent con­di­tion before you enter the inter­view room.

4. Go through your resume and CV

Take one more look at your resume and CV and think about how you will present it on the inter­view. You will prob­a­bly not have enough time to talk about every­thing you have done in your life, so con­sider what part of your expe­ri­ence is rel­e­vant to the employer. Remem­ber, inter­view is all about link­ing. You should be able to show how your for­mer expe­ri­ences will help you in the new posi­tion. Go through both your resume/CV and the job-description, and cre­ate some links between them.

5. Be on time for the inter­view (and on the right place)

Believe it or not, but I have man­aged to go to a com­pletely wrong address for an inter­view (again still in my rookie). How did that hap­pen? Well hav­ing writ­ten the interview-address on a lit­tle note-paper, I decided to leave the note-paper at home. I some­how thought I would remem­ber the address any­way. I ended up on the right street-name, but on the wrong address-number. Com­pletely frus­trated, I rang up the man­agers and accused them for giv­ing me the wrong address. You could imag­ine my face when I later came home and looked at that note again.
Be on time and make sure you know the actual place of the inter­view. If it´s a dif­fi­cult address, find the place in advance. That´s much bet­ter than start ask­ing peo­ple if they know this address five min­utes from time.

Now go get the job!

Also read:  Improve Your Chances in the Job Market

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