Welcome to Short and Sweet #11.
Today we are going to talk about, how to ace the interview. This is part 2 of our 3 part series on how to ace interviews. So today is what to do while you are in an interview, and how to leave the best impression for the interviewer. Let’s get started.
#1 is you should be ready and you should be relaxed when you walk into an interview and think to yourself, “This is just a meeting.” You’re there to learn things, to evaluate and to present your best self. But I think a lot of candidates forget that they are there also to find out about the company, as well as evaluate the company. They’re always worried about giving the best impression. If you can just relax and remember that this is a business meeting and you’re there to do that, that will help.
Point #2: You need to remember that you’re hired for 2 basic reasons. You’re hired to either make the company money, or safe the company money. So you need to think through with your examples, stories that you’re telling the company, how and you career and skills, making the company money, or saving the company money. Because the person on the other end of the table that’s evaluating you is thinking to themselves, how you can solve that problem for them. If you are an accountant, they’re listening for how can you give accuracy, and better processes and better timing. Same if you’re coming from a supply chain. What processes can you put in place to save the company money and make things better. If you’re doing sales, you need to be able to sit there and talk about how much your targets are and how much targets you hit, and how much revenue you’ve brought in in what time frame. That’s what the interviewers are really looking for. And then on top of that, they will try to match personalities. But really keep in your forefront of your mind, how can you help the company make money, or save money?
The next point to remember, is this is a business meeting. And because it’s a business meeting, you should have pen and paper and put it on the table right there in front of you. Some points to remember, #1 don’t play with your pen. It’s too easy to be swirling the pen, holding the pen, biting on the pen, don’t do those things. Keep it on the table. Point #2, take a couple of notes. You don’t want to take too many notes, this is not note taking time. But if there are few relevant facts or points that you want to remember during the interview, write them down. Remember if you are in a meeting, and someone wrote something down that you talked about, you would feel important. The interviewer will feel important too, if you are putting down couple of notes, and they know that you’re listening, and that’s important for them.
And the final point that I will make is to make sure at the end of the meeting, tell the interviewer what you thought. Did you enjoy the meeting? Did you enjoy meeting the interviewer and what specifically did you like? if you liked the meeting, tell them “I really enjoyed meeting with you today, what are the next steps?” It’s OK to ask. If you didn’t like the meeting, that’s fine, you walk away professional, you thank the interviewer for their time and you just walk away and you can reject the company later. But if you really did enjoy the interview, and you think this is the job for you, it’s important to relate that to the person sitting across from you, saying “I enjoyed the time with you today, how can we proceed to the next step?”
So there’s some hints for you to take with you during the interview to help you really bring yourself to the next level of acing an interview.