B4: Interviewing Skills
The job interview is one of the most challenging and hope-inspiring events of our lives. It consists of a meeting with a potential employer during which you discuss your qualifications for an available job. Here, you would be asked to discuss how your education, work experience, interests, and character align with the job. Often interview questions go beyond to reveal how you relate to others, solve problems, use specialized skills, and would fit into a specific department or the organization as a whole.
Employment interviews come in all shapes and sizes and may not be limited to only one exchange or one interaction. A potential employee may very well be screened by a computer (as the résumé is scanned) and interviewed online or via the telephone before the applicant ever meets a representative or panel of representatives. The screening process may include formal tests that include personality tests, background investigations, and consultations with previous employers. Depending on the type of job you are seeking, you can anticipate answering questions, often more than once, to a series of people as you progress through a formal interview process. Just as you have the advantage of preparing for a speech, you can apply the same research and public speaking skills to the employment interview. Let’s examine this process in more detail, starting with the following video: Top Interview Tips: Common Questions, Body Language & More
The Interview Process
The invitation to interview means you have been identified as a candidate who meets the minimum job requirements and demonstrates potential as a future employee. Your cover letter, résumé, and/or related application materials may demonstrate the alignment between your qualifications and the job duties, but now comes the moment where you will need to articulate those points out loud in a bid to convince the interviewer that you are indeed the right person for the job. To achieve this goal, you must arrive prepared to discuss how you can be an asset to the organization. To be able to do this, you must know yourself as well as the organization and the job that has been posted, so careful preparation is required to optimize your performance. There is no one right or wrong way to prepare and present at your interview; however, some elements are common across interview opportunities.
Preparation
The right frame of mind is an essential element for success in communication, oral or written. For many, if not most, the employment interview is surrounded with mystery and a degree of fear and trepidation. Just as giving a speech may produce a certain measure of anxiety, you can expect that a job interview will make you nervous. Anticipate this normal response, and use your nervous energy to your benefit. To place your energies where they will be put to best use, the first step is preparation.
Briefly, the employment interview is a conversational exchange in which the participants try to learn