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Mistakes you should Avoid At the Interview Table

bikram — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 17:22:20 +0000

Interview table is a place where you just can’t afford to go wrong. Don’t let your wrong moves and silly answers mess up the much awaited success. We often unknowingly commit few common mistakes and lose the opportunity forever. After reading this article, be careful next time, while an interview knocks your door. Here are some commonly made mistakes at the interview desk.

Grabbing seat

Often interviewee is extremely nervous while seeing the interviewer for the first time and forgets basic manners by grabbing a seat without recruiter’s permission. You may not notice it, but your interviewer will and find it extremely ill-mannered. Wait for the interviewer to sit and then take your seat with his or her permission. Sit only after you greet the interviewer.

Wandering eyes

Wandering eyes right from interviewer’s tie to shoes, from ceiling to the window is extremely disturbing for the interviewer. It not only reflects candidate’s lack of attention, but also lack of confidence. Look straight into interviewer’s eyes and don’t let your eyes wander here and there. It’s extremely annoying. Look straight into interviewer’s eyes and don’t let your eyes wander here and there. The interviewer may try to find out what are you observing here and there. Make maximum eye contact, but don’t gaze at the interviewer either.

Too much personal talks

No interviewer appreciates personal talk. So avoid it. Even when asked to describe yourself, don’t include too much of personal details like where you were born, where you went for last holiday, what you do in your free time, your relationship status and the like. Even you can avoid too much of personal queries, simply by saying you don’t feel your personal life has anything to do with your professional field. Honesty will impress the right interviewer and he or she won’t intervene into your personal life either.

Fidgeting

Often in nervousness we start fidgeting objects and unknowingly it draws attention of the recruiter. Avoid this habit.

Dumb queries

Just for the sake of asking questions don’t shoot your questions to the interviewer. Ask only smart, interesting and valid questions. Don’t ask stupid questions like ‘Will I get this job?’ or ‘What’s your budget?’ It shows immaturity.

How Being Street-Smart Helps You Crack a Job Interview

bikram — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:35:00 +0000

A job interviewer comes to an interview table with a hope to find the best candidate for the position, and a job interviewee equipped with all the knowledge required to do the work comes to the table to get the job for himself. But both of them fail to secure the result each of them wanted: the interviewer does not get the best candidate, and the interviewee, who was the best among all, does not get the job.

Why?

Because an interviewer has only so much time and attention for one candidate, and even that time and attention shrinks down to bare minimum, for the candidates are too many. As a result, what an interviewer gets is a nearly suitable candidate for the job, and an average interviewee, who is street-smart, gets the job.

A street smart person knows the art of survival. He knows that not the best but the swiftest wins the everyday battle. He also knows what to say in which situation because he can intuitively tell what others want to hear. The tips I am going to share are the ones a street smart job searches usage to convey the interviewer how qualified he or she is.

The goal of this article is to do the same, to help you become and street smart and succeed in an interview, even if you are not the sharpest.

Experience

Your interviewer is interested in knowing about your experience in doing the job you have applied for, so instead to beating around the bush come directly to the experience part during your interview. And tell them some details of the work using jargons.

Expertise

You need to show you expertise in your domain while talking about the experience. Talk of the details tells your interviewer that you know nuisances of the job, which only the experts of the field can hope to know. And use of jargon suggests the depth of your understanding of your field. Use acronyms for “3 or more words” jargons.

Exceeding Expectation

Cracking an interview is an art of understanding the requirement and over delivering on it. There is no way that an interviewer can know about you, in any detail, in the limited time he has for you. You should, therefore, serve them what they want the most. Blow them away by showing them what they need, and more.

Follow these three advices, and you will end up getting every job you will ever apply for.

Follow the 3C rule and Nail Down a Dream Job

bikram — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:17:00 +0000

Getting a job, even in a down market, is not difficult provided you know the trick of the trade. You know what to display in front of an interviewer. And you can only do that if you know what is that an interview wants from you.

This is where this blog post figures in. The 3Cs (creative, commitment, and confidence) that we are going to discuss in this article will help you convey the message an interviewer wants to hear from an interviewee.

3 Cs of job interview

Be creative

You should be creative in your approach. Do not just give a rotten answer to each of the question asked. It sounds boring, it looks mechanical, and no one wants a non-creative, mechanical person because they already have more powerful machines to do the job.

Do not deliver a premeditated answer. Take a chance, offer something innovative. This will impress your interviewer.

Commitment

The second C of job interview is commitment. Convey your interviewer your desire to stay with his company as long as things does not fall apart. Tell him that you are not the “job hopper” kind and believe in staying with a company and delivering result. Your interviewer needs to know whether you will go out of your way to solve a customer’s problem or not. Tell them you will do it. This will put the interviewer at ease, and he will lower his guard, which will provide you entry into his organization.

Confidence

You do not have anything, if you do not have confidence to move ahead, despite all the odds. No product is perfect. Your interviewer, who is also your prospective employer, knows this, and you should also know this. And if you have the guts to sell the product, despite its several short coming then are in the team.

Show your employer your level of confidence and belief in what you do. Do not shy away from this.

This brings us to the end of 3Cs of a job interview. In the next article will see what the 3 Es of a job interview are, and how each one of them will help you crack a job interview.

3 More Questions to Ask During Your Job Interview Even When You Are Desperate

bikram — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:47:32 +0000

An interview is not just an opportunity for the interviewer to know about the interviewee, but it is also an opportunity for an interviewee to know if the company he or she is interviewed for is any good or not. And the only way to find this is by asking questions. You will not know anything, if you do not ask questions. Continuing our discussion from where we left yesterday, in this post I will talk about 3 more questions you need to ask during your interview.

Question 1: How performance is measured

You need to ask your interviewer about the criteria on which you will be judged when taken for the job. It will give you a target to match in order to get promoted or rewarded. A good company will have a set practice for employee evaluation, and HR people will not shy away from telling you that.

Question 2: Why previous employee left the job

This is a tricky question, but you need to know why the place became vacant. There could be a genuine reason for the previous employee to leave, and office politics or unfair boos could also be a reason, which you can only find by asking about it. The answer to this question will give you good idea about the existence and complicacy if office politics.

Question 3: Remuneration

You need to know about your salary, perks, performance bonus, etc. After all, it is the money that you are working for. You also need to ask about the salary date, deductions, etc. You will not want surprises here, so do not hesitate in talking about your remuneration. If you find the package offered below your expectation then tell the interviewer what you were expecting. Interview is the best place to talk about your salary and other benefits.

Answers to these questions will help you understand whether your personal goals will be met in the company or not. This will help you weigh the job opportunity properly.

I had only this to say, what else do you think should one ask during an interview?

Confidence and Job Interview

bikram — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:53:01 +0000

Who needs more confidence to get the work done: an interviewee or a salesperson? The correct answer is both, but as we are discussing about the job interview, we will concern ourselves with the confidence of an interviewee. But before doing that let’s face this question: How many of us have felt the sweaty palm and restless mind when entering the interview room?

I bet each one of us has faced this situation once or more in our career, but some of us go through this many times in their career, and more often than most of us. I think I know why they go through such ordeal every time they are in there for the interview, and thus I am writing this post. I believe this guide will help them do away with interview syndrome, once and for all.

How to remain confident in an interview

Do not lie: The major reason why people feel less confident during interview than they actually are because of the lie they tell to the interviewer and the lie they wrote in the résumé. There is no point in lying because even if you get the job by lying, you will not be able to do justice to the work assigned to it, therefore, you will provide poor work, which will translate into bad review followed by firing. Now, what’s better: no job, or a résumé with a small black spot?
Reach the venue 30 minutes in advance: Not everyone lies in the interview, but most of us are susceptible to another flaw, which is equally harmful. Always reach your the interview venue 30 minutes in advance and familiarize yourself with the surrounding, so that you can feel at home.
Research the company: You are expected to know a bit about the company you are into. The knowledge shows your interest in the work, and the absence of it suggests that the company you are in at that point of time is just one of the many companies where you just dropped in with a hope to get hired. No one likes to have discarded employee.
Know your stuff: If you do not know your stuff then you should not go to the interview table. Your interviewer is your prospective employer, so he will ask you all sorts of questions related to the work you will handle in his company. If you fumble in answering to his satisfaction, consider the interview over, and do not wait for any call because there will be no call.
Be yourself: I will not ask you to put a broad grin or ear-to-ear smile on your face, and I will also not ask you to sit too straight and crush the interviewer’s hand with the sheer power of your palm just to say how confident you are. By doing all this, you will sound nothing but just an idiot who does not know manners. Hence, I will suggest you to forget what you have learned from the success coaches and be yourself. Do not try to be anyone, you will never succeed. Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”