David Sweet
If you interview for a new job, you have one major responsibility: prepare. No matter if you search for a job in sales, marketing, accounting, supply chain, IT, research, teaching, translating, or any other profession, you need to focus on the interview. Interviews lead to jobs. A new job can give you a salary raise, improve the quality of life for you and your family, and add new skills and abilities to your life.
What I find, however, is that many people prepare for an interview by glancing at the job description and quickly scanning the website. These steps, though important, just start the process to prepare. In a competitive market, you need more groundwork than that to beat other contenders.
Below are a few steps that will help you succeed in an interview. If you implement a few of these strategies, you will find a dramatic improvement in your interviews. These strategies fall under three categories: 1) understanding the point of view of the interviewer, 2) asking why the company should hire you, and most important 3) practice.
1. Changing Point of View
First, you need to understand the point of view of your interviewer. Most of the time, a person walks into an interview thinking mainly about themselves—their skills, experiences, and abilities. Rarely do they frame these into the context of the person, team, or company. For that reason, first take yourself out of the equation and reflect and research from the interviewer’s point of view.
• Know the company.
• Know how the company makes money.
• Know the job and what is expected about this particular role.
• And if possible, know all you can about the interviewer.
If using a recruiter or an acquaintance from the company, ask them to help you prepare. However, if you are applying on-line or directly, you’ll need to do the research yourself.
Where do you research?
As you might normally do, browse the company website to learn general information about the company. The “About” page has some useful information, such as number of employees, capital, and the name of the president. Research the president.
If a public company, download their annual report. Don’t worry about reading the whole annual report, rather use the Search Function of your browser or PDF and search for the words, “Japan” and “Tokyo” and “Asia”. Read those portions. Also, read the message from the CEO at the introduction of the annual report. Doing those two things will give you a good macro-view of the company, the concerns, challenges, and opportunities of the company and your interviewer will be found there.
In this day and age, it goes without saying to use social networking such as LinkedIn and Facebook to learn as much about the people you will meet. Know the interviewer’s education, work history, and hobbies if possible. The reason you check these items is to know the personality and background of the interviewer and the company.
2. Why Should the Company Hire You?
Next step is to start asking yourself why the company should hire you. Sit down with a pen and paper and answer these questions:
• Why is the company meeting you?
• Why do they need you?
• What can you do especially well for this position?
• Why should the company hire you?
Think like the interviewer. Then change perspectives and think like a manager or president. Think like a co-worker. If you were hiring you, what questions would you ask? Write down all the answers you can.
Here are a few more items to help prepare for the interview:
• Prepare a self-introduction. You need to succinctly know how to walk someone through your career in a matter of 2-3 minutes.
• How are you different from other candidates for this position?
• What problems have you solved?
• Write down things you’ve done for a company that have saved or earned the company money.
• What are your strengths? List them out—with examples.
• List weaknesses. What have you learned about yourself and how do you work around them?
• Lastly, write down another 5 questions you would ask if you were the interviewer.
This may seem like a lot of information to prepare, but after you’ve done it once, you can reuse most of this information for other interviews by tweaking answers for specific situations.
3. Practice!
Now gather all the answers you’ve created and start practicing. You want to rehearse, not memorize answers as a memorized answer comes across as stilted. Trust your memory for your achievements in life, your experiences. Read through the answers out loud.
Let’s accelerate your practice:
With a video camera and a friend, role-play an interview. Have your friend ask you the questions you wrote. Then after the practice, watch the video with your friend.
• Listen to your answers.
• Watch your body language, manners, and gestures.
• Did your actions mirror your message or withdraw from your message?
• Do you look confident or nervous?
• Do you look intense, happy, relaxed when you’re speaking?
Make sure to ask and listen to the feedback from your friend too!
If you don’t use a video camera, then have a friend or relative sit down and practice with you. Again, ask them for honest feedback and then practice again—perhaps with someone else.
If you feel really uncomfortable practicing with others or on camera, the least effective, though better than nothing approach is to practice in front of a mirror asking yourself questions and responding. Just the act of responding will give you the chance to practice answering basic questions
The above steps offer a guideline to help you prepare. Please realize that every interview situation is unique and different; it’s impossible to prepare for every situation. What the above steps do is provide confidence to help you relax, the freedom to know the answers for the most common situations, freeing you to concentrate on more difficult questions. When you’re serious about landing a new job, you need to take the time to prepare and practice. And like anything in life, the more you prepare, the better you’ll do.
David Sweet, consultant, author, and speaker with 20+ years of human resources experience, has spent over a decade assisting companies in Japan to improve how they recruit. Currently, he is the managing director of Top Grade Japan. For more information on improving how you recruit, including consulting, training, and up-coming seminars, contact him on info@TopGradeJapan.com.
What I find, however, is that many people prepare for an interview by glancing at the job description and quickly scanning the website. These steps, though important, just start the process to prepare. In a competitive market, you need more groundwork than that to beat other contenders.
Below are a few steps that will help you succeed in an interview. If you implement a few of these strategies, you will find a dramatic improvement in your interviews. These strategies fall under three categories: 1) understanding the point of view of the interviewer, 2) asking why the company should hire you, and most important 3) practice.
1. Changing Point of View
First, you need to understand the point of view of your interviewer. Most of the time, a person walks into an interview thinking mainly about themselves—their skills, experiences, and abilities. Rarely do they frame these into the context of the person, team, or company. For that reason, first take yourself out of the equation and reflect and research from the interviewer’s point of view.
• Know the company.
• Know how the company makes money.
• Know the job and what is expected about this particular role.
• And if possible, know all you can about the interviewer.
If using a recruiter or an acquaintance from the company, ask them to help you prepare. However, if you are applying on-line or directly, you’ll need to do the research yourself.
Where do you research?
As you might normally do, browse the company website to learn general information about the company. The “About” page has some useful information, such as number of employees, capital, and the name of the president. Research the president.
If a public company, download their annual report. Don’t worry about reading the whole annual report, rather use the Search Function of your browser or PDF and search for the words, “Japan” and “Tokyo” and “Asia”. Read those portions. Also, read the message from the CEO at the introduction of the annual report. Doing those two things will give you a good macro-view of the company, the concerns, challenges, and opportunities of the company and your interviewer will be found there.
In this day and age, it goes without saying to use social networking such as LinkedIn and Facebook to learn as much about the people you will meet. Know the interviewer’s education, work history, and hobbies if possible. The reason you check these items is to know the personality and background of the interviewer and the company.
2. Why Should the Company Hire You?
Next step is to start asking yourself why the company should hire you. Sit down with a pen and paper and answer these questions:
• Why is the company meeting you?
• Why do they need you?
• What can you do especially well for this position?
• Why should the company hire you?
Think like the interviewer. Then change perspectives and think like a manager or president. Think like a co-worker. If you were hiring you, what questions would you ask? Write down all the answers you can.
Here are a few more items to help prepare for the interview:
• Prepare a self-introduction. You need to succinctly know how to walk someone through your career in a matter of 2-3 minutes.
• How are you different from other candidates for this position?
• What problems have you solved?
• Write down things you’ve done for a company that have saved or earned the company money.
• What are your strengths? List them out—with examples.
• List weaknesses. What have you learned about yourself and how do you work around them?
• Lastly, write down another 5 questions you would ask if you were the interviewer.
This may seem like a lot of information to prepare, but after you’ve done it once, you can reuse most of this information for other interviews by tweaking answers for specific situations.
3. Practice!
Now gather all the answers you’ve created and start practicing. You want to rehearse, not memorize answers as a memorized answer comes across as stilted. Trust your memory for your achievements in life, your experiences. Read through the answers out loud.
Let’s accelerate your practice:
With a video camera and a friend, role-play an interview. Have your friend ask you the questions you wrote. Then after the practice, watch the video with your friend.
• Listen to your answers.
• Watch your body language, manners, and gestures.
• Did your actions mirror your message or withdraw from your message?
• Do you look confident or nervous?
• Do you look intense, happy, relaxed when you’re speaking?
Make sure to ask and listen to the feedback from your friend too!
If you don’t use a video camera, then have a friend or relative sit down and practice with you. Again, ask them for honest feedback and then practice again—perhaps with someone else.
If you feel really uncomfortable practicing with others or on camera, the least effective, though better than nothing approach is to practice in front of a mirror asking yourself questions and responding. Just the act of responding will give you the chance to practice answering basic questions
The above steps offer a guideline to help you prepare. Please realize that every interview situation is unique and different; it’s impossible to prepare for every situation. What the above steps do is provide confidence to help you relax, the freedom to know the answers for the most common situations, freeing you to concentrate on more difficult questions. When you’re serious about landing a new job, you need to take the time to prepare and practice. And like anything in life, the more you prepare, the better you’ll do.
David Sweet, consultant, author, and speaker with 20+ years of human resources experience, has spent over a decade assisting companies in Japan to improve how they recruit. Currently, he is the managing director of Top Grade Japan. For more information on improving how you recruit, including consulting, training, and up-coming seminars, contact him on info@TopGradeJapan.com.
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