Improve Your Interviews by 1,000,000%
July 9th, 2010So I came up with this arbitrary percentage… I don’t know if you’ll improve by 100% or a gazillion percent… but I bet you will improve SIGNIFICANTLY (that’s a term we used in the MBA program that meant “enough to care about”).
How? Should you:
- Study common questions and prepare answers ahead of time?
- Make sure you dress right and floss your teeth?
- Have a strong first impression (great handshake, flashy smile, etc.)?
- Tell stories?
- Relate to the interviewers?
Perhaps all of those, and more, will help you improve your job search interviews. Here’s my one piece of advice to help you improve your interviews a ton:
Record yourself in a mock interview.
It is wierd. You might feel silly and uncomfortable. But when you review the recording, with some peers, you will uncover a lot of things and find yourself saying “wow, I didn’t know I did that with my hands,” or “why do I keep looking around the room, I look too nervous,” or “why can’t I just give my response smoothly,” or “I didn’t realize I said UM 40 times in that one response,” etc.
I don’t care how good you think you are…. record yourself, and have some others record themselves in a mock interview, and then sit down and critique the recordings.
You will find big and small things you can improve on.
I double-dog-dare you to do this.
