Interviews - Pleasure or Pain?

The idea of attending an interview can have a variety of effects on people not least panic, nervousness or the complete opposite: total over confidence. Over the course of a week I see a mixture of these but regardless of the reaction nothing beats not doing any preparation.

Preparing for an interview is a vital process which most people believe finishes with some research about the company background and questions about salary and career path. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The level expected is much higher.

To fully understand how to achieve thorough interview preparation, first you have to acknowledge a fundamental principle in interviews, which is: attending an interview has to be viewed as a two way street i.e. the employer and potential employee both have to be happy with the answers received in order to progress.

With this in mind, the interview preparation should include questions about every aspect of the role which you think important. However, be careful about the areas as focusing purely on a particular area will raise alarm bells.

An example of this: candidate was attending a interview for which they had applied for and after initial screening interviews seemed to be perfectly matched. Upon attending the interview, the candidate then proceeded to ask a variety of questions about the role (so far, so good!) but then focussed on the benefits and salary for the remainder of the interview prompting the client to question their motivations to move. This then led to the candidate not progressing.

So what went wrong? Well, the candidate focussed so heavily on one area it brought into question the motivations to move. So what did we learn? Questions have to be balanced and considered but also representative of the stage of interview in order for you to get the most out of the process.

In my experience, clients are also guilty of not preparing enough but thats a different story.

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