How to perform better in job interviews: good posture builds your confidence – and helps you breathe!

With good posture you will not only look and feel more assured – without looking overbearing – good posture will generally build your strength and flexibility, and help avoid back problems.

Imagine there is a string pulling up the top of your head. Put your shoulders back without puffing out your chest. Align a neutral spine. This helps you breathe more easily, so you can remain calm and focused in your interview, and good posture enhances your speaking voice. Pilates teaches you how to realign your body. 

How to perform better in job interviews: Other resources

If you are a few days before your interview, concentrate on these above preparation tips so you don’t bewilder yourself. 

If you have some more time, check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!

How to perform better in job interviews: practice answering questions

I send my short listed candidates some questions they might be asked in their interview. This to start them thinking about how to describe their key achievements and qualities in a succinct way. Expect questions about how your skills and experience meet the selection criteria. Review the selection criteria several times, jot down some points next to each about what you’ve done that shows you meet each of them. Are there any parts of the job description, or areas in your CV that may be of concern to the panel? Think of what you can say that you will do to assuage any concerns. Remember to remain realistic and honest!

Don’t assume the panel are as familiar with your CV as you are! In the interview draw out the highlights from your CV that support your claims for this role.

Practice behavioural questions

Behavioural questions are extremely popular in interview and most of us aren’t good at answering them. 

The key to both types of questions is to have already thought of examples of what you have done, how you have handled conflict that provide evidence of how you would act in the role you are interviewing for. For my candidates I offer to conduct a mock interview and this further gets people thinking about how to better phrase their accomplishments in interview. It quells the nerves, too, as it makes behaving in an interview a more recent experience. It’s a bit like jumping into cold water before a race, so that the initial shock is already dealt with. Or, another analogy: remember a time when you got back onto a bike, or horse, when you had not ridden for a while? It can take some readjustment to find your comfort zone.

Even if you aren’t dealing with a supportive recruiter like me, practice into a mirror, with a friend or record your answers and play them back to see how you might improve. 

Remember you can pause and take notes

You may get asked a confusing or convoluted question. Or in your excitement, you get off track and you answer the wrong question. Jot down the key words of any slightly complicated question, and glance at them during your answer to make sure you cover all the points. Make sure when you finish to ask the questioner if you have answered their question, it’s possible they are nervous too and asked garbled question that didn’t serve their intentions.

How to perform better in job interviews: Other resources

If you are a few days before your interview, concentrate on these preparation tips so you don’t bewilder yourself. 

If you have some more time, check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!

How to perform better in job interviews: define your competitive advantage

Remember your interview isn’t really about you; it’s about the organisation that is considering employing you. And you are selling yourself to them. So tune into the selection panel’s WII FM: work out from their perspective, if they hire you, “What’s In It For Me!” 

Research the panel members and, of course, the organisation. What particular issues, challenges, opportunities are they facing that you, with your unique set of skills and experience, can take care of for them? This is your USP – your unique selling proposition, and represents the package of benefits you bring to their needs. Other candidates who lean on their individual product features – the general stuff in the resume – will fail to make this important connection to their ‘buyers.’ 

Even if you are not familiar with sales and marketing, you probably know that people do not make wholly rational decisions.  Hiring decisions are based on the hiring managers' feeling of comfort, that this appointment is not going to create trouble for them. So be mindful of subtly reassuring the panel about how you will be able to make your new employer look good, how you will be solve their problems, how you are not going to be a risk to them – backed up with evidence based on your aptitude, skills and experience. 

Check out my interview tips bookmark stack on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/LWrehD 

And my company website: http://www.desailly.com.au 

And please drop me a line to let me know what works well for you!