Job Searches

Lesson 6: Final Rehearsal

Practice, Practice, Practice

At this point, Job Interviews for Dummies should be your bible. Read it. Follow it. More importantly, as the highly successful commercial says, DO IT. The practice and visual techniques are worth their weight in gold – but are useless if you do NOT actually do them.

All this preparation MUST be done well in advance of getting that interview. Don’t try to cram everything in one day before that terrific interview – at least reading over pertinent sections will help, and visualization always helps. If you can, get someone to videotape you practicing your answers. Then critically look at yourself. Yes, it’s hard, even just to see yourself. You will be shocked; most people are the first time. Do you really look like that, talk like that, motion like that? Yes, so if you want to change something, now you know what to change. Do you keep looking at the camera/person (good – maintain eye contact but don’t let it become a staring contest). Do you have a habit of looking to a certain area before answering? Careful – some people interpret where you look as if you are lying (NLP or Neuro-Linguistics). Try to look just offside to the person when thinking of an answer – this is a neutral area. What are your hands doing all this time? Try to keep them unclenched and from going white.

A mirror works just as well by the way, so no excuses on practicing with a real visual counterpoint. And practice means out loud. Visualization is great, but there’s something about the spoken word that seems to penetrate the brain and make it real.

I use visualization for my “fantasy” questions – what’s the worst they can ask me, what’s the best, what are my answers to all questions I can think of. Then, I practice (out loud) in front of the bathroom mirror (the only room in the house with a lock) my answers to what I feel are the real questions – the usual ones, and more difficult ones. “Why do you want to work here?” – if you have not done your research, you are sunk on this one. Saying “I need the money or the job” will not pass you on this question. Saying ”I’m not sure yet about working here” only helps if the company did not advertise their name and you only had a day or two before the interview to do your research. You CAN say though, that it does seem like a cohesive company and you feel you would fit into their culture from what you have gathered so far at your interview.

The best, though, is to say you feel you’d enjoy working at the company and feel you’d be able to contribute to its growth. No one has offered you the job yet, and you can always turn it down later IF a job offer comes through. By keeping a positive attitude you’ll remain in the final running.

Don’t forget to ask when you can expect a call back, or when they will be making a decision. This is critical for your final Follow up. Let them know as well that you will be contacting them in the future. If you get a total cold shoulder, realize that you are not in the running at the moment, or the job is already filled and they are going through company policy as a formality.

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