Interviewing Preparation

As a job search coach one of the areas where I am asked to provide guidance and suggestions is interviewing. Many times my clients want to know how to prepare for the interview and other times they want to practice interviewing.
While I can’t predict all of the questions that will be asked of an applicant, we do prepare based upon the job posting and by reviewing the client’s resume, strengths, weaknesses and accomplishments. Here is what we do:

1. Review the job posting for key words and job specific phrasing. Take a piece of paper and draw two columns. In the first column, write down the job wording and job responsibilities (write them one by one). In the second column, write out your accomplishments as they relate to these words and phrases. Look at your resume for guidance (after all, there was something in your resume that interested the hiring manager or HR representative). Refer to your prior work experience and also any outside or volunteer work.

2. Look up the company website and read the sections entitled Home, About Us and Our Employees. Review any new products and services as well as the company core values. These sections will provide additional information about your understanding of the company and you can again align your past performance with their principles.

3. Google the company and do as stated above. Also look them up on LinkedIn.

4. Practice interviewing using behavioral questions. Go back to the two-column chart you created earlier and using the wording in the left-hand side, create behavioral questions. For example, if you are applying for an Environmental Engineering position and one of the job responsibilities is “soil and groundwater sampling”, two behavioral questions might be, “Take me though the steps you use in groundwater sampling. What tests do you perform, what do you do with the results?” or “What are some of the issues that you have run into while doing groundwater testing? How did you handle these and what were the results?” Practice answering these questions out loud or with a partner.

5. Have a list of questions to ask the interviewer. You don’t need to save the questions for the end of the interview; ask them or any question whenever you need clarification or more detail. Some sample questions to ask the hiring company include, “What are the pressing needs of this position?”, “What are the goals of the department, the organization?”,”I read that you just introduced Product X, how is this position related to the roll out of that product?”

There are other ways to prepare such as answering the Strengths, Weaknesses and Tell Me About Yourself questions and we can talk about these at another time. The important thing about interviewing is to prepare. While the interviewer may not ask you everything on your list, it is better to be prepared. After all, preparation leads to a better understanding of yourself and that naturally leads to confidence and assuredness.

Preparing for the Interview

A few weeks ago I wrote about creating a statement on your resume that speaks about who you are.  This Impact Statement is all about selling you as THE person that a potential employer would want to walk in and take on the position.  We also talked about the "Tell Me About Yourself" question and how uncomfortable that question is to both the interviewer and interviewee. We suggested asking the interviewer to provide you with direction to your response.
The other day I had to sell myself and answer the "Tell me about yourself" statement at the same time.  I was approached to do some instructional design work for a company.  It wasn't about job search skills training; something I can talk about all day.  No, it was about the cycle of designing, developing and evaluating training programs for a pharmaceutical company - something that I haven't done in several years. So what did I do and how does it relate to a job search?

1.    Did my homework: I looked up the company again and again to figure out what they do and what they offer their customers. I reveiwed the industry wording.

2.    Researched new trends and industry jargon: I went on LinkedIn and joined an instructional design group.  Here I researched new trends in the field. When I didn't see anything, I asked the group if they could help. I got a couple of responses and read up on these.  I also looked up instructional design in the Occupational Outlook Handbook and aligned that wording with my past activities and knowledge of industry buzz words and jargon. I finally reviewed the trends in the field by Googling several professional group discussion boards (you don’t always have to join the professional group to read and respond to these boards).

3.    Designed my elevator speech: I had to change it because the focus changed. This wasn't a meeting about teaching job search skills.  I had to revamp it to include my "Why I'm the best" statement in regard to instructional design. (Gulp!) I went to measurements and statistics. How many years have I been in the business? How many programs and types of programs have I designed, facilitated? How did I measure effectiveness? How have I done needs analyses in the past? What were my successes? Why? By the way, while doing this I also noted my weaknesses.  There are certain areas where I know I lack the skill set and should the customer want these skills, I have to let them know that no, I don’t have the experience for that.

4.    Wrote it out and practiced. I wrote my elevator speech with a slant towards “Tell Me About Yourself.” (In a prior email, the company said they wanted to know about my experience in instructional design).

My statement included my company name, industry, and why I am the best. It generally said, “I am the owner and operator of Blackbird Learning Associates where for almost two years I have designed and developed training initiatives for the New Jersey state libraries and various corporations and community colleges. I have over 25 years experience analyzing organizational needs and designing, developing, implementing and evaluating learning and development programs. I have successfully trained over 5,000 employees in the pharmaceutical, banking and insurance industries.  I follow the ADDIE method of instructional design and I thought that today I would take you through my experience as it relates to the ADDIE method.”

All this work paid off and I received a contract with this company. Every job has different needs and if you prepare and focus on the particular needs of each organization, the selling part beomes a bit easier.  Good luck!