The Easiest, Yet the Most Effective Way to Pass a Job Interview
Take your pens and write. To pass a job interview successfully you will need two days, one curriculum vitae, one mirror, one dictaphone and free time (about an hour) of three of your friends.
Most candidates’ main problem is that they cannot sell themselves. In the USA people are taught to present themselves from early childhood. In some other countries people are taught to be modest and not to show off. As a result, during a job-interview a grown-up man or woman becomes paralyzed. The paralysis may be of two types: either he or she can hardly say anything or talk unstructured gibberish. That is why HR-managers don’t understand them, become confused and get angry. The result of such interview is clear.
What should you do?
I am not going to fix your childhood troubles. I will tell you an easy way to make your job interview advantageous.
Take your CV (I hope it is written correctly by this moment and the range of your official duties (what you were doing) describes your KPI (how the business changed as a result of your work)) and learn it. Like a poem. By heart.
Sit in front of a big mirror (a full-length one) and turn on the dictaphone.
Tell ALOUD the learned CV (exactly aloud – you can’t even imagine how what you say aloud differs from what you say in your mind. Not in a good way, note that).
Listen to your speech on the recording and be terrified.
Correct the roughness and retell your CV aloud again, recording your voice on the dictaphone.
Correct the result again.
Do so five times during the first day.
If you do everything correctly and analyze your work every time, it will take you about 3.5 hours.
Sleep the night.
Repeat everything five times next day, analyzing, correcting and perfecting what you say each time.
In general, on the 10-12 time you get a satisfactory result: you have a 7-10 minute (no more) coherent structured story about yourself, which doesn’t look like a learned text anymore.
Tell 3 closest people the story about yourself and ask for severe criticism. Make corrections.
Tell them your story again and again until they approve it.
You are ready.
What is the benefit of such a method?
The first 20 minutes of a job interview are the most stressful when the candidate hasn’t accustomed to the situation yet but has to present himself or herself. With the help of this method your self-presentation is automated and during your introduction you have time to look around, “breathe out” and understand who you are talking to and what is going to be next.
Your looking around doesn’t affect your introduction – the HR-manager hears a nice well-structured self-presentation and “becomes kinder” – there is a high chance you get more benevolent questions on your biography.
As a result, you pass the most complicated part of the interview almost without any stress which affects the future offer greatly.
