JobGoRound

Thought I’d take a moment or two to review another important pre-interview consideration that could make or break the results of your job interview. I’m speaking of Job Interview Preparation.

What’s that? Most of us think that when it comes to a job interview, we gather up our resume and references, don our attractive clothing, put on our game face and assume we can present our own skills and know-how to the interviewer or interviewers. After all, they are our skills and know-how,
if we can’t present them better than anyone else — who can? Right? Suprisingly enough, you’d be WRONG if you believed that.

Having been involved in literally 1000’s of interviews over the course of my career, I can promise you that most Applicants cannot logically present their skills and accomplishments, let alone do it in a manner that moves the interview along to a positive conclusion. Oh sure, they can offer up a nice list of things to talk about, things they can do in their respective work environments, and make it sound good too. But for the most part, too often, they neglect the important news… like what you are going to do specifically for the employer with which you are interviewing now. Employers then have to cull through your materials, including what you have to say about yourself in the job interview, and your resume and your application, and the results from any required job assessments, and they have to patch together a pattern of know-how, job experience and goals that will hopefully fit the needs for which they are interviewing.

So in preparing for a job interview, you should strive to organize how you will present your credentials and achievments and skills so it proceeds logically and fulfills the requirements of the job — not just so you can rattle on about what you know and what you’ve done and what you hope to do.

My best advice is to make a list of your skills, as they relate to the specific job you are interviewing for. List each of your areas of endeavor, your duties, you tasks. For instance, if you are a retail manager interviewing for a job in that industry, your list would include regular tasks like “customer service,” and “Vendor management,” and “cash control,” and “staff training,” and “store safety,” and a dozen other daily, weekly or monthly duties. A corporate buyer may have on their list: “price book management,” “bid processing,” “vendor price negotiations,” or “delivery logistics management,” and more. Each vocation has its own unique set of duties
to list.

Why list those duties? Because you are going to write an example for each of those duties to illustrate by example your mastery over the task in question. The examples you choose will be real-life examples whereby
you solve problems within a range of tasks. For instance, the retail manager enters on their duties list the task of “cash control.” Then describes how they
solved a problem of cash shortage on the evening shift by reassigning who worked which cash register, and by taking register readings multiple times during a shift and reviewing results with each employee, thereby identifing
the cause of the shortage and thusly saving the store from suffering a significant loss.

That illustrates to the prospective Employer, in a job interview, that you not only perform that duty, but you have real-life effective strategies to solve problems relating to that specific task. And you must address each of your key duties or tasks, because you don’t know which tasks will be the most important to be discussed when you are at the interview. So you must be prepped on each. That is a much more effective way to present your skills in an interview.

Good Luck WIth Your Job Search

Author: Mark Baber