How prepared are you for the interview?

As a job seeker, when was the last time you asked yourself how prepared were you for that upcoming interview? I am sure most of the job seekers hardly give any thought to this and are more bothered about the "interview process".

One of the key factors impacting our success during an interview is the level of "preparedness". As a "job seeker", you can't afford to ignore this crucial aspect as this may turn out to be the decisive factor during the interview. Whatever be the type of interview - screening or selection, telephonic or face-to-face, a casual approach would kill any chances you may have during the interview. On the contrary, a professional approach may help carry you through some of the difficult scenarios during the interview. Understanding the correlation between "preparedness" and "professional" will make things much smoother during the interview.

Any jobseeker at any point may map onto any of the below described four levels of "preparedness"

1. UNPREPARED - "the uninterested one"- At this level, the job seeker is casual in approach and few reasons for this could be ignorance, lack of motivation, or not interested in the current employment opportunity. Whatever the reason is, the job seeker just wants to go through the "ritual" of the interview and be over with it without bothering too much about the outcome. The best way to address this is to engage in self-analysis and gain clarity on career aspirations and plans.
2. UNDERPREPARED - "the selectively casual one"- At this level, the job seeker, based on his/ her understanding or through selective feedback, focuses only on preparing for the selective aspects of the interview. I prefer to call this a "selectively casual" approach where based on certain assumptions or beliefs, the job seeker adopts a "narrow-focused" approach for the interview. The narrow mapping done at this level leads to the job seeker missing on catering to the big picture and only talking about the comfortable aspects or strong areas of the personality. This level could be addressed by taking a holistic approach to the interview and covering all the bases.
3. OVERPREPARED - "the cautious one" - This is where the job seeker happens to be overly cautious about interviews and goes to the extent of preparing well beyond the context. The downside of being at this level is that the job seeker goes overboard during the interview and tends to extrapolate on every response. The overexcited approach does more damage than a benefit during the interview, with the person(job seeker) going into details/ micro-details even without being asked to do so. The best way to address this is to stay in the "present moment" and avoid overthinking.
4. APTLY-PREPARED - "the aligned one" - A job seeker operating at this level is well aligned with the expectations of the role applied for and the interview process. The person (job seeker) is coherent in approach and (at this level) has managed to create alignment between aspirations and expectations. The balanced responses and attentive listening ensure that the person is in control of the interview. The longer the job seeker stays at this level, the better the expected outcome.

As a job seeker, the objective should be to identify which level are you at and then work towards making the shift to the "APTLY-PREPARED" level because that's where things start to get favorable for the job seeker.