Interview Tips

Preparing for an interview can often be a challenging and humongous task to showcase right skills, attitude, personality, and interest. Couple this up with the fact that there are a ton of materials and opinions available on how to do so, and it seems like a never ending quest. Hence, via the following text, I wish to highlight a few important points or tips for preparing for an interview, which came in handy for me and surely delivered the results.

Know and Sell your USP - It is imperative that you highlight your key strengths in an interview and substantiate that with actual examples/anecdotes. This is what will differentiate you from the crowd. It can be anything ranging from your skill-set, technical expertise to your positions of responsibility to your previous work experience, etc. Avoid using commonly used attributes like team-player, hard-worker, patience, dedication, time management, etc.

Know your resume well - The importance of knowing every letter of your resume/CV cannot be stressed more. The other way of looking at it is only put those items on your resume which you are confident about. Almost everyone emphasizes on this, but still a large portion of job seekers seem to neglect it.

Prepare your answers - Its always a good habit to rehearse and practice your answers to commonly asked questions like, "Tell me about yourself", "Walk me through your resume", "Highlight your strengths and weaknesses", "Tell me about a situation where you had to work out of your comfort zone", "Describe your projects", etc.

Pay attention to your Body Language and dress properly. No one wants to work with someone who does not dresses properly, is untidy or seems lagging in his/her body language. Especially look out for your voice, handshake, making eye-contact, sitting up straight, and being calm and composed.

Find out why do you want to work in this role with this firm. Identify how will you fit in with the role, function, and the firm at large. Try to gauge whether this opportunity will help fulfill your aspirations, and propel you to the next level or not. This insight will come in handy during the interviews.

Research about the company - It is a sure-shot way to impress the recruiters and get them interested if you research about the company, its leadership, mission, vision and values prior to attending an interview. Also try to get connected with your contacts inside that firm, or your college's alumni associated with that firm, and seek insights from them about the work, culture and the philosophy of the firm.

Along with the above points, it is also important to learn to deal with Rejections, and taking them in your stride. It is more of a life tip, rather than just restricted to interviews. After every rejection, analyze why you couldn't make it, what were your shortcomings, and try to rectify those. It is also vital, that you do not get emotionally attached with any of the results, and look at them objectively.

In the end, just remember that it is as much about your journey, as it is about your destination.

All the Best :)

P.S - the above mentioned points are written keeping fresh graduates in mind, but are equally applicable to experienced professionals.