1) Determine the questions you are likely to be asked

You need to put yourself in the mind of the interviewer, acting on behalf of your prospective future employer before attending the job interview. This will give you the best chance of being prepared to answer all the questions. It will also reduce the chance of being ‘floored’ by a question that you hadn’t even considered before.

Key questions that you shouldn’t have any problem answering include, “Why do you want to work here”, “Where do you see yourself in five years time”, “What do you think are the key skills for this job” and “What key skills would you bring to this job”. You need to practice pre-prepared answers to these questions until they sound natural, believable and confident.

Next, you need to think about questions that you are likely to be asked that relate to the existing or future politics within the organization. For instance, if the original entrepreneur that started the business runs the company, then the interviewer may try and find out if you are comfortable working in a fairly reactive environment.

2) Prepare your own questions

You need to prepare you own questions about the role and company before the interview. This shows that you are keen on the job role and are proactive in nature. In addition, it shows the company that they perhaps may have to ‘sell’ the role to you should it be offered.

The questions that you need to ask should be about the future business strategy, their opinion of their own competitors and current operational and technological procedures. Other good questions to ask include promotional opportunities or personal development opportunities, however these two areas need to be touched sensitively as there may not be any such opportunities available at present, and the company may simply want to ensure that the individual that they recruit will want to stay working in the same role for a reasonable period of time.

3) Be prepared to ‘close’ the interview effectively

If you ‘close’ your job interview effectively, you’ll be ensuring that you know when a decision about a job offer will be made, when a second interview will be conducted, or the likelihood of you being offered the position.

If a prospective future line manager is interviewing you, then the chances are that you will be able to get good feedback on what your chances are of being offered the job. If you ask questions like “Is there anything that you feel I haven’t gone into enough details about” or “How do you think I’d personally fit into the organisation”, it demonstrates your keenness for the role.

If, on the other hand an HR department is conducting the interview, it may be more worthwhile to close the interview by saying something like “I’d like to confirm that I’m very much interested in the position. Do you conduct second interviews or make a decision after today?”

The bottom line is that you have to leave the interviewer with a feeling that you’re keen on the position and that you’d be happy to stay in the job role in question for a decent period of time.

1) Company Background

The Internet has to be the key for finding about the company. First of all have a look at the company website. What kind of tone is the website setting? What kind of consumer is the company likely to be targeting?

Have a good read through any mission statements, financial results or ‘about us’ sections on the company website. As well as getting a better feel of the company paradigm, you will be able to discuss future company strategy from a more informed perspective at the interview.

Remember to have a search for other websites that offer a neutral perspective on the company as well. Companies House provides information on previous years’ accounts. Also, the Chairman, CEO or Managing Director may have appeared in the news in the past, so remember to search for their personal names on websites like Google News.

2) Industry Competitors

You need to know who your future competition will be if you get the job. In addition, if you can inform the company at interview stage of things that they don’t already know about the competition, it gives you a significant advantage to getting the job.

First of all, search for your prospective future company name on a search engine like Google. (Don’t type the URL straight into the address box at the top of the page.) Secondly, assuming you find the company’s website listed on the search engine, there should be an option for viewing ‘similar sites’. Click on this option and you should be able to view a list of websites belonging to companies in the same industry.

Once you find the competitors’ websites, it is a good idea to do a very quick ‘SWOT analysis’ of their product and service offering. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. All you have to do is write down five quick bullet points on each SWOT heading about each company. It should take no longer that an hour to focus on the three most likely competitors, but it demonstrates a superb amount of personal preparation and keenness for the position at the interview.

3) Industry Trends

From your Competitor SWOT Analysis, you will be able to determine whether or not the competitors have any unique selling proposition compared to the company that you have the job interview with. You can then establish whether or not the consumer market for such unique propositions are expanding or contracting.

Ways of determining whether or not it is worthwhile suggesting during your job interview for your prospective employer to consider amending their current product offering include researching consumer trends websites such as Mintel or business information websites like the Financial Times.

In Job Hunting Tips – Interview Preparation – Part 2, we will discuss the questions you are likely to be asked at a job interview, the questions you should prepare to ask at your job interview and techniques to ‘close’ the interview effectively.

Most people have experienced the recruitment agency black hole. This is when you register with an agency, fill out every form that they ask you to complete and attend a lengthy interview with a recruitment consultant. Then you hear nothing.

It is so frustrating when this happens because you have been led to believe that you will be flooded with interview offers as soon as you register. It makes you less likely to believe in recruitment agencies and more likely to ‘go it yourself’ in the future.

There are two different ways to use recruitment agencies to find your ideal job. They are as follows:

1) Register with as many recruitment agencies as possible and wait for them to get back to you when a job opportunity appears

2) Register with one or two carefully selected recruitment agencies that specialise in your particular job sector and get to know at least one of the recruitment consultants within that agency as well as possible

Unfortunately most people go for number one. This means that they are only told about jobs that are particularly hard to fill.

So how do you make sure that you are told about they key jobs as soon as they become available? Simple. You need to be KNOWN by recruitment consultants in your industry. Whenever they receive a new job requirement from one of their clients, you need to be the first person on the recruitment consultant’s mind.

In order to be one of the first people to be informed about an excellent new job opportunity you need to initially carefully select one industry specialist bespoke recruitment agency. You then need to meet one of their senior industry specialist consultants face-to-face to explain your specific requirements.

However, in addition to meeting the specialist recruitment consultant face-to-face, you also have to stay in touch. Consultants browse through thousands of CV’s (Resumes) every month, so if you don’t phone them every two weeks then there’s a good chance that they’ll forget about you. Another star candidate will have risen to the surface by then and you will be a historical statistic.

The mantra for dealing with recruitment agencies is

Stay in touch

Stay in touch

Don’t rely on the automated candidate finding systems that each agency has. Unless you form a personal relationship with one of the consultants, constantly asking them about new opportunities then the chances are than you won’t even find out about top jobs that are available.

Good luck with finding your ideal job in the near future!