A bit of practice can lead to a perfect interview score
Practice, as they say, makes perfect, and yet how many people do you know who actually bother to practice their interview questions and answers before squaring up to the interviewer? These same people will rehearse a wedding speech or spend hours going over a presentation until the material sticks and they can deliver it confidently, but when it comes to job interviews they just go through their question and answer sessions in their heads and hope that it all comes out right on the day.
Although practicing for a job interview isn’t the same as rehearsing a pre-prepared speech, it does provide several of the same advantages. First of all, it helps to give you greater confidence. Secondly, by telling your interview “stories” out loud, it helps to fix them in your mind so that you can repeat them more easily and convincingly and so that you can better remember the key points that you want to get across. Thirdly, the more often you tell your stories, the more natural your delivery becomes. Finally, it helps you to become more aware of things like your body language, the speed at which you talk, your tone of voice and any tendency to “um” and “err.”
There are several ways that you can go about practicing for a job interview.
1). You can prepare a list of questions and then sit in front of a mirror to answer them so that you can pay attention to things like body language. This tends not to be the best option, however, firstly because you only have your own opinion of how well you answered the questions and put yourself across, and secondly because you are likely to be so conscious of your own body language that you won’t behave naturally.
2). You can enlist the help of a trusted friend or family member to play the role of the interviewer and, if possible, video record the interview. This can actually be a highly effective way to get in some practice, but you do need to choose your role-play partner carefully as the aim of the exercise should be to take it seriously and make it as realistic as possible. Provide your partner with a list of questions and ask him or her to assess you on:
- How well you get your key skills and experience across
- Whether you provided sufficient evidence to support your qualification and suitability for the role
- How interested and enthusiastic you seemed about the job
- Whether you asked enough relevant questions of the interviewer to enable you to make an informed decision as to whether the role and the company are right for you
- Whether your body language put across the right messages
- Whether you spoke with confidence, as opposed to coming across as aggressive or arrogant
- The speed of your speech (often when we are nervous we think we are talking much faster than we actually are) and whether it was clear and intelligible
- Whether you spoke too much or not enough
Listen to your partner’s feedback and watch the recording of your interview to establish whether there is anything about your performance that needs polishing up. You might also find it helpful to carry out mock interviews with several people to get different perspectives.
3). A third option which may be worth considering, particularly if the job that you are applying for is of great importance to you, is to hire a career coach or an interview coach to help you prepare for your meeting. Although clearly this would mean making a financial investment, a good professional coach who is familiar with your field or industry should be able to help you hone your interview skills so that you give the best possible performance.
Although it has to be said that there’s nothing to beat the personal interaction you get when you practice your interviewing technique with somebody you know or a professional, if you don’t have access to either then you could make use of today’s technology to help you out. Online tools such as Perfect Interview show videos of professional interviewers asking tough questions which you have to answer on webcam in order to get instant feedback on your performance. One of the big downsides to this type of tool, however, is that clearly it can’t take into account all the specifics of the job and the company that you are applying for and to. In terms of the more general interview questions that employers typically ask, however, it can provide some benefit.
