Successful Interviewing Tips

Congratulations, you have made it to the interview phase of the job hunt!  Your potential employer has found your resume and application impressive enough to schedule a time to meet with you.  This is your chance to close the deal!

The most important thing to realize when applying and interviewing for jobs is that you are selling yourself, your skills, your abilities, and your experience, both academic and professional.

Let’s break down what having an interview means.  It means you have passed stage one.  Your potential employer has reviewed your application and resume and found that you meet or exceed the job qualifications and SEEM to be a good fit on PAPER.  Good work!  You have effectively sold yourself on paper.  Tune into Success Advice Podcast # 6 - Resume Cover Letters to learn why they are so important to use and how to use them.

Now you are on stage two.  Here you are being tested on your ability to represent everything you put on paper and sell yourself in person through effective communication skills.  It is one thing to put things on your resume, and an entirely different one to be able to talk about yourself confidently and express why you are the best fit for a job.

You will be put on the spot to display why you are the best candidate through sharing your strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, qualities, and experiences so be prepared to talk yourself up and sell yourself.  Interviewers can ask a variety of questions and you can never be too prepared.  It is best to have stories of times when you exhibited qualities that the position/company demands. 

I did some research to find interviewing questions and Monster.com proves to be a great resource.  Click here for a list of 100 possible interviewing questions at Monster.com.

It is good to practice what you might respond to any given question but try to avoid sounding rehearsed!

Remember, your job is to make a good first impression whether in person or over the phone.  If in the interview is face-to-face, make sure you dress to impress, and as a rule of thumb always dress at least one step higher than the position you are applying for.  For Professional Image advice, check out the first Performance & Success Advice Blog Post.  If the interview is over the phone, make sure that you introduce yourself, get the person’s name who is interviewing you, speak slowly and clearly, and be sure not to interrupt the interviewer!

 

*TIP 1* - Prior to the interview, do some research on the company, the position you are applying for, and if you know who the interviewer is, on them as well.  They will almost always ask you what you know about the company and the position you are applying for.  Do this to show the interviewer you are prepared and interested in both the position and the company.

*TIP 2* - Also prior to the interview, prepare a list of questions you have about the job.  Remember, not only is the potential employer interviewing you, but you are also interviewing them to see if the company, culture, and job are a fit for you!  Do this to show the interviewer that you are resourceful and that you know what you want.

*TIP 3* - Make sure that you have either the business card of the interviewer or their contact information.  This will come in handy after you leave the interview to Follow Up.  Do this to show the interviewer that you really want the job and are willing to take time to show them that you care.  The more creative the follow up, the better you will look.  At the least, I recommend writing a personalized, hand-written thank you note.  Tune into the Success Advice Podcast # 1 – Follow Up to learn why it is so important and how to follow up!

*BIG TIP* - You were asked to come for the interview because you sold yourself on paper.  You interviewed and were able to effectively sell yourself in person.  Now what?  ASK FOR THE CLOSE!  Do this to show the interviewer you want it and that you know how to get what you want. 

Here are a few ways to do this:

• A Safe Close, ask “What are the next steps from here?”
• A Safe Close, ask “When should I expect a decision to be made?”
• A Safe Close, ask “When should I follow-up with you about the decision?”
• A Blunt Close, ask “Does it seem like I am a fit for this position and the company?”
• A Bold Close, (the assumptive close) ask “When do I start?”

 

Here is the BIG TAKE AWAY to interviewing success:

1.           Pre-interview prep (practicing questions you may be asked, preparing questions to ask, and conducting research)

2.           Dress to impress

3.           Communicate effectively and sell yourself! (speak slowly and clearly)

4.           Ask questions to engage the interviewer and show you are prepared

5.           ASK FOR THE CLOSE

6.           Follow Up

Performance & Success Advice Blog Post # 18 - Disciplined Time Management

To make better and more productive use of my time, I recently implemented a new system of Disciplined Time Management.  

This time management system empowers you to: 

• Use planning to map out your daily and weekly courses of action
• Prioritize the most important tasks to get them done
• Use active procrastination to delegate and put off lower value tasks
  
• Track how productive you actually were vs. how productive you wanted to be
• Have the self-discipline to hold yourself accountable to your desired results by pre-planning your days and evaluating your results

I didn't invent this system, I implemented it thanks to Michael Janke's book, Take Control, and tweaked his system to work in my life.  This is not the only system out there, but use it as a guideline if you want to see huge results and leaps in productivity.

Here is how it works:

1. You must first commit to having a Disciplined Time Management system.
2. You then buy a notebook as your planner *Michael recommends that you personalize it* I wrote out my best contacts, my mission statement, my goals, and how I will achieve them to personalize mine.
3. Every Sunday you plan your week.  At the top of the weekly page, you write "Week of..." for example mine for this week says "Week of August 23rd-29th."  You now make one big box and divide it into four areas.  *Michael suggests - Work, Home, Personal, Life-goals* (personalize these 4 as needed).  Mine are Work, Magazine, Personal, & Life-goals.  Under each of these, you write out the tasks that you need to/would like to accomplish throughout the week.  As the week goes on, you fill them into the day you wish to complete them and cross them off as you complete them.
4. Every night, you plan for the next day. Write the date of the next day at the top of the page and on each line, you draw a box and write out the task that you need to/would like to accomplish.  After you have written everything out, you want to create a course of action for each task. For example, yesterday my first task was "Interview Dave Mirra for the Collegiate Performance Magazine."  My course of action was "wake up at 7:00 am, brush your teeth, put on your suit, eat a healthy breakfast, do some pre-call planning, and call Dave at 8:00 am."
5. Prioritize your daily activities.  I use the letter system Michael suggests in Take Control and Brian Tracy recommends in Eat That Frog: A=Top priority, B=Important, but not an A, C=Would be nice, but not crucial, D=Delegate or delay, E=Eliminate.  After prioritizing, complete your activities and cross off the boxes as they are done, starting with the A's and working your way down (make sure to cross them off the weekly planner as well).  After you complete each day, fold the corner of the page (don't fold the weekly planner) to mark your place.
6. Evaluate your productivity each evening and at the end of each week.  This will help you to learn to focus on the highest priority activities and help to better prioritize in the future to bridge the gap between how productive you want to be and how productive you are.
7. Have the self-discipline to keep up the habit every night!  If you can do this, you will find that this system will yield higher levels or productivity and huge results.  Remember though, it is only as good as you make it!

This is one of the tools that I have armed myself with.  This system of Disciplined Time Management works for me because I made the commitment to becoming more productive so I can achieve more DAILY to accomplish my life-goals.

In order for this system to work for you, you need to follow up with it and do a little every day.  There is a reason I have blogged about all of these things...success is a combination of many things and when used in synergy will yield MASSIVE RESULTS.

I use this Disciplined Time Management System to increase my productivity and improve my focus on the most important daily activities so I can achieve my goals in life.  How do you ensure you achieve your goals?

Questions?  Comments?  Blog with me!

Performance & Success Advice Blog Post # 16 - Follow-up!

This blog post comes with good reason, as you will soon see.

Before I get into the reason, let’s dive into the book definition of follow-up.

1. A continuation or repetition of something that has already been started or done
2. A piece of work that builds on or exploits the success of earlier work

Combining the two definitions, we get what I would describe to be the business definition of follow-up.  Continuing something that has already been started to exploit its success. 

Now let’s analyze this definition in the context of a business opportunity being presented to you.  By initially expressing interest, the potential for you to capitalize on this opportunity begins.  Notice how I underlined the word potential to emphasize that it has the capacity to develop into something, but you need to exploit it!  In order for you to actually take advantage of the opportunity, you need to follow-up on it by:

• Continuing to express interest
• Showing how bad you want it AND
• Being willing to take the steps necessary to make it happen 

I bet you are probably burning to know what my inspiration is for this blog post, so I won’t keep you waiting.  To fully understand what I am about to tell you I have to preface this by telling you the following two things.  First, my goal in life is to help people become successful.  Second, I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I am really well connected in the business community. 

When you put the two together, it makes sense that I always offer up my connections to anyone that stands to benefit from them.  Why am I telling you this?  There is a keyword in that statement – I always offer my connections.  Every time I find out someone would benefit from a connection of mine, I hand him or her a business card of mine and say, “send me an e-mail and I will call that person and connect the two of you.”  The shocking part is, as much interest as people have when I tell them I can help them, those who actually follow-up and e-mail me are slim to none. 

The moral of this story is quite simple.  It is one thing to be interested in an opportunity.  It is a whole different story to follow-up on it.  The thing that separates successful people from other people is the act of the follow-up! 

My business partner, Dr. Jeff Magee, is an International Speaker, the publisher of over 20 business books, 4 of which are best selling novels, a consultant to 36 out of the Fortune100 firms, a business coach, and the publisher of the Performance Magazine – the bottom line is, he is very successful.  The other night, I told him about all the people that I offered to connect with professionals in their field of interest who never followed up with me.  We both got a good laugh at the fact that out of all the people that express interest in contacting us for opportunities, those who actually follow-up are few and far between.  He said something like out of the thousands of people he speaks to who express interest in contacting him, maybe one or two actually follow-up.  What does this tell you? 

I cannot stress this enough…FOLLOW-UP!!  

Follow-up when…

• You meet someone new
• Someone tells you about an opportunity
• After you go on an interview
• Someone does something nice for you
• You want to show someone you care
• Just to get in the habit of Following-up! 

*TIP*  I’ll let you in on a little secret that not enough people do.  Follow-up with a hand written thank you card!  It’s simple, it’s easy, and it makes a statement about who you are.  It doesn’t take much time at all to write out a note, throw a stamp on it, and drop it in the mail and the impression it leaves is priceless.

Questions?  Comments?  Blog with me!