If you're memorizing answers to interview questions right now,
you are doing it all wrong.
So many talented professionals have no idea how to prepare for a job interview.
And that is why I'm going to share with you my simple four step process
to prepare for a job interview today. Stay tuned.
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I release a new video each Tuesday. Let me ask you this question.
Has your job interview preparation ever looked like this?
You scoured the internet and YouTube to find the best answers to give.
to the most common interview questions.
Maybe you looked on the company website just a little bit,
but didn't really know what you were looking for.
Or perhaps you just got so overwhelmed with everything
and had no idea what you were supposed to do.
So you did nothing. You showed up and you wung that interview.
Whether that was effective or not. *meh*
I've been working with a lot of people on their job search lately,
and one of the things that I find most people just have no idea how to do
effectively is how to prepare for an interview. Luckily,
job interview preparation is actually really simple when you know exactly what
to do.
So I'm going to take you through the three steps that you need to take in order
to prepare for the interview and make sure to stay all the way to the end.
Because if you miss the fourth step,
everything else is going to be done in vain. And in fact,
if I would argue that you only did one thing, it's going to be step four. Now,
if you're ready to find out what these four steps are,
click that like button and let's jump right into it.
The best way that I can actually describe effective job interview preparation.
is that there are four levels or four layers that we need to actually move
through. And the first level is who is the company? Trust me,
you don't want to be the person who shows up to the interview and asks,
what does your company do?
This is something that you can very easily find out these days as simple check
on their website, check out their products, check out their services,
but really there's three questions that you want to walk into the interview
already knowing about the company and what they do.
If you're going to be able to ask effective questions and really be able to wow
the interviewer. The first is what does the company's core product.
Whether it's a physical product, a digital product,
or if it's a services company, know what that company does.
What is their bread and butter.
Walking into an interview without knowing this one thing
is like trying to do a puzzle with 75% of the pieces missing.
It's not going to go well. Now, luckily,
this is really easy to find for most companies.
You can suddenly go to their website and go to their products and their services
tab to figure out what they do. Now,
the second layer is that you actually want to get an understanding
about the competitive landscape. Who are they actually competing with?
If you just simply type into Google the company name and competitors,
it's all going to come up. You're going to get a really good idea of
where they actually sit in the market.
You also want to have an understanding of who their customer is.
Knowing who their customer is is really going to help you
when you go to talk about how you help people,
just like the people that they help and finally you want to check out where
they've been featured recently. Have they had any recent press,
any major announcements? Has the CEO done a talk recently at a big conference
This is all stuff you can easily find on the Google machine or on Google News.
Working these things into the questions you bring into the interview,
or into casual conversation.
is going to demonstrate that you actually took the time to research.
before you arrived for the interview into that job description.
But before move into the next level of interview preparation you want.
to make sure that you have in general understanding of who this company is, What
they do, who they help And what has happened lately.
Once you have those four things squared away,
it is time for you to move into the second level of job interview preparation,
and that is getting into what they are really looking for. In this level,
you want to get an understanding of the actual person that they're looking for.
You're going to begin this in the most obvious of places.
The job description it is going to be on the website.
Now in this you want to basically do a deep read of the job description,
take a look at the role and the responsibilities,
and also take a look at the qualifications that they're looking for.
What does it sound like?
They really need this person to do who are they actually looking for?
Pay special attention to any behavioral characteristics as well as values in
this phase.
Another resource that can also be very helpful here is
checking on glassdoor and seeing if there is any reviews
from potential future team members as you're actually researching the role.
Of course if you have any questions that are coming up,
you want to make sure that you're filling in the blank, so jot those down.
But really what you're trying to do in phase one and phase two
is figure out what the company is, what the role is,
and who the team is so that you can get an understanding
of where you would actually fit into the picture.
Which is going to bring you into level three,
which is where do I fit in.
I've never been a huge fan of memorizing interview questions
and regurgitating a whole bunch of answers that don't actually say anything
about who you are and what you're bringing to the table.
In this level, what you're actually doing is looking at what the company
is looking for and what you actually want to get.
An understanding here is how your skills and how your experience directly
correlate to those things.
You want to connect the dots for yourself so that you can connect the
dots for the person in the interview because ultimately your biggest strength,
your greatest weakness, and who you are.
These are all questions that really should be customized based on the
opportunity. So let's say for example,
one of the key things that they're looking
for someone that is really good at communicating internally and externally.
What you want to do is you want to actually review your own resume,
your own work experience, and identify those key situations
where you were an effective communicator between internal
and external parties so that you're ready to talk about that experience
because that is going to be something that is very relevant for them.
Or maybe if it's a role like escalations management,
they're looking for someone who is really good at conflict resolution. So again,
you're going to go through your experience and your history.
I knew you were going to have a story about a time that you quickly
resolve conflict right at the top of mind.
This does not require any memorization.
I do not suggest that you prepare any monologue.
And the whole point of preparing for an interview in this way is
to not only make you look good by being someone
who actually prepared for the interview,
but it is to make sure that you are thoroughly researched and prepared
to bring forward your best stories so that it's easy for them to see that
they really need to proceed and hire you and that you're not leaving the
interview saying, I should have said that thing because let's face it,
we've all had those moments and this shouldn't take you hours
and hours or days and days because when you have a conversational opening
like the one that I taught you in my how to answer, tell me about yourself.
Interview question. I'll link it down below if you haven't caught it already.
What you're looking for is just a foundation of understanding of who they are,
but really what you're trying to prepare is knowledge and
evidence that you are the best person that they absolutely must add onto their
team. Now,
hopefully when you've actually completed these three levels of interview
preparation, the fourth level is something that is going to naturally occur.
And I bet you want to know what it is.
The fourth level of interview preparation is really confidence.
This is the most important thing for you to walk into any interview with.
If you walk in with just this one thing, you are going to get far.
Now I know that this one is a lot easier said than done because
so many people experience interview nerves and they get really nervous
before they walk into an interview.
Now, a lot of my clients say that once they've gotten through those first three
levels
that they actually feel really confident at the end of that and
having those talking points and understanding how your awesomeness,
experience and skills really maps to exactly who they're looking
for is not only going to sell you on the fact that you are the right person
for the job, but it's also going to help them.
The reason for that is that confidence is contagious.
That's exactly why you've probably worked with the person
who has an out-sized amount of confidence and it rubs off on everyone else,
whether they're worthy of it or not. If nothing else, remember this.
They have invited you for an interview because they think that you might be one.
And one of the things that you don't always see when you're a job seeker,
is how excited a recruiter or a hiring manager might be to talk to you,
especially if your resume is full of awebombs and your online presence is on
point.
If you would be interested in some tips though to be more confident
or at least look more confident in interviews,
let me know down in the comments because if there is enough interest,
I'll absolutely make that video for you and if you personally have any
suggestions to feel more confident going into an interview,
feel free to drop them down below. I know that even with the company research,
a lot of people do have a hard time coming up with questions to ask in an
interview.
If your list is a little bit blank or you just don't know where to get started,
check out this video right now. As always, if this video was helpful,
give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. I'll see you in the next one.
Bye for now. [BLOOPERS]