Whether you’re fresh out of college, looking for your first job, or an industry veteran chasing a more senior position, the interview can be a daunting prospect. Having to present your best, most employer-friendly self to a team of interviewers, knowing that one wrong word, action or even facial expression could sink your chances of landing your dream role is enough to make even the most confident person a little uncomfortable.
For many people, having to sell themselves to a potential employer is about the hardest part of working life. Very few of us feel confident giving a sales pitch or have had any significant sales related training. It’s even worse when the thing we’re trying to sell is ourselves. While we might, after some coercion, be persuaded to say that Jim’s Baked Beans are the beaniest beans ever, we’re far more reluctant to say anything positive about ourselves. In real life we try to talk down our achievements, claiming that anything good we’ve achieved was down to having great people helping us, or a lucky break, being in the right place at the right time or simply not that big a deal ‘anyone could have done it’. This will not work if we want to be successful in the interview.
So let’s start with the bad news. No two interviews are the same and no two interviewers are the same. You can never be certain exactly what questions might be asked, or exactly what the interviewers want to see in your answer. One interviewer might find a 5 year term at a previous employer admirable and showing loyalty, another may consider it a sign of a dull employee who couldn’t function outside their familiar workspace. Both types of interviewers could be at your interview at the same time. Additionally, we’re not robots and we can’t always be in full control of our feelings. Interviews are high-pressure situations and it’s simply not possible to completely eliminate the nervousness that they can invoke. The good news is with the right preparation you can be ready for the majority of the questions that are likely to be asked, and ensure that you have the best chance of landing the job that you want.
The perfect interview starts at least a day before you will meet the interviewer. While it is possible to go into an interview with no preparation and even win the job, the more prepared we are, the more relaxed we are, the better we’ll perform and the more likely we are to get the best outcome. Note that the best outcome isn’t getting the job. The best outcome is being offered the job and being able to make an informed decision on whether to accept it or not. So let’s look at the steps we need to succeed.
Step 1 – Research the company
The best thing about this step is that it’ll help us look good in the interview and give us important information we can use when deciding whether to accept the role. Start with the company’s website. From there you should be able to get a feeling for how large the company is, what they do, how many locations they operate in and the impression they like to give their potential customers – whether they want to be seen as super-efficient, warm and friendly, narrowly focussed on being the best at a single activity or a one-stop shop for a wide range of goods or services. Many companies have a careers section on the website and if you haven’t already seen it, this can be a great way to discover what the company believes it has to offer as well as what they’re looking for in an employee.
Another good place to look is LinkedIn where you can often get a summary of the company without all the marketing junk. It’s also useful to check if you already know anyone who works there who can put in a good word for you, or let you know what working there is really like. If you know the names of your interviewers you’ll be seeing, you can even use it to check them out, find out what they look like (so you know who they are when they approach you in reception) and what their backgrounds are – are they new to the company or veterans? Where else have they worked and what did they do there? Have you any shared schools, companies or industry sectors you can use to make a connection? LinkedIn can really round off your understanding of the company and the people who work there.
Another site you might be tempted to visit is Glass Door. Here you can see reviews of your potential employer by people who actually work there. Great right? Well… to a certain extent. Just remember that people are far more likely to leave online reviews about things they’re unhappy with than things they like, so the reviews are bound to be more negative than positive. I’m not saying to avoid the website, just not to be put off if everyone seems to hate working there. It’s more likely that a small number of people dislike it (and you can never please everyone) and no-one else can be bothered to leave a review. Having said that, it can be useful to read between the lines. If multiple reviews mention a specific problem in the company then it can be worth investigating further, perhaps even trying to bring it up in the interview, although I’d recommend being more subtle than “The reviews on GlassDoor.com say your CEO is a lazy gas-bag. Is that true?’
Interviewers love to see someone who appears interested in their company, so the research you’ve done can really give you a chance to shine. You may be asked outright ‘what do you know about us?’ or the interviewer might just start describing the company to you and you can interject with additional comments or questions to demonstrate your knowledge. If all else fails you can wait until they ask you if you have any other questions and then ask about something you’ve read about online that hasn’t been mentioned in the interview, although again I’d avoid directly mentioning that thing you read about the CEO on GlassDoor if you can.
It’s also important for you to have a good understanding of the company you’re interviewing with. Is it the right size for you? If you only want to work in a start-up environment, make sure the company is a start-up, if you only want to work for a mature multi-national, make sure it isn’t. You should also try to discover if the culture and potential career paths are a good fit for what you’re looking for and check if there are any warning signs or things you want to get confirmed at the interview. For example, if the company has multiple offices, perhaps it’s worth knowing what the role of your specific office is. Is it the main development hub for the entire company, a specialist office focusing on one of their many products, or a localisation branch where the bulk of the work will be in modifying the software to work in your own language? Alternatively, if 24/7 support is a major part of its offering, you might want to find out whether you would take part in any out-of-hours shifts or on-call rotas.
Step 2 – Research the location
While being late for an interview doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost the role, it definitely puts you at a disadvantage. Your interviewer is likely have started to wonder whether you’re lazy, disorganised, disrespectful, or a combination of all three. What’s worse is that you will be flustered and uncomfortable, perhaps out of breath if you’ve hurried the walk from the car and definitely not performing at your best. To avoid this it’s vitally important to ensure that you know where you’re going for the interview, how to get there and how long it’s likely to take. Does the company you’re interviewing with have a visitor car park? Many do but if not you’ll need to find a nearby public car park (or at least a side-street that allows parking) and plan a route on foot from there to the office, remembering to factor the walking time into the total expected journey time. Google Streetview is fantastic at letting you see the roads you’ll be on before the day. Streets can look very different when driving or walking down them than on an over-head map so I’d definitely recommend using this tool to check out the building you’ll be visiting as well as the last few roads you’ll take before you get there. Google Maps can also be used to plan a route and estimate how long it should take, although remember that it’s just an algorithm and may not be 100% accurate even before heavy traffic, roadworks and diversions are taken into account. If the company is in another town to the one I live in and I have to travel a significant distance, I like to find somewhere to stop near the office, such as a large supermarket, or other shopping park where I can aim to arrive early, get out of the car, stretch my legs, ideally make a ‘comfort stop’ and kill a bit of time before the interview. This allows me to arrive more comfortable and relaxed without risking turning up very early. While arriving at the office 10 to 15 minutes early is recommended to show eagerness, as well as to allow a buffer in case of unexpected delays, turning up much earlier than that should be avoided as the interviewer may think the interviewee is bad at following instructions, or they might be annoyed that they feel they have to rush what they’re currently doing to accommodate the interviewee. Clearly you have a better chance at winning the job if the interviewer is in a good mood when they meet you than if they’re not!
The last thing to consider when checking out the location of the company is whether it’s a commute you’d be prepared to do every day (assuming you’re interviewing at the same place you’ll be working). Are you happy with the time the journey will take every day, remembering that it’s likely to take longer at peak times? If you can arrange the interview so that you arrive or depart around the time you’d be travelling for the job then this will give you a much better picture of what the daily commute will be like. If not it might be worth trying it out on another day before deciding whether to accept the role.
Step 3 – Research yourself
I don’t know about you, but my memory is far from photographic, in fact a casual question about what I did the previous evening can sometimes cause an embarrassing silence while I franticly try to trawl my sluggish memory to figure out an answer, often ending up with a non-commital ‘nothing much’ before 5 minutes later remembering that I’d done something really cool and impressive that I really wanted to talk about. Imagine how much worse it is when an interviewer asks me about a company I worked for 5 years ago!
So, the night before the interview is a great time to open up your CV and learn all about you. Check out the skills and technologies you’ve listed and make sure that you can at least remember the basics of each one, including what they are and how they’re used. Being able to expand any acronyms or initialisms is also helpful and if it’s been a while since you used them, give yourself a quick refresher course. Also go through your work history, remind yourself what it was like to work in each role, what you liked and what you disliked as well as some of the projects you worked on while there and try to remember why you left, at least the new-employer-friendly version of events! If there are any gaps in employment, ensure that you have a good explanation of what you were doing at the time instead of being in continuous employment.
Hopefully you took the time to update and error-correct your CV before sending it through with your application but if there is anything still missing or incorrect, make sure it’s at the forefront of your mind so that you can bring it up as soon as it is sensible. That’s not to say that you should blurt out “I actually only worked for Acme Corp for three years, 10 months, not four years” as soon as you get in the door, but you should be ready to give the correction or update smoothly and without hesitation if the conversation naturally strays into an area where it might be relevant.
Finally, have a good think about what you’re looking for in your next role, whether it’s salary, benefits, career progression or even something simple like being able to wear jeans at the office. If you get the role it’s going to take up a major part of your life for the foreseeable future so it’s important that it ticks the right boxes. While salary is a risky subject to bring up first, the interviewer may directly ask you what you’re looking for and if this happens the best thing is to be confident and honest. Appearing uncertain, apologetic or evasive if this question is asked won’t do you any favours, neither will quoting a figure that’s below what you really want out. If you’re uncomfortable quoting a single figure you could suggest a range, dependant on the rest of the package or other factors. You should make sure that everything else that’s important is discussed at the interview though, so that at the end of the interview you have all the information you need to make the decision of whether to accept or reject any job offer they may make.
Hopefully this article has given you a good idea of the sort of planning you should be doing before going into an interview. By ensuring that you are up to speed on the company, location and yourself you will give yourself the best chance of having a good interview and getting the outcome you want. In my next article I’ll discuss the interview itself, what sort of questions you should expect and how to respond.
