From the book How to Prepare for an Employment Interview.
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This book shows you how to sell yourself in an employment interview.
Hiring decisions are not easy to make. It's important to understand this, because the employer's anxieties are one of your biggest obstacles to getting a job offer. Your goal during the interview is to remove these anxieties and reassure the employer that they can feel comfortable choosing to hire you.
You want to go into the interview knowing two things:
1. What you're offering the employer-what you can do for them.
2. How to present your claims to make them forceful and credible.
That's the purpose of all your preparation.
There's an element of presumptuousness in all employment interviews. You're coming in, usually to an organization that you know little about, claiming implicitly that they'd be better off if you worked there. You're saying that you would add enough value to their operations to justify the salary you would be paid and the other expenses the employer would incur taking you on as an employee.
Research and analysis are vital, because if you don't know anything about the company, their problems, and the role you see yourself playing, how can you credibly claim that you offer them something of value?
There are three key areas you'll want to research or at least think about in preparation for your interview:
THE COMPANY-what they do, their management style and culture, who their customers are, and how their products or services provide value.
THE POSITION you see yourself in-what you'd be doing, the challenges you'd face, how you might go about it, and the skills, traits and abilities needed to succeed.
THE REQUIRED SKILLS, ABILITIES, TRAITS, AND KNOWLEDGE, and the evidence you can present to demonstrate that you have them.
Once you've gathered and considered this information, you'll be able to go in knowing what you feel you should say during the interview and what you'd like to focus the interviewer's attention on.
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