Have you ever wondered how some people get interviews after interviews… offers after offers… and sometimes in the span of a year?! They make job searching look so easy… but we know otherwise. Applying and interviewing for jobs can be a massive gruesome headache while taking over all your precious “free time”. So how do others get such disproportionate results?
Hint: It’s not that they’re smarter than you or had better grades than you in school.
It’s because they make it so easy for people to hire them. It’s as if they were made for the role and the company… and they ALWAYS work for the best companies. We secretly hate them, but we also want to be like them.
Not many people take the time to prepare and stand out in the interview. Instead people focus on making the perfect resume, cover letter and looking presentable. Once they interview, they keep applying for other jobs wondering why people aren’t hiring them. They say things like “must be the economy” or “I should just be glad I have a job” or “my job is not as bad”.
But why live like this when you can be the one making companies drool all over you fighting to have you work for them? The secret to getting hired is to add a few new behaviors no one else is doing, therefore making you stand out from the masses.
Are you ready to make yourself so irresistible for that job offer?
Let’s get started!
Get The Inside Scoop
Best way to interview and showcase you were meant for the role and the company is to get the inside scoop. Sometimes when we read the job description there is very limited information we have on the company or the role. A good way to find who are they looking for and why? Is to talk to people at the company with similar roles.
Now, before you say “I don’t know anyone at the company” I will let you in on a little secret. You don’t have to know anyone at the company to be able to reach out to someone. When I was applying to a job in a new industry I didn’t know much about, I sent an email to someone I didn’t know to give me insight into the role and the company.
Guess what? They said yes and they took 15 minutes of their time to help me out which gave me the upper hand. They were also kind enough to let me mention their name during the interview.
Crazy huh? And if you’re wondering what to say to someone you don’t know and get results, I have a surprise for you. I am giving you free access to my template I used to reach out to people I didn’t know. You can access email template here. Go ahead…you have my permission to use my template.
Anticipate The Expected
At this point, I’m going to assume you’ve at least had one interview in your entire life. So by this time you already know the annoying questions every interviewer asks “Can you tell me about yourself”. We despise the question with every fiber in our body…. but yet we never fully prepare to answer it. We say things like “I will know what to say once I’m there” or “maybe they won’t even ask me that question” or “I’ll wing it, like I’ve always have”.
But why do that to ourselves when we can just prepare for the expected? Before transitioning into a new industry and getting a $30,000 salary increase I prepared for my interview. I made a resume that was good enough to get me interviews and I just wowed them during the interview by preparing for the commonly asked questions.
Here’s what you need to do, to stand out.
- Identify the most common interview questions for your industry and if you’re unsure you can access the most common interview questions here.
- Try to identify what the question really is. What the interviewer really wants to know is… are you the best candidate for the job and are you going to stay within the company long enough.
- Then write down what you would like to say that addresses what the interviewer is thinking.
- Afterwards, practice recording yourself in audio until you sound confident, likable while being professional.
- Then, record yourself in video and pay attention to your body language and nervous ticks… like jazz hands or rolling your eyes to the back of your head while you stall time to think.
Take advantage of what you already know and elevate your interview skills.
Create an Achievement Portfolio
Many of us have a short term memory when it comes to our successes and all the projects we’ve been part of. So how can you highlight your success during an interview? Create and Achievement Portfolio. An Achievement Portfolio is a culmination of your top 3–5 projects you have worked on that showcases your results and how you achieved them. An Achievement Portfolio should have the following for each project:
- Name of Project/Event
- Goal
- Visual Graph (ex. Before and after results, trends due to your work and input, increase in revenue or decrease in expenses)
- Strategies Implemented
- Results
- Next Steps
- Barriers & Challenges
- Lessons Learned
This will allow you to track successes, projects, outcomes and help you anticipate potential barriers and challenges for future projects. Achievement portfolio can be used during your interview process (or performance review) to position you as an expert and increase your worth.
So, when they ask you behavioral questions like, “Have you encountered a tough situation and how did you handle it?” you can pull out your achievement portfolio. Choose any project, lead with the barriers and challenges and visually show them the graph of your results.
Now you have all the resources you need to stand out during the interview and have interviewers fighting to hire you. Do you know anyone else preparing this much for the interview? You’ll be exponentially standing out from the herds of people who do nothing and complain they can’t get ahead.
Call To Action
Are you ready for a promotion and advancing in your career? If so, check out my ‘Free Ultimate Guide: 5-Proven steps to set you up for a promotion in 5 days — in any industry’.
Click here to get the Ultimate Guide right now.
Originally published at medium.com