5 Tips to Make the Interview Process a Success and Help Ensure You Get the Job Offer  

There are two types of interviewees, in my opinion:  the kind who desperately want the job — and the other kind who don’t want the job, but are interviewing because the recruiter or someone convinced them they should.

What is interesting about these two types of interviewees is that it seems it is always the one who doesn’t want the job that ends up being the one the manager wants to hire. Why is this – and, more importantly,  what should you do when prepping for an interview so you’re the one the manager wants to hire?

A possible answer: the one who doesn’t want the job asks a million questions about the company, the vision, the goals, the leadership, the people, the role, and the manager.  In other words, the one who doesn’t want the job is very happy in their current job, and they aren’t looking, so they’re doing everything they can – in an objective way — to compare and contrast to their current situation to figure out which one is indeed better.

By contrast, the candidate desperate for the job doesn’t ask questions, talks about all the research they did on the company, and says that it’s the dream job they’ve always been seeking – yet they didn’t ask any questions!  So the interviewers wonder about the substance of this person.  It seems as if they’re so focused on getting the job, they don’t understand just what they’re trying to get.

Here are a few examples on how to avoid the latter scenario:

Interview the Interviewer
Use the interview as the time to not just answer questions about yourself, but also to ask questions about the company, the culture, the role, and the manager.  As a recruiter, I can’t tell you the number of times candidates have said to me that they don’t have any questions for me because they read about the company online or that their friend told them about the job, or that the HR person they talked with before me gave them a good overview.

What’s wrong with that you ask?  It’s short-sighted and not thorough.  You should ask everyone that you speak with the same questions.  Do you get the same answers?  Is there a discrepancy in what people are saying?  Do you really know what you should know or are you too excited and happy about what you’re seeing at first glance that you aren’t taking the time to understand what you’d be getting into?  Those applicants who ask a lot of questions are the ones that companies like in the interview process, as it shows that they want to know as much as possible to decide if they want to work for the company or not.

Don’t Oversell Your Research
It’s a great idea to look at the website and read recent company publications, but that won’t win you extra brownie points, so be careful about overselling your research and how much you think you might know about the company.  Again, the interview is your opportunity to learn more, not sell that you know a lot from your research.

So, for instance, pose the following query: “I saw the recent press release on the new product going to market; it looks like it’s going to be successful, which is great. Tell me about the product, and why you think it will be successful.”  Ask that same question to everyone, and get the variety of opinions; it’ll give you really good insight.

Ask About Internal Growth Opportunities
If one of the reasons you want to leave your current role is because you don’t see upward growth, ask the manager about growth opportunities.  How many people are on the team currently?  How many were promoted in the last 12 months?  Last 24 months?  Is that acceptable, or will this end up being a lateral move for you that won’t have career growth — which is why you’re leaving your current role?

Send Unique Thank You Notes
If you’re going to send a thank you note to all with whom you interviewed, take the time to write individual notes that pertain to the discussion you had with the person.  It’s easy to do “canned” thank you notes, and we all forward them to each other so we see how much effort you put into it.  While you don’t have to send thank you’s, it is appreciated, as it is a dying art. If you do send them, ensure that you have no typos and that you’re grammatically correct.

Be Authentic  
Share who you are and the work you do and what is important to you in your career, and if it turns out you don’t get offered the job, it’s okay – after all, as the saying goes, “‘rejection is protection” and the universe will bring you to the next opportunity.  It isn’t about getting offered the job; it’s about finding the right opportunity.

The goal of getting the job is to ensure that it is a good move for your resumé and career.  And if you have a really great interview but the role isn’t right, the company will remember you for the right role when it opens up.  Or maybe you’ll learn enough about the company to realize that you don’t want to work for them; that’s good too, because again, rejection is protection and better to learn earlier rather than after starting at a company!

Above all, the point of preparing for the interview is this: focus on learning as much as you can so that you can determine whether or not the role and company will be a good fit for you.