Alan Stutts | BLOG | Education Author

As soon as you mail the first resume or respond to the first classified ad, you have to act as if every call you get is an employer asking to schedule a job interview. You probably listed your home telephone as the contact number on your resume. If you are away from the house when calls from employers may come in, make sure they are handled professionally:

Make sure the greeting on your answering machine or voice mail is clear and professional. Something simple is best: “You’ve reached the home of John JobSeeker. Please leave your message at the tone, with a convenient time at which I can call you back. I will return your call within 24-hours. Thank you.”

Ask others who may be home during the day to adopt a cordial and business-like voice in answering the telephone. Leave a script near the phone if necessary.

Do not let young children answer the telephone.

Leave a notepad and pencil or pen by the phone to write down messages.

Use call forwarding to forward calls to your cell phone or another telephone if you will be available to answer calls at the second number.

As soon as the caller introduces themselves and ask to schedule the interview thank them for inviting you for an interview.

Keep your calendar with you at all times in order to quickly check your availability. Never ask if you can call back later.

Ask about the interview format: “”With whom will I be meeting?” “How long should I plan to be at your office?” “What would you like me to bring along, in addition to copies of my resume?”

Ask the caller to spell their name, and the names of the people you will be meeting with.

Ask for explicit directions to the location of the interview, or for a Web address of driving directions and a map.

Before hanging up, repeat the agreed time and date to the caller to confirm what you have written down.

Thank the caller and tell them you are looking forward to the interview.

As soon as you hang-up the telephone, enter the appointment into your appointment calendar.

You do not know what type of interview questions you will be asked until you are asked them. You can, however, anticipate some of the questions that will be asked in both traditional and behavioral interviews. These are questions that professional recruiters use, that are recommended in books and seminars on interviewing, and that researchers have uncovered and that professors teach.

You should have an answer to these questions and it should be written down. The process of deciding what your answer is, and writing it down, helps you recall the answer when the question is asked.
Collect as big a list as possible of possible interview questions. Sort them by type, if you like, and categorize them into subject areas to make them more manageable. This is the kind of activity you need to do on a computer. If you use a word processor, put each question on its own page, with the question type and category at the top of the page.

While writing your resume, you examined all of your accomplishments and identified your skills. This information will provide the core for your answers. Rewrite the achievement statement used in your resume so that it is conversational and answers the anticipated question.
No question should take more than a couple of minutes to answer. Some very broad questions, such as “where do you see yourself in five years” should be answered very succinctly, while a question about how you approached a specific problem in the workplace may require a bit more time to answer well.

It may take several drafts to get your answers clearly focused and well-stated. Read reach draft loud to make sure the flow and tone are conversational. When you are happy with the answer, read it aloud to someone who will give you constructive feedback. Use as many of your anticipated answers in practice interviews as you can.

Job interviews are incredibly stressful events, even for the gregarious amongst us. You improve your chances of winning the job if you prepare for each interview as though it were the only one in the world. Preparing includes several steps:

Decide how you will answer common interview questions and write the answers down

Develop a strategy for answering unexpected questions or questions you cannot prepare answers for.

Write down the answers you will give for inappropriate or questionable questions.

Rehearse the interview process from beginning to end, including a couple of “dress rehearsals” with actual companies.

Keep a list of companies you have contacted, an up-to-date appointment calendar, and a pencil by the telephone so you have them when the scheduler calls.

Create an interview kit to take to every interview. This should include a checklist of what you have to do prior to leaving for the interview.

Buy or borrow a business briefcase or portfolio to take to interviews.

Check your wardrobe and buy, clean, or repair the clothes you need for interviews. Have your dress shoes repaired and polished professionally. Have at least two interview outfits in case you have to go to more than one interview at a company.

Maintain your haircut and manicure so that you can go to any interview on short-notice and look well-groomed.

Know what your transportation Plan B is in case your car breaks down when you have an interview or on the way to an interview.

Practice shaking hands to perfect the firm, brief business hand-shake.

Some companies ask job candidates to complete surveys, questionnaires, or assessment tests as part of the interview process. This form of assessment may happen prior to the interview, on the day of the interview, or as a follow-up to the interview. You may be asked to come in to the company offices for the testing, but they may also mail the materials to you or ask you to go to a particular Web address. In some cases, the testing is carried out by an independent testing company and you are asked to go to the testing company’s offices.
Surprise tests are no fun! When you are called for the first interview, ask the caller about the steps in the interview process. If they mention assessment or psychological testing, ask for the names of the tests to be administered, when they will be administered, and by whom. If testing is not mentioned as part of the process, ask politely if any testing will be done.

The types of tests employers administer are usually well-researched tests designed to give information about an applicant’s aptitude, personality, or knowledge. They may be the same tests you used through your career center at college or through a career counseling service to help you decide your career goals.

In a behavioral interview, the questions you are asked rarely permit a yes or no answer. Behavioral interview questions often begin with phrases such as (Waterloo):

Tell me about a time when…”

Describe a time when…”

Give me an example of your _________ skill.”

The interviewer wants to understand past accomplishments in order to predict future performance. They ask questions that require you to tell a story about a work incident or a life incident. As you tell this story, they listen for clues to help them decide if you have the qualities they are looking for. These qualities are:

Ability to communicate

Decision making ability

Enthusiasm for your work

Flexibility in approaching people or problems

Knowledge and skills used in work

Leadership skills

Personal attributes such as initiative, determination, and independent thinking

Team building skills

Many questions in a traditional interview require short, factual answers. Some of these answers may already be in your resume, but do not assume that means the interviewer did not read your resume. The interviewer asks the questions to see if your verbal answer agrees with your resume. One of the problems with traditional interview questions is that it is fairly easy for the job seeker to give the “right” answer, rather than give the interviewer any insight into how you approach problems.
Some traditional interview questions have become so overused that they have become the butt of jokes and inspired sketches on comedy shows.

Do these sound familiar?

Tell me about yourself.

What are your strengths and weaknesses

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Why should I hire you?

Why do you want to work here?

Not all interviews are the same, and not just because the interviewer is different and the company is different. There are also differences in interview styles and format.

Interview formats include telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, and online interviews. The first two are the most common formats, but interviews via video conferencing or Internet conferencing are not unheard of. Each of these interview formats also has variations. On some telephone interviews, you talk with one person and on some you are engaging in a conference call. A face-to-face interview may involve one face, or several faces in sequence, or several faces at one time. The same variations can occur within video or Internet interviews.
Regardless of the interview format, the interview style may be one of the three most common:

” Traditional - Focuses on gathering information about you. Questions ask you for factual answers or to state a philosophy or principal. The goal of the traditional interview is to learn about your past, to validate the information learned from your resume, and to assess your philosophical “fit.”

” Behavioral - Focuses on discovering your competencies and how you behave in common business situations. Questions often ask you to describe what you did in a particular type of situation or ask you to predict what you might do. The goal of the behavioral interview is to predict your future performance and assess your work style “fit…”

” Combination - Explores both past experience and future performance. This style is not uncommon when interviews are done by several people in sequence or when you go to a series of interviews over a period of time.
Each of these styles of interviews asks differing types of questions. Many of these questions, however, are common to nearly every interview of one certain type.