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How to Crush a Job Interview

A Few Simple Interview Techniques for Improving Your Strike Rate

How to Crush a Job Interview
How to Crush a Job Interview

Interviewing for a new job, whether it’s a step up in your own organization or a move somewhere else is stressful. You know that wrong words or gestures, or fumbled answers mean you won’t even make the shortlist.

The mistake most candidates make is to think that all they have to do is turn up at the interview, give a reasonably good account of themselves and wait for the appointment letter to arrive. But it’s not that simple. If you don’t absolutely crush your job interview, expect your job hunting to go on and on.


Once you’ve had a look at the interview techniques below, hop over to our Facebook Group. You’ll get many great tips and videos every day, and you’ll find other ambitious professionals like yourself sharing their secrets to career success.


Follow these four proven interview techniques and, assuming your experience, ambitions and skills match the job you’re interviewing for, you’ll be a cert for the shortlist.

1. Don’t go to a job interview cold: a lesson from a billionaire

A billionaire we know talked his way into his first job in the property industry – managing a suburban shopping center – guided by research he’d done before the interview.

He studied the company, its directors and main shareholders and read about their business strategies in their investor reports, in business publications and in the broader media.

The day before the interview, he walked around the shopping center, making notes about the facilities, clarity of signage, the store positions and how busy they were, and identified the other retail sectors that should be represented there.

At the job interview, after the usual chat about his previous employment, his future goals, outside interests and so on, he changed the entire focus of the interview to talk about his previous day’s research.

He demonstrated an understanding of the company’s business focus, what their challenges were and how they might meet them. He talked about which store chains they could approach to improve the retailer mix and then, playing his trump card, said: “At least one of your stores is so badly located I’m surprised the tenant hasn’t cancelled the lease.”

The interviewer was stunned. When asked to explain, our candidate identified a store selling clothes for babies and young children was on the upper floor of the centre. Mothers with babies and small children, he warned, find it difficult to manage on the escalator, especially if they’ve bought large soft items such as towels, pillows and soft toys.

Did he crush the interview? He was hired on the spot. At the age of 24, he was the youngest center manager the company had ever employed. He is now the biggest shareholder in a major property empire spanning three continents.
(Source: personal interviews, media reports)

You’ll feel more confident and capable in a job interview if you know more about the company than the interviewer would expect. Develop opinions about the company’s objectives, the image of their brands and what future strategies they might follow.

Even if your conclusions are slightly off-beam, you’ll earn respect for having been fully prepared for the meeting.

2. Have your story ready

Apart from the cold facts on your resume, what qualities or experience do you have that make you an ideal choice?

About twenty years ago, HR departments latched onto a technique called behavioural interviewing. It’s based on the assumption that your past performance is a useful predictor of your future.

It’s a flawed concept because the things that happen in our lives, in and outside of work, are never repeated in precisely the same way. Yet many employers still rely on it as a guide.

Let’s imagine you’re interviewing for a job as leader of the sales team. The interviewer won’t say to you, “Look our salespeople are resigning right left and center, our last product launch didn’t go smoothly and new competitors are nibbling away at our business every day. How would you tackle that?”

They’re more likely to ask how much experience you have in leading and motivating a team. Or, a more skilled interviewer may ask, “Tell me about a time you were able to bind a team together after a tough trading period.”

The first question is easy to answer but tells the interviewer little more than how well you can handle questions. Also, the length of your experience is less important than the type of experience and what you’ve learned from it.

Some people have decades of experience but are not much more competent than they were on their first day. They simply repeat their first year’s experience in every subsequent year.

Either way, now you have an opportunity to tell your story which, based on your own personal history, will show you have the relevant skills. Here’s how such a story might run:

“At school, I was captain of the basketball team.

In my last game, we were three points adrift and nothing we tried got us close to their hoop. At the last break, I got the players together and told them we needed to relax more, focus on enjoying the game and let the score take care of itself.

In the final quarter we got three singles in scrappy play and, on the buzzer, we scored a three-pointer. The other team couldn’t believe it, they just stood there open-mouthed as we walked off the court. We felt ten feet high.

In my current job, I lead by example. I don’t push difficult clients onto others, I tackle them myself. I believe if you can find out why some clients are tricky, you can turn them around.

Last year one of the sales execs threw up her hands and said she couldn’t make any headway with a procurement guy she’d been trying to snag as a client. I offered to make an appointment for us to see him together.

The client was arrogant and dismissive, openly hostile. I remembered my colleague had told me he was quite new in the job. I asked him where had worked before and when he told me, I realized the problem.

We’re in high tech logistics solutions and he’d come from a specialized, but conservative, engineering field. He simply didn’t know enough about the systems that were out there and what they could do. He was a meticulous man of high integrity, but simply hadn’t got the product knowledge he needed. Obviously, he felt insecure.

Over the next few weeks, I sent him useful articles about our products in industry journals.

One morning, I rang him to say I’d got invitations to a logistics function. I offered to pick him up, take him there and introduce him to some of the people I know.

The following month he asked us to visit his office and he handed us a bid proposal for a $2million project. He looked for competitive proposals too, of course, but I think that groundwork I’d done with him helped to swing it our way.”

Using your achievements to demonstrate leadership, integrity, motivation skills and devotion to customers, even difficult ones, makes a powerful case for seriously considering you for the job.

You might prepare two or three stories so you can pick the appropriate one depending on the qualities the interviewer is looking for. Make sure they’re all true, deliver them with passion and modesty and make them just detailed enough to reflect their authenticity.

Never use the same story to demonstrate different skills. Make the context of each one clear, highlight action and outcomes that are relevant, and include any lessons you’ve applied to subsequent events.

3. Manage your stress before the interview and you won’t have to manage it during the interview

If you’re someone who finds it hard to relax in a job interview, you need to do some additional preparation.

Your research on the company interviewing you is critical. Knowing more about them, their markets and their competitors alone will give you a confident platform on which to build.

Get help from a family member. Let somebody put you through a few mock job interview sessions, get them to throw tough questions at you and try to intimidate you by staring hard into your face and leaning in forwards into your personal space.

Intensive rehearsing is an important way actors gain confidence and it’ll work for you in the same way. If you want to crush your interview, practice crushing an interview. You’ll get better at it with every rehearsal just like actors do.

Use these sessions to anticipate questions you may be asked and to work out which questions you’ll have for the interviewer.

Make time on the day of the job interview for some gentle exercise: stretching and a good walk would do it.

While you’re waiting to be called in for the interview, don’t allow anxiety to creep in. Focus on visual images of you having a successful meeting and a positive outcome – imagine you’re watching a film of your friends and family congratulating you on your success.

As you walk into the interviewer’s office, breathe deeply a few times and make sure you have a friendly smile on your face. Shake hands and, if you feel it’s appropriate, you can break the ice by saying, “I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.” Notice how those words suggest a coming together of equals rather than a boss/employee relationship.

4. Carefully manage your social media content

Smart employers will scan the social media pages of job applicants. Pictures of you in bars or swigging beer at a barbecue or, worse still, leaving a club at 4.00 am will flatten your chances of landing a decent job.

So too will your involvement in intemperate rants or posting threats, expletives or inappropriate memes. All these will be seen as an inability to properly manage your personal image, and remember what many HR people believe: your past behaviour is a predictor of your future behaviour.

Not all jobs are for you

If you’re shortlisted for a vacancy and, after reflection, you decide the job is not ideal for you, write or call the company. Thank them for the interview and explain why you’re withdrawing. They’ll appreciate your honesty and the courtesy you’ve displayed. They may even remember to call you if something more suitable comes up.

Ready to crush your next job interview?

The job market is tough all over the world. If you follow these simple job interview techniques, you’ll improve your chances of becoming the preferred candidate. And don’t forget, our Facebook Group is packed with interview-crushing advice and opportunities to ask questions and get fast answers from peers and experts.

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