By Warren Fowler
Only a handful of situations in life are more stressful than job interviews. Sitting in front of strangers who want to expose your weaknesses while you are hoping to get that much-needed job sounds terrifying. Most people feel like they are participating in their own interrogation, which makes them choke or give superficial answers.
The only way to avoid this is to prepare for an interview and be ready to answer even the most demanding questions. However, some professionals don’t get it right because they believe in some common recruiting misconceptions. In this article, we will reveal 5 job interview myths that can ruin your growth.
5 Things to Know Before the Job Interview
There are dozens of misunderstandings related to the hiring process. A lot of applicants use the wrong tactic and reduce the odds of getting a job. That’s why we decided to make a list of the 5 most common job interview illusions. Let’s take a closer look here.
1. It’s impossible to prepare
There is no such thing as impossible, especially in terms of job interviews. We know that it’s hard to predict the outcome of human interaction but you have many ways to prepare and reduce the possibility of getting caught by surprise. First of all, you should make a list of frequently asked job interview questions.
Start by identifying the obvious questions such as ‘Tell us more about yourself’. You will hear generic inquiries like this one in all sorts of industries. On the other hand, there are other, more specific industry-related questions. For instance, a recruiter might ask you to predict a few industry trends for 2018. This is where your experience and expertise come into play.
At the same time, you should organize a role-playing session with your friends and exercise answering the questions that you previously identified as most probable. This gives you the opportunity to perfect your feedback on standard questions but also to improve your non-verbal skills.
2. Overestimating competitors
Some professionals are too afraid of competitors and strongly believe that their skills cannot compete with other people’s expertise. However, you should bear in mind that the average job opening attracts 250 resumes but only 2% of applicants are actually invited for an interview. In such circumstances, the sheer fact that you received a job interview invitation suggests that you can rightfully compete with other candidates, so try to relax a little.
Instead of panicking, you should embrace a different mindset. Keep reminding yourself that you have a lot of professional experience and a broad scope of knowledge and interests. Remind yourself of the biggest career achievements and the times when you proved to be an excellent employee. All these auto-suggestive messages can boost your confidence quickly. That way, you will stop thinking about the qualities of other applicants and begin focusing on your own strengths.
3. Fighting with generalization
The worst thing you can do during the job interview is to talk about generic issues. What you should know is that HR managers take an average of 6 seconds to scan a CV and they rarely ever remember details from the candidates’ resumes. That’s why you need to do your best to present them professional results and qualities. We suggest you focus on 3 aspects of the business:
- : You should always emphasize the most important results of your work. Make it data-driven and tell recruiters about concrete career achievements. For instance, you can say that your former company increased lead generation by 47% since the time you were appointed digital marketing executive.
- : Let them know what your earlier roles and positions in the hierarchy were, as well as the number of employees you were monitoring.
- : Try to explain the details of your work and the knowledge and skills you gained. Mention every certificate, software, course, or training you went through in your career.
4. Lack of research
Almost half of the recruiters say that having little or no knowledge of the company is the most common job interview mistake. Candidates usually make such mistakes because they only prepare for the FAQ. But your duty is to conduct a thorough research about the company and find out as many details about it as possible. You should know the names of the most important persons in this organization, products or services they offer, relations with other businesses, company news, etc.
An anchor of your research is the company website but you also need to dig deeper and explore their social media accounts and posts you find via the Google search. Besides that, you also need to follow the latest industry developments, community discussions, and expert opinions. Try to find out who are key opinion leaders in this field and read their predictions and analysis. The more you learn about this company and the niche in general, the higher the chances to get the job eventually.
5. You don’t do the follow-up
An average job applicant would probably say that the interview follow-up deems too obnoxious and pushy. It does sound logical but it’s not true because polite follow-ups actually increase the odds of earning a job. Namely, 42 days is the overall average time it takes to fill a given position. In such circumstances, an interviewee has the right to ask for employer’s feedback. As a job candidate, you should thank recruiters for inviting you to the interview and ask when to expect to make their final decision. It will not only make you stand out from the crowd of other candidates but also give you a post-interview peace of mind.
Conclusion
Job interviews are extremely demanding for most individuals and the only way to present yourself well is to prepare thoroughly. Understanding common recruiting misconceptions is an important activity in that regard. In this article, we showed you 5 job interview myths that can ruin your growth. We hope our suggestions will be helpful for you but don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us in comments.
Author Bio: Warren Fowler is a marketing enthusiast and a blogger at EduGeeksClub, who loves music. If he doesn’t have a guitar in his hands, he’s probably embracing new technologies and marketing techniques online!