Preparing For Successful Interviews

By Author: nitin chauhan
Total Articles: 16
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There are those who pass most interviews and there are those who fail most interviews.Then again, there are those who know their stuff and those who don’t.Yet again, there are those who prepare for interviews and those that don’t.It is always good to know your stuff but preparing for an interview can be just as important.



There are certain steps that you can take to prepare for interviews that give you an advantage over those who don’t.Firstly find out something about the company where you are being interviewed.



This is a no-brainer – and it is easy to do in the internet age.Virtually all companies have websites these days and they are a mine of information on the companies.From there you can find out about the products or services they are selling and how they see themselves as a company.Very often they will put things on the website that they are proud of, e.g. winning an award or being the best company at X, Y or Z.It is a racing certainty that you will be asked early on at interview if you know anything about the company.



It is a good idea ...
... to be able to talk about what you know about the company and any successes they have had.“I see that you won the XYZ prestigious award” should get a good conversation going.Interviewers like your knowledge of the company at two levels.Firstly you know something about the company and still came to the interview which shows you want to work for this company.



Secondly, it shows that you are a person who prepares.Another preparation to make is, if you work through an agency or contractor umbrella company, or have a mortgage through a specialist contractor mortgages company, you could ask if they have on their books of hundreds or thousands of contractors, anyone who has worked at this company before and can give you some kind of inside insight into the company and people there.



You could learn a lot, and get competitive advantage on other candidates, from a phone call to someone who was at the company before – or is maybe even still there.The next thing to do is to study all the skills that you have that the company interviewing you are interested in.



You probably only use a subset of any particular skill and you probably had the broadest knowledge of that skill when you came off your training course in the skill.It is important, therefore, to look at all areas of those skills and even learn those areas of it that are seldom used.



There is always some smart technical person at the interview who wants to show off to the assembled audience that he or she can ask questions the interviewees can’t answer (mainly because they are seldom used).If you can answer them you can get some extra kudos and have an advantage over those other candidates who relied on knowing the subset of the skill that is most often used.



Gerry McLaughlin is the CEO of UK IT Contractor umbrella companies website www.ITContractor.com.