{"id":6193,"date":"2016-07-11T10:16:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T10:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/ace-a-job-interview-with-these-last-minute-tips-6193\/"},"modified":"2016-07-11T10:16:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T10:16:09","slug":"ace-a-job-interview-with-these-last-minute-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/ace-a-job-interview-with-these-last-minute-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Ace a job interview with these last minute tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto\" src=\"http:\/\/media.monsterindia.com\/cmsimages\/1468210514.jpg\" alt=\"interview tips\" width=\"650\" height=\"457\" \/><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Even if you have less than a day before your job interview, you can outshine the competition with a little interview preparation. The following four tasks will take you about four hours (plus five minutes) to complete, and you&#8217;ll walk into the interview confident you&#8217;ll be successful.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\"><strong>Conduct Basic Interview Research<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">To prepare for an interview, find out as much as you can beforehand. Call the person who scheduled your interview and ask:<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Who will you be talking to? Will you meet the manager you&#8217;d work for, or will you just talk to HR? What are the interviewer&#8217;s expectations?&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">What&#8217;s the dress code? Dress better than suggested. Most times, it&#8217;s best to wear a professional suit. You&#8217;d be amazed how many candidates show up looking like they&#8217;re going to class, not presenting a professional demeanor.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Get directions to the office. Plan to leave early. Keep a phone number to call if you get stuck on the bus or in traffic. If you arrive late and stressed, the interview will not go well.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">If you don&#8217;t have a detailed job description, ask for one.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">That&#8217;s a five-minute phone call.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\"><strong>Learn About the Company Online<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Do some fast Web research, which will give you something to talk about in addition to the job description. Go to the employer&#8217;s Web site, or search the Web for information such as:<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">How big is the company in terms of annual sales or employees? What does the company say about its products or services?&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">What recent news (such as a new product, a press release, an interview with the CEO) can you discuss?&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">If the company is public, the boilerplate at the bottom of its press releases will tell you a lot.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Basic research should take you about an hour.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\"><strong>Think of Some Stories<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Be ready to answer typical interview questions with a story about yourself. To prepare, write down and memorize three achievement stories. Tell about times you&#8217;ve really felt proud of an achievement at work or school. These stories demonstrate all those hard-to-measure qualities like judgment, initiative, teamwork or leadership. Wherever possible, quantify what you&#8217;ve done, e.g., &#8220;increased sales by 20 percent,&#8221; &#8220;cut customer call waiting time in half,&#8221; &#8220;streamlined delivery so that most customers had their job done in two days.&#8221;<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">By the way, nonwork achievement stories are good too; if you volunteer for the local food pantry, write down a time you overcame a big challenge or a crisis there.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Achievement stories make you memorable, which is what you want. There&#8217;s an exercise in Monster Careers: Interviewing called &#8220;Mastering the Freestyle Interview,&#8221; which helps you develop these stories into compelling sales points.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Take the time you need &#8212; at least three hours on this task.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\"><strong>Pick Your Outfit, and Go to Bed Early<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">Lay out your interview outfit the night before, get a good night&#8217;s rest, and always get an early start. The last thing you want is to waste all of your interview preparation by arriving flustered and panicked because you couldn&#8217;t find a parking space.<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif\">The interview is a crucial step towards scoring the job of your dreams. And the best way to succeed in an interview is to go in prepared. Find more <a href=\"\/\">expert advice on interviewing here.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even if you have less than a day before your job interview, you can outshine the competition with a little interview preparation. The following four tasks will take you about four hours (plus five minutes) to complete, and you&#8217;ll walk into the interview confident you&#8217;ll be successful. &nbsp; Conduct Basic Interview Research To prepare for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interview-tips"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.sg\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}