Has AlTaiar

Interviewing your interviewer

May 22, 2012

Lately, I have been preparing a good deal for interviews and searching for new positions. I have had a good experience in the whole process so I thought I might sum it up in blogging about it so that others could benefit from my experience.

I know lots of people will tell you to prepare for your interview, but it is not just preparing and reading about the company and job that you are going to. First, you should like the job you are applying for. This might sound ideal for some who are hunting for a job now, but trust me, when you are looking for a job you might not care much, but once you start working there, you would want to change. This would not work for your benefit neither to the company’s. And to be quite honest, there are lots of jobs out there, so you must find some job that you like, you might think it is to hard to get, but it would be easier for you to impress people (interviewers) and you will be happy and productive in the long run.

During the interview, many people talk about the body languange, proper communications, giving expamples, and other things. These are wonderful stuff and worked very well for me, but what I want to add is this. Try to show the interview that you have done your home work and you read about them, the company, the job, the required skills and soon. Take it further and relate it to your previeous experience, and explain what you did for it. For instance, if the job requires higher problem solving skills, it might be worth mentioning while you talking to the interviewer about a case where you had proven great creativity in solving a particular problem. This does not have to be so direct and explicit, but you will be given a fair bit of time to talk, so you should make sure that you are using to address these requirements beside answering the subject question.

In addition, most people like to talk about themselves, their work, and they really want to sell it to you, especially if they are high ranked excutives, or managers. A good interviewer should use this in provoking the iterviewers interest and making them talk as much as possible. This will not provide you with lots of details about the job, the company, and the work, but it also shows your communication abilitiy to the interviewer and they will be impressed. Once I went to an interview that lasted about 2 hours and I think I talked less than 30% of that time. I ask few questions and keep the interviewer talking by interacting with him. By the end of the interview, I knew too many things about the job that I did not want it anymore even when they sent me the offer letter.

The next point is a bit tricky, in the sense that if you do not play it right it might back fire on you. This is about being able to prepare few suggestions that can improve the current process and/or technology. By reading about the position and the company you will know lots of things about the sort of process or technology they are using. There must be few alternatives out there, some would be better and some would be worest. A good way to impress your interview by asking them the right questions and then proposing a new enhancement by accommodating a new technology or a process. Please make sure that you know what you talking about and the employer is using the process or technology that you think they are using. If you tell them what do not you use MS Office 2010 instead of 2007 and they are already using 2010 you would look stupid. Therefore, what you need to do is prepare well first, then ask few implicit questions to confirm your believes and then you can address the point.

Finally, I hope what I said here helps somebody in finding their dream job. The key points that I tried to make here are be prepared not only in the tranditional sense but be creative and try to relate what you are preparing for/talking about to your previeous experience. And, engage the interviewer in your talk, by triggering their interest in you and the discussion, and lastly if you did your home work properly you could give some suggestions that would dazzle the interviewer.

If you have a comment, feedback or a question, I would love to hear from you