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You must have read a hundred or more tips to crack your interview of a job or for a b-school selection process from various sources.The most spoken ones range from the preparation of a readymade answer for most likely asked questions (like “Tell me about yourself.” or “What are your strengths/weaknesses?”) to take care of your attire. While these are important, there are a few other things that we do not emphasis much in the list of personal interview preparation which is powerful and can help you differentiate yourself among other candidates.
Here are 3 tips for you to prepare before attending any personal interview:
1. Match your Resume with Job Description:
There is a general misconception that you need to add all your strengths, accomplishments and skills in your resume. You should take at most care in not falling in this pool of mistake of showcasing all that you have because of the sole reason that you are only aiming one job title in one company.
The key recommendation is to observe and analyse the job description/selection criteria well before crafting your resume and make sure you customise your resume for each job you apply.
Once you have a clear idea of the required skills and competencies for the job role that you are applying, try to match your resume with those requirements by adding your relevant skills and achievements which prima facie fills the gap between the job role and personal strengths.
This method of crafting resume not only benefits you to showcase the relevant skills that your recruiter needs to understand but also it makes your resume precise and indirectly convey the message that you respect their time.
2. Guide the interviewer into your path:
To continue with the benefit of the previous tip is that now your chances of questions are more likely predictable from your resume. You can take full advantage of this by bringing your interviewers attention on to your strengths and accomplishments.
Let’s say for example if the interviewer asks you “What were the challenges in your previous job?” In this case, you can begin the answer with a couple of challenges that you faced during your work, but your answer should not limit to only that. You must mention the strategies that you implemented to overcome these challenges and make sure this strategy is already listed as an initiative or accomplishment under your experience section of the resume.
In such instances, the most probable follow-up questions will be related to that accomplishment or anything that is listed below or above this on your resume. In this way, you can conclude each of your replies with an endnote that is mentioned directly or indirectly on the resume.
3. End the interview with questions:
Many of the personal interviews end up being a Q&A session where only the interviewer asks questions and not the candidate. Many recruiters these days do mention if there are any clarifications but most of them resist to ask. Whether the panel asks you or not, you must take full advantage of the last moments of the interview in asking questions. Avoid asking monetary questions until and unless you are clueless regarding your salary and benefits, etc as it may give a false impression on the recruiters.
Instead, try asking some strategic questions like something related to the organisation, the job role or maybe the team which you would be potentially working with. You could even ask questions related to your growth pattern within the organisation in the short and long term. As you heard a lot of times that first impression is what you need to focus, in the case of a personal interview even the last impression is equally important to leave a mark on the recruiter to differentiate yourself from others.
Written by - Arun S.
Edited by - Nidhi Verma
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