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Prepare & practice for the job interview

Prepare & practice for the job interview

You can't guess specific questions in advance, which will be asked in the interview. However you can prepare in advance for commonly asked questions. Interview questions are categorized as
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1. Skills based questions
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These questions are related to the functional knowledge, experience, and industry practices. These questions help find the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge.
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2. Behavioral questions
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These questions show aptitude, problem solving approach to a role and soft skills.
Preparing and practicing for the commonly asked job questions is a good strategy to ace the interview. It prepares you mentally and you become more confident. Content (What to say) and delivery (How to say) will helps.
Preparation brightens your chances of success. The most commonly asked job questions are related to
• About you - Education, abilities, strength and weakness
• Work Experience - Job history, current role and achievements
• Why are you looking for a change
• Tell me about a situation and show the actions and results
• Salary question
As a candidate, you need to convince the interviewer that you are the right candidate by demonstrating the right behavior supported with real stories based on your experience, abilities, attitude and skills.
Throughout the interview process, recruiter is interested to know, do you have the right skills and experience. Are you a good match? Will you be able to deliver? Will you be a good fit to the culture? To do well in the interview, one needs to show the interviewer you are not only a good fit for the job but also better than others.
How does your skill set match the job requirement? Think about your strengths, experiences which matter the most for this job. Embed these in your answers to convince the interviewer. Practice your script. Practice but do not memorize. Even if you come across a known question, do not blurt our the reply. Take time to get comfortable with the question and then answer. Do not be a robot.
You need to understand the intent of each question. Do you have the right experience? Have you handled such a situation successfully? Can you learn from your mistake? What value add you will bring to the employer? Now package what you have, customize it and deliver to the interviewer. Create confidence in him that you are the one who will do it better. Express each answer supported with your work life experiences. Also it is not about past but about future i.e.what you promise to deliver.
As you practice the answers, you will gain confidence and this will reduce the anxiety. Practice will hone your interview skills.
We have listed most commonly asked job questions and categorized in Top10, Top30, Top50 ... so that you can move up the practice ladder at your pace. Happy practicing.
Photo adaptation / Pixabay / mohamed_hassan-5229782
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The interview is a game and practice can boost the performance

Everyone wants to do well in the interview. Some don’t know how to do it and some are over confident. When one does not prepare, the end result in both the cases is an outcome based on chance. If we need to increase our chance to succeed in the interview game, then we need to know, learn, prepare and play this game well. The interview is also like any other game. The better get at this game, the chances of success increase. Good thing about interviews is that we can strengthen our skills with practice and improve our ability to present ourselves confidently.

If you are early in your career stage then you need to know what questions will be asked and how to prepare. What is the right approach and avoid common mistakes. You will need to learn what makes a right or wrong response? Know the questions and learn dos’ and don’ts. If you are able to do this step then you have moved up the ladder in the interview game.

Knowing is good but not enough! Career experts point out that very few candidates take the process seriously, they do not prepare at all. They simply lack preparation. Hiring is not only about job knowledge skills or your education. The job skills, education and your background does matter but how you present yourself, your responses matter more than anything else in the interview situation. This fact is surprising to most of the candidates. How can something matter more than the job skills? The good thing about responses is that we can learn correct responses and these can be improved to be more impactful. The key to improvement is to practice your responses.

In fact there is no substitute to good practice. Practice requires discipline and determination. Allocate a dedicated time slot to learn and practice the questions on a regular basis. This effort will help you hone your interview skills. This will help you know what are the common questions, how to answer well, know the dos and don’ts.