Factors that can Ruin Your Interviews and Cost You Job Offers
Stress and poor interview preparation are two major factors that cause a lot of people to fail at a job interview.
Job interviews are stressful at the best of times. Even the most confident of people will suffer a little from nerves. It is fair to say that unless very skilled, the interviewer will also be apprehensive!
Stress is typically caused or compounded by the fear of the unknown. The solution is simply to remove or reduce that fear of the unknown.
Stress will also be interpreted as nervousness, which in turn can make you sound like a blithering idiot - all easily avoided with the correct preparation.
How to Improve Your Interview Performance
- Obtain as much information about the interview before attending - preparation is the price of superiority!
- Things like: What will be involved, who and how many interviewers, how long, competency style of questions, points-scored answers, etc.
- Relate what you will probably be asked about the person specification or job description - if they are not published, ask if you can have them. Quality employers will have produced these, smaller companies might not have.
- Try to think of examples of where you have previously (and successfully) used the required skills before. Prepare some dynamic examples to fire back!
- Remember that it often takes ten times longer to successfully prepare than it does to deliver. A 30 minute interview should take up to 5 hours preparation to cover all the bases. If you really want the job this is time well invested.
Assuming you have adequately prepared for the unexpected your confidence will be at its highest and you will perform with your head held high!
Things That Can Go Against You
- Ensure you are well groomed, smart hair, remove any facial piercings, cover any tattoos and ensure clean shoes, etc. This is not being prejudiced but simply eliminating any possible reasons for rejection. Employers do not have to give you an honest reason why they haven't offered you the job!
- Not presenting yourself in a positive way - limp handshake, avoiding eye contact and negative posture are all traits an employer will dislike.
As a general rule you will not be seen as suitable if you are indecisive, illusive, negative or antagonistic. When answering questions try to avoid:
- Denigrating previous or your present employer or boss - no matter how much you hate them or why you want to leave, keep it to yourself in a job interview.
- Be cautious about what you write on social media - your potential new employer might just have looked before meeting you!
- Discussing why you might have failed - we all fail from time to time, it's how we learn things, just don't labour the point!
- Presenting yourself as overconfident, nobody likes a know-it-all!
The Major Reasons For Not Getting Job Offers:
- You were punching above your weight in terms of the skill and experience you have to offer versus the expertise required to do the job.
- The interviewer did not warm to you as a person.
- Failing to communicate clearly and effectively the value you can add.
- Your manner, appearance or attitude may have irked during the interview - of course this can be grossly unfair as the person interviewing you might not be your boss.
- Silly things like the colour of your socks for gentleman or the colour of lipstick for ladies can put the interviewer off - of course this works both ways, you might not like the interviewer.
- If you do not get on with the interviewer but do get offered the job consider that you might not be working directly with that person.
- Interviewers (or line managers) should not recruit clones of themselves and quality organisations will have a process to prevent this. However smaller organisations may not, which could result in a rejection.
- And finally, the interview was conducted in an unbiased and proper manner but considered objectively against your competitor applicants you failed to meet the criteria. At least you have been turned down for the right reasons!
Although not an exhaustive list by any means the content above is worthy of some thought and consideration when applying and being interviewed for that new job.
It's a daunting proposition at best so here at Bradley CVs we have developed a series of bespoke telephone interview coaching sessions that cover every aspect of being interviewed.
Other pages on interviewing:
- FREE Reports: How to Get a Big Pay Rise; How to Dramatically Improve Your CV / Resume; Job Hunting Secrets Revealed.
- Are you missing out on interviews because your CV is letting you down? Learn how a professional CV writing service can substantially improve your chances of securing a job
- Do you want to improve your interview success rate? Learn how a mock interview and interview techniques service can dramatically improve your chances of securing a job
- FREE: Psychometric Test. Discover the interview questions that will floor you and how to answer them.
- Introduction
- General tips / advice
- List of interview questions
- Answering interview questions
- Good interview questions
- Top interview questions and answers
- Example interview questions
- Typical interview questions
- Job interview questions
- How to get a big pay rise
- Psychometric tests
- Questions to ask the interviewer
- Group interview tests
- Panel interviews
- Interview body language
- Interview problems
- Interview question what are your strong points
- Interview question not meeting deadlines
