Transcription
I'm always shocked by how ill-prepared some people are for the job interview. Job interviews are not something you can do off-the-cuff. You have to prepare ahead of time for them. So, in this video, I will talk about the elements you need to be preparing ahead of time, how to really prepare for the interview itself, and figure out what questions they're going to ask you. And then, I will share the best way to practice. With that, I'm the solder Thompson, your career consultant, and it's time to get down to business.
All right, so first up, what you need to prepare for your interview. There's a lot more than you think. You need to obviously prepare your answers to figure out what they're going to ask you and figure out your answers to those things. You're going to have to think through those pretty typical interview questions and your answer to that. You're going to want to research the company and be prepared to answer questions about them. But you also need to prepare for kind of what I call the logistical stuff. How are you getting there? What time you need to leave? Things of that nature. So, we'll go over all of those things.
So, let's start with the easiest first, the logistical part. Take a couple minutes and figure out how long it's going to take you to get to the place. Where do you park? Read over any directions they gave you. Do not wait until the morning of. I always give the example of if you are interviewing at a studio in Hollywood, you are going to need to leave extra early because you have to sign in at the guard gate, then you have to find a parking lot or parking spot in their miserable eight-story parking garage, and there will be no spots left. Then you have to walk from the parking garage to wherever their office is on the lot. Now, if you wait till the day of to get in the car and read the instructions from the assistant, you're gonna miss all that. But if you take a couple of minutes beforehand, a couple before, as soon as they send it over, and read through all that, you can prepare accordingly to take stress out of that morning.
Same with your dress. Try on whatever you're wearing for the interview a couple of days before, if possible. You know, make sure does anything need to be ironed? Does everything still fit? Some of us have that one interview suit that we wear no other time. Does it still fit? Are there stains on anything? Doing this ahead will give you the chance to prep everything, make sure it's all ready to go the morning of, and take, once again, stress out of that morning. And then go get copies of your resume made. You need to bring copies with you to the interview, so go get a couple copies made. Don't leave all this until the last day. Prep it all ahead of time.
So, to give great interview answers, you need to do your research. To do this, I suggest setting aside some time. Like, literally schedule it. Grab a pen, grab a notebook, grab your laptop. Yeah, it's on my lap. Couldn't see it, could you? Go where you work best. So, if you work well at a coffee shop with all the noise around you, go there. Just make sure they have Wi-Fi. If you work best locked in your room, tucked away at your desk, sit there. Set a timer if it helps and just say, "I only have to do this for an hour." And do it in chunks. But you have to set aside intentional time. Grab all those supplies to go with you. And then make it fun. This could be daunting, and anytime there's a task that feels a little daunting, do what you can to make it fun. So, put on that Spotify playlist you love if you are a good music person. Grab your favorite drink. If you want to get the big Frappuccino, dark chocolate mocha, whatever. Great. If you're a kombucha person, is anyone also a kombucha person? It's just me. I'm obsessed right now. If you're a kombucha person, grab your kombucha. Have some sort of treat to make this a more pleasant experience. Maybe burn a good candle, something like that. Well, no, what if you're at the coffee shop? But you got me.
Once you're all set up, research the company first. Now, once again, this should not take you forever. And I had someone once say, "Well, I just haven't had any time to research the company." And I made them walk me through their schedule. You need like 15-20 minutes. You're not writing a research paper, but we need some time to research the company. Go on their about page, read their mission statement, read who they are. Look up the higher-ups and see what's said about them. Go on their social media, see what they've been talking about lately. Have they been promoting anything in particular? Google them and Google News search them, see if they've been in the news for anything lately. And then research the people you're meeting with. Go on LinkedIn and look up the company page there, as well as try and look up anyone in the department you're going to be meeting with. See if you have anything in common. And please don't, please jot down notes on all these things. This is why you brought the notebook and pen so that you can jot down notes. Don't think you're gonna read through all this and be like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's all good." Jot down notes. I like to put them on index cards. So, I would have an index card just about their mission and values. I would have an index card just about the person I'm meeting with. But it really helps you get some sense of who the company is. And this information will help you when constructing answers like, "Why do you want to work here?"
Also, side note, just from my communications people, my television people, if it's for something specific, you better have watched, read, listened to that thing. TV is notorious for interviewing people very last minute. So, I was called on a Tuesday to interview for a job on Wednesday on a very specific show to be working on a specific reality show. I'd never watched that show. I got home from my current job at 8 o'clock at night. But you know what I did? Without one hour before I went to sleep, I went and watched an episode of the show. And thank God I did, because what was one of the questions they asked me the next day? "Have you ever seen our show?" Yes, I had. Right. So, you want to make sure you're up on that. So, it fits with the magazine or an online publication, read some of their articles, read their magazine. If it's a podcast, listen to a couple of episodes. Just make sure you're up-to-date on who they are.
Okay, so to prepare your answers for questions and figure out what they're going to ask you, you're going to need the job description. So, hopefully, you saved a copy of it. It's always important. And go through it line by line and see what they're asking and then how you've had a past experience that matches that qualification that they were looking for. Once again, I like to use note cards for this. So, if it says multitasking, I will put multitasking at the top of a note card and then bullet point times I've multitasked. And then I will use that STAR method to kind of craft that answer to be ready for the situation for any question asked about multitasking. And if you need more on the STAR method, I have a video on how to answer behavioral questions with the STAR method. You can find it here, and I'll put it in the description box below.
Then you want to prepare your answers to those very common questions, the ones that you're pretty much guaranteed to be asked in some form. "Tell me about yourself." "Why do you want to work here?" "What's your biggest strength?" "What's your biggest weakness?" Things of that nature. Be thinking about your answers to those. Craft those on cards as well. And then you want to practice all these. Practice, practice, practice. My biggest tip to anyone for interviewing, if you listen to nothing else, is do not let the first time you say those words be in the room. It's very hard to answer these questions and have them flow well. And while you're not going to know what an interviewer is going to ask you, that's basically impossible, you want to be as prepared as possible. So, by practicing these answers over and over until they flow and they still sound like you, you don't want to sound like a robot. As long as you get to that point, you're good. So, make sure you're practicing.
And then don't forget, you need to come up with the questions you're going to ask at the end of the interview when they say, "Do you have any questions for us?" Yes, you do. So, be thinking about those as well. And if you need help coming up with those or figuring out what those questions should be, oh my gosh, I have a video for that too. You can find it here, and I'll link that below as well.
That is it. To recap, you want to prepare your logistics, as well as researching the company, going through the job description to figure out what stories you should be ready to tell using the STAR method, and then coming up with your answers to those common interview questions, as well as figuring out what questions you're going to ask at the end of the interview. If you do all these things, you're going to be so good to go and so well-prepared the day of the interview. Now, we're good.
If you need more help with interviewing, I have a whole interview playlist for you below. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already. Hit that like button if you like these types of videos. Hit the notification bell if you want to know when new videos come out. And if you have any friends who are interviewing right now, please share this video with them as well, so you can all get great jobs and go live it up together afterwards with your new salaries. That makes sense. Anyways, that's it for today. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.