3 Changes You Need To Make to Improve Your Job Interview

By Chris Delaney

 

If you find yourself failing in job interviews, your interview mistakes, the reason you are not receiving more job offers, will fall into one of these 3 categories.

Category 1; The Confidence Killer. Public speaking and job interviews rate as one of the highest phobias and fears. Prior to the job interview a drop in confidence creates a drop in preparation. This interview procrastination kills your interview as you are under preferred and overwhelmed.

When thinking about a forthcoming job interview,  a lack of confidence changes how you perceive the impending job interview, with most visualising themselves failing, making mistakes and looking stupid. This negative outlook increases anxiety and stops you preparing and practicing your interview presentations, questions and answers.

Category 2; No Unique Features. Often applicants feel because of there number of years in the sector they are entitled to the position or at least have a good chance of being offered the job. Everyone who is offered an interview has met the job criteria and in most cases will have similar experience, skills and qualifications.

This complacency blocks the interviewee from selling themselves throughout the job interview as they believe “It will be there loss!” Having a unique selling point, as well as meeting the job criteria, creates an attractive package. The job applicant has to remember that the interviewer only knows the selling points that you mention throughout the job interview.

Category 3; Answers with No Beginning or End. The way answers to interview questions are structured and communicated, makes a real difference in the impact on the interviewer. A generic interview answer creates disinterest, an answer that goes on and on turns interviewers off and an interview answer with no structure creates confusion.

If your interview style falls into one or more of these 3 categories you will find that you rarely receive positive feedback from employers. To be offered more positions, change your interview style and improve your interview performance following these 3 simple steps:

 

Improve Your Interview Step 1: Create Confidence By Killing Anxiety

When you think about anything that scares you; public speaking, presentations, board meetings and job interviews you feel the associated panic. You don’t have to be in the situation for real to be scared, just the thought of a job interview as an example can trigger anxiety.

As a hypnotherapist I work with clients to cure them of interview phobias. I have found that once you delete anxiety or other negative emotions associated with job interviews, clients begin to feel more positive. Here is a quick exercise that will help you control and delete your interview fear, allowing you to increase your job interview confidence.

Step 1 – think of a upcoming job interview (this will be created as a negative visualisation in your minds eye)
Step 2 – as you watch this negative internal movie of you at a job interview performing badly, you will feel the negative associated emotions; fear and anxiety. Concentrate on these emotions, and imagine them as a spinning feeling inside of you
Step 3 – give the spinning feeling a colour 
Step 4 – imagine seeing this spinning colour and imagine pushing the spinning feeling outside your body, so you can see it spinning in front of you
Step 5– Flip the spinning feeling back on itself, so it spins in the oppsit direction and spin it faster and faster until it starts to change colour
Step 6 – Push this new feeling back inside yourself and spin it faster and faster and you will notice you your associated emotions have changed and become more positive

Improve Your Interview Step 2: Create Desire Through a Unique Selling Point 

 

When shopping we all have one thing in common we all want more for our money. This is why a “sale” is a massive pull for shoppers, or why we are more likely to buy goods that come with additional free extras.

The interview is a sales pitch and the interviewer is essentially your customer. You make a pitch if they like what they hear and you offer more then the other applicants you will be offered the position.

In the job interview you have to be seen by the interviewer as a better applicant then the rest of the interviewees. To be offered the position you need to offer the interview more then what they want, additional extras, you need to sell yourself through a unique selling point. If you were offered two cars for the same price, which car would you take? Car 1 – standard model or Car 2 standard model plus free insurance, free satnav and free petrol for 1 year?
Its a no brainer. the same process can be used in the job interview. Show the employer how you meet the job criteria and then offer additional benefits. What skill, quality or experience do you possess that others don’t? What can you bring to the team that will make a real impact? How will your experience and work ethic make an difference in terms of quality, productivity or profits?

 

Improve Your Interview Step 3: Create Interest Using An Interview Answer Structure

 

Most people answer an interview question without first thinking about the structure of their answer.

Their nerves and anxiety create fast paced, waffling (or short) answers that don’t highlight there unique selling point.

By structuring a job interview answer you can create intrigue, want and desire. You first need to open your question powerfully so the employer wants to listen to the body of your answer. To do this answer the question directly, if asked “have you used X system before?” answer “Yes, I have over 10 years experience implementing X system in a number of...” By stating how you are highly experienced/skilled in the criteria relating to the asked question the employer will want to hear more.

The body of your answer, for most interview questions should give a real life experience or story “...an example of this is when I....” here you can add lots of selling points to create intrigue and desire. And finally build on this by explain how you will implement this skill in the employer workplace “....this same system which saved my current employer 10% in overhead cost could easily be implemented in your factory...” 

Many interviewees state facts when answering questions. For some questions, this is fine, but in the main you need to give real examples. When you hear a story you visualise the plot and every visualisation has an emotional attachment. When you explain how you were able to achieve success in their business, the employer will feel this emotion and associate the positive feelings onto you – the employer will have a positive gut feeling about hiring you.

Chris Delaney is an Interview Coach and author of The 73 Rules for Influencing the Interview using Psychology, NLP and Hypnotic Persuasion Techniques. Contact Chris on Google+

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