Second part of this serie: I’ve been looking for a job. First part is here.
I didn’t want to do the phone interview. On the phone and in English, I was scared. But well, I had no choice and I had to do it. I prepared this first interview, then a second one. Two weeks after I met the people for real this time. And a finale interview. Now I can do a constructive feedback about what happened. Here they are my 10 recommendations to succeed in a job interview.
#1. Prepare the job interview. You may think that it’s obvious, but I needed to learn to talk about my previous job in 2 minutes, not being too chatty, being accurate and interesting. I tried to avoid saying stuff, things and yeah, you know what I mean. Well I had to rehearse.
#2. Feel comfortable even if it’s a phone interview. Even if it was a phone interview, I get dressed. I shut the windows to there was no noise from the streets, but the room was now too warm, so I ran to the kitchen for a glass of water. But while running I thought that I had to be careful not to fall (it always happened in the worse cases). I wrote a note on a Post-it to fell good: Smile and speak slowly. So I smiled to my Post-it. I switch on my computer, switch off gmail, facebook and twitter to stay focus. I thought that I needed to turn off my phone to not be disturb, but then I realized that it had to be on or nobody could call me. I felt very clever. I waited, and then the phone rang.
#3. Be yourself, but not too much.
#4. Don’t joke around. Don’t. Even. Try.
#5. Look nice.
#6. Avoid the silence, but don’t be too chatty.
#7. Be prepared to the last question: “Do you have any question”. You can’t say “no”.
#8. Find the right outfit.
#9. Negociate as much as you can. After that, it will be too late.
#10. Try hard. As we say in French, be like a mussel attached to its rock.
Pitié, faites que je n’ai pas l’air d’avoir trop la dalle…
I loved thia article of Life Hacker: Get Hired. It really helped me. And I laughed reading The Oatmeal.
