5 Ways To Build Confidence For An Interview

The interview is one component of the job seeking process that most people love to hate.

While it serves as a sign from the employer that you are being strongly considered for a position, it also can be a source of angst for candidates who fear they’ll make mistakes that will cut them out of the running.

A great way to overcome the anxiety interviews produce is to begin feeling good about the process.

Need help getting there? Here are five ways to build confidence for an interview.

1. Conduct Research

One great way to build your interviewing confidence is by conducting plenty of research on the company you’re applying with and the position it’s offering. A common question interviewers ask is, “Do you know anything about our company?” Most times, candidates are forced to answer “No.”

If you’re able to share the company’s background information and showcase knowledge of its future goals for the position in question, you’ll undoubtedly catch the interviewer off-guard, in a great way!

2. Locate Sample Interview Questions

There are many sample interview questions floating around the Internet that can help you gauge the types of questions you could be asked. Take time to review those questions—and come up with great answers—to ensure the actual interview flows fluidly.

3. Practice Often

A great way to build your confidence for the interview is to practice before the big day. You can do this by answering questions in front of the mirror to read your own facial expressions and body language, or have a friend act as the interviewer to help you simulate the actual environment.

4. Make Sure You Have No “Skeletons”

An important step in preparing for your interview is being able to recall your own career history and discuss prospective goals with the company and in your professional life as a whole.

But as you look back over your career, be sure to research yourself online to ensure there are no skeletons on the Internet that could be brought up in your interview.

Remember, companies conduct background checks often via search engines, so it’s up to you to ensure your social networking profiles are professional, or private.

5. Decide What The Job Is Worth

You may assume that this tip refers to the amount you expect to be paid for the position. In fact, you may be asked about salary expectations, so it’s good to prepare an answer.

But aside from salary, it’s important to decide whether the job is worth handing over your password to a social networking site or other personal site, something that has become a trend for some employers.

Do you feel that sharing private information is worth it? Give this some thought before arriving at the interview.

In addition to taking the above steps, it’s great to find a professional outfit you feel comfortable wearing. Feeling good in your clothes and knowing you’ve fully prepared can work wonders in boosting your confidence before the big day.

4 Red Flags Employers Watch For On Cover Letters

The cover letter gives you the chance to express that you’re a professional and that you have the skills the employer is seeking. When you don’t send a cover letter with your resume, it can be interpreted as you’re not that serious about the job – that it’s not even worth your time and effort to include a greeting that will put your information in context to the employer’s need.

The cover letter is particularly important if your resume raises red flags when reviewed on its own. Things like a lengthy period of unemployment or no specialized training for a job that requires it needs some explaining to alleviate concern.

So, here’s what you need to be watchful of in your cover letter so that it works effectively with your resume.

1. You didn’t customize.

Like the resume, your cover letter needs to be customized and speak directly to the employer’s need. It shouldn’t simply say, “I’m interested in the job and here’s my resume for review.” If you’re going to do that, then it’s the same as not sending a cover letter at all. Speak of your knowledge in the business, what you know about that employer, and how your experience and skills can contribute to the employer – provide highlights from your resume.

2. You left important questions unanswered.

Clearly, there are some things on the resume that may raise a red flag and if they go unexplained, the hiring manager will not take a chance on you, but just move on to the next candidate. Consider things like periods of unemployment, lack of degree or certification, frequent job changes, or a change in direction of career that may require more information. The point is not to over-explain, but to touch on the subject in short to offer reason that will alleviate potential concern. For example, you may have taken a year off from work to care for a newborn or sick parent.

3. You didn’t proofread.

Your cover letter is a reflection of your professionalism. If it’s filled with misspellings or poor grammar, the employer will be left to believe you are careless – a direct reflection of how you may perform on the job.

4. You didn’t follow directions.

Many employers will leave specific directions in the job posting for applicants to follow. It can be as simple as including XYZ in the subject line when your email message is serving as the cover letter, to including your salary requirement or providing an answer to a question. Since many employers get more applicants than they need, any one applicant who fails to follow directions is an automatic strike out.

The cover letter is another opportunity to promote and share your qualifications, so take the time to produce one that is polished and speaks directly to the employer’s need as well as addresses specific requests.

3 Things To Do After An Interview

If you’ve been lucky enough to land an interview and survived it, you know what I’m going to talk about: the waiting game. We’ve all had to endure this at some point in our job seeking careers. We stare at our computer screens all day with our e-mail Inboxes open, we check our phones every five minutes (sometimes even less than that), we even check our regular mail boxes – you know, just in case.

Regardless of what we do while we wait for that acceptance or rejection, doing any of the aforementioned will only stress you out.

What To Do After An Interview

It’s important to remember no matter what the outcome of your employer’s response, your skills are valuable and you have plenty to offer. Spending your time doing the things that reaffirm your many talents should be your focus when waiting the hear back from a potential employer. Here are the best things to do after an interview:

1. Keep Looking

Just because you’ve had the interview, you know you’ve done well, and now you’re waiting to hear back from your interviewer, doesn’t mean you should stop looking for work. We are not out of recession just yet.

Looking for work is also a good way to note some additional things employers include in their job descriptions, which could be beneficial when writing your cover letters and preparing for future interviews in your job industry. Do you meet those demands? Do you acquire the skills the company is looking for? Great, now go back and revamp that cover letter!

2. Network

According to recruiting information website, ERE.net, “referrals accounted for 28 percent of the external hires last year.” Knowing people in your industry can only benefit you as a job seeker, and even as an employed individual.

Look for job fairs in your area and try networking with people in your industry there, use social media to build an online presence with potential employers, follow-up with some of the networking contacts you already have to strengthen your relationship with them. Whatever your networking tactics are, keep building and enhancing those contacts to further establish yourself as a professional.

3. Work On Personal Projects

You can’t fortify your skills if you don’t use them, plain and simple. So, while you’re waiting for X employer to get back to you, why not work on something you love? If you’re a writer, start working on that book you’ve always wanted to publish. If you’re an educator, find some schools you can volunteer at and tutor the young minds of our country.

If you’re a painter, whip out those brushes and bring that blank canvas to life. Whatever your passion is take some personal time to develop it and make it your own. It’s better than stressing out about whether you got the job or not, right?

The next time you find yourself agonizing over an employer’s response, try not to think about the outcome and start focusing on how you can be a master of your skills.

5 Ways To Deal With An Incompetent Boss

To make sure we’re on the same page about dealing with an incompetent boss and not just a way to be nasty about your bad boss, let’s get on the same page. An incompetent person is someone who is functionally inadequate or insufficient in knowledge, skills, judgment, or strength.

If this is what you’re talking about then you’re right, they are incompetent. It happens. In other words, the boss doesn’t know squat about being a manager and probably knows little to nothing about the area of work you do.

While it can be frustrating to have an incompetent boss, an incompetent boss can seriously damage or derail your career. If they do have a serious lack of knowledge, we know that they can do nothing to grow you as an employee which means any growth will be yours to make happen. Let’s look at the potential damage they can inflict and what you can do to minimize or avoid.

Career Impact:

Bad decisions – Because they don’t know your work, the decisions they make can have an impact they are clueless about. They lack insight and understanding. This means the impact to you can range from cleaning up a mess to putting you in a position that makes you look like you tanked the business. It can make you lose precious time and focus or even get fired.

Bad direction – We look for our boss to provide direction in the form of “how to” all the way to yearly planning. When the boss is incompetent, their directions can be bad or pointless often leaving important issues untouched.

Bad support – Our boss can be the single biggest supporter of our career trajectory but if they are clueless about the nature of your work, they may be supporting either the wrong things or person. You can’t expect them to really know or understand if you’re delivering well. They may be a roadblock to your career or simply no help.

When you have an incompetent boss, you do have to think through how this person functions in order to use whatever strengths they do have to your advantage or minimally avoid career limiting outcomes. Let’s look at some of the things you can do to prevail with an incompetent boss:

1. ‘Up Level’ yourself.

In other words, leadership can come from you. If you know your area well enough, there is no reason to not go ahead creating and pursuing a direction you know will achieve results good for your company. People that do this are naturally followed by their peers as an informal leader. Management, although maybe not your direct boss, will notice your initiative. Of course, you don’t want to do something that undermines the boss, so keep them in the loop.

2. Figure out the problem spots.

The boss’s incompetence is annoying, but it usually impacts you and others in specific ways. Try to observe what those are and make a plan to counteract the problem. I once had an incompetent boss; the biggest issue was that he would sometimes make decisions for the group I managed that were ill considered and negatively impacted the company.

I sat down with him and asked if I could either be involved in those decision discussions or to direct the person asking to me directly. It mostly worked. There were times when that direction simply wasn’t possible, but people soon learned that they needed to come to me for good decisions. We worked around the problem.

3. Teach th.em.

Every time you speak to your boss you have an opportunity to train and teach them about your area. It seems kind of ludicrous to train your boss, but the ongoing investment will be worth it once they are savvy enough to know what you’re talking about.

4. Look for a mentor.

Just because your boss doesn’t bring much in the way of growth doesn’t mean there isn’t someone in your place of business that can be good for your career. Look around for someone at a higher level who is sharp and going places with some type of a good connection to you. Ask them to be your mentor. It will be flattering to them and helpful to you to have someone helping you and in your corner.

5. Leave.

Sometimes it’s better for your career to leave rather than try to stick it out. If you’ve tried several things and there is no improvement, it may be time for you to pursue something else. This kind of situation can be damaging to both you personally and your career.

While an incompetent boss can be annoying and frustrating, they aren’t the worse kind of boss to have – unless they are nicely packaged with other short comings like being a jerk or tossing you under the train for sport. Many times you can make up for their short comings and also “manage up” as they know innately that they lack many skills and knowledge. Don’t let your frustration get in the way of managing the situation more effectively.

How To Effectively Demonstrate Your Value In A Job Interview

When you’re looking for a new job, you need to provide specific concrete examples of the competencies listed on a job description – whether it is problem solving, influencing, taking initiative, or managing change.

What a lot my interview coaching clients do is to either give quite generic examples or just talk about what they’ve done – but without mentioning specific accomplishments.

Do you feel that this describes you? You are probably very good at your job and could do it with your eyes closed. Yet, you struggle to demonstrate your expertise effectively in a job interview.

Here are a few tips to help you overcome any blocks you might have about talking about your achievements:

Get over the idea that you’re bragging.

One of the reasons candidates shy away from talking about their accomplishments is because they don’t want to sound arrogant. However, the job interview isn’t the time to be too humble. Talking about your accomplishments and using facts and numbers isn’t bragging – it’s telling a story.

You have to remember that a potential employer wants you to do well in an interview – they are literally looking for an excuse to give out the job! So tell them what they need in a clear, factual manner.

Use STAR or CAR format when giving examples.

STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) or CAR (Challenge, Action, Result)

Prepare a few examples of how you’ve solved problems, and dealt with different challenges and failures of what you’ve achieved using the above format.

Use numbers to your advantage.

Numbers are great for demonstrating your skills and expertise. Did you increase revenue, or save time/money? Did you improve a procedure and, if so, how much time did you save? How many clients did you win in your last job?

Don’t just tell the employer what the result was – tell them how you got the result and what your decision making process was.

Prepare several examples for your next job interview and you’ll significantly increase your chances of getting that job offer!

How To Present Your Strengths Effectively During An Interview

Throughout your career search, you will (hopefully) have the opportunity to showcase your candidacy in multiple job interviews. Considering it takes an average of seven interviews to win one job offer, it’s imperative that your performance is exceptional enough to propel you to the next level. How can you best present your strengths during an interview to earn a call-back?

Let’s concentrate on three key ways you can present your strengths effectively during an interview.

1. Begin the interview with a stellar “Tell me about yourself” reply:

Even if you’re never asked this question directly, you will find an opportunity to introduce your background to the interviewer early in the discussion. The ideal way to do so is with a one- to two-minute summary of your:

• Scope of experience: Give the interviewer a succinct overview of the breadth and depth of your work history.
• Career brand: Describe your career brand in a few sentences. The key is to focus attention on the elements of your background that make your candidacy stand out.
• Leadership style: If you are applying for management or executive roles, make sure you briefly describe your leadership style. If you are not, focus on your communication style instead. In either case, give the interviewer the opportunity to see you through the eyes of those you’ve worked with in the past.
• Personality: Select 1 to 2 exceedingly well-though-out adjectives to describe your personality.
• Pedigree credentials: Have you worked for industry-leading firms or completed sought-after specializations? Have you earned a degree from a well-respected institution? These kinds of credentials are part of your brand and deserve to be highlighted early in the interview.
• History of impacts: A critical part of your brand is the sum total of the impacts you’ve had on employers you’ve worked with throughout your career. If you’re in sales, for example, it might be the total amount of sales you’ve generated career-long. If you’re in an executive role, it may be the total revenue you’ve influenced and/or the total cost savings you’ve generated career-long.

Sharing these kinds of big picture details early in the interview helps make sure that you have conveyed the most important elements of your candidacy early on. It also helps “seed” the interview with things you would like the interviewer to ask you more about, which in essence allows you to gently guide them toward key facets of your brand.

2. Prove your value via behavior-based success stories:

The most popular form of questions asked by recruiters and employers these days call for a storytelling response. Known as behavior-based interviewing, this style of questioning asks you to prove your capabilities by describing past examples.

When writing resumes and other career communications tools, career management professionals refer to these stories by an acronym such as PAR/CAR, which stands for problem, situation or challenge | actions | results. The idea is simple: Prove your skill by telling your listeners about a problem you faced on the job, describing how you resolved it, and noting the specific quantifiable results you achieved.

The smart job seeker will prepare six to eight success stories in this format and practice relating each one to different questions. For example, a success story about your turnaround of a team could be used to document your leadership, change management, and strategic planning strengths by emphasizing different aspects of your actions or results.

If you invested in getting your resume written by a professional, then you already have some success stories defined. This means you can use your resume as an “agenda” for the interview:

• Comb through each phrase and sentence of your resume to ensure you are prepared to answer any and all questions raised by interviews.
• Expand on the bulleted achievements noted in your resume by crafting verbal versions of them to share in your job interview.
• Include journalistic details in your interview success stories by telling your listener what you did, how you did it, why it was necessary, when you did it, and who you did it for/with.

3. Use visuals to demonstrate the match between the company’s needs and your strengths:

A great way to showcase your strengths in an interview is to share a PowerPoint or other slideshow that highlights your experience, brand, and value in eight to ten slides. By leveraging charts, graphs, diagrams, and succinct facts you can prove your prospective value to the interviewer in ways that will set your candidacy apart from other job seekers.

• Prove the match between you and the job at hand by summarizing their needs and the qualifications they seek with your strengths and experience.
• Keep your bullets and text crisp and to-the-point. Say more with fewer words.
• Use color to highlight your message rather than detract from it.

If you’re interviewing with a group of people, see if you can arrange to present your slideshow during your interview. If that’s not possible or you’re being interviewed by one person, it’s fine to offer slide handouts instead – just make sure you still present your slides verbally so you can stress the points you think are most critical to drive home.

As you can see, there are myriad ways a job seeker can highlight their strengths during an interview. With a little reflection and a bit of preparation time, you can sell your strengths via polish, proof, and practice.

How To Turn Your Internship Into Full-Time Employment

Your internship can be a great way to gain experience, meet networking contacts, and prove your worth to an employer. It can also be the necessary foot in the door to land a full-time position at the organization.

Wondering how you can turn your internship into a full-time gig? Here’s how:

Ask For Feedback On A Regular Basis

Although you don’t want to cross the line into being annoying, it’s important to have a grasp on your strengths and weaknesses by getting feedback from your boss.

Go Above And Beyond Your Job Description

Show that you’re always thinking ahead by anticipating others’ questions and needs. Do more than is expected of you to stand out among other intern candidates. Volunteer for additional projects when you can, and be flexible with your schedule for a chance to impress the team by staying late or coming in early.

Taking on additional tasks, being flexible, and thinking ahead shows your dedication to your role and helps your supervisor and co-workers view you as an integral part of the team.

Be Consistent

Always maintain focus and discipline while at work – and avoid distractions such as text messaging or checking social networks.

Record Your Accomplishments

After you’ve finished a task or a project, write down any accomplishments you’ve had. Showing that you can produce results is a great way to move up at the company.

Act Like You’re A Full-Timer

Show up with an eager, positive attitude each day. Come in early and be the last intern to leave. Dress at least one step above your current position. Take pride in each project you are assigned and ensure it’s your best work before handing it in.

Secure A Mentor Within The Organization

Moving up is much easier if you have someone to lean on for advice and insight.

Have A Solid Grasp On The Company

Know what the organization needs and how you can fill those needs. Understand each product or service. Get to know the clients and customers the best you can. Learning this vital information will not only make you do your job better – you’ll have a clear understanding of how you can move up in the organization, too.