Acing your next interview now means that when you want (or need) to find a, you have all your bases covered.
If you’re happily employed, especially in today’s job market, you have a lot to be grateful for. Beyond the obvious benefits, you also have a unique opportunity to prepare yourself for your next interview, should the need arise.
Losing a job, whether unexpectedly or not, is incredibly stressful. In fact, job loss ranks among the top 10 most stressful life events a person can experience. When combined with the additional challenges that often arise as a direct result, the situation can feel overwhelming.
People in this situation often say their confidence has hit an all-time low. They’re overwhelmed with intense anger and grief, and family tensions are running high. In moments of helplessness and desperation, emotions can drive crucial decisions, making them more vulnerable to scams. It can feel like everything in their lives is spiraling out of control.
Why worry about acing your next job interview now?
Preparing for your next job interview now means that if you need (or want) to find a new job tomorrow, you’ll be ready. By covering your bases ahead of time, you can minimize the additional stress that often comes with life’s already challenging moments.
Acing your next job interview means covering these bases:
- Being clear of your market worth
- Having an updated resume
- Knowing your own strengths and weakness
- Staying abreast of desirable soft and hard skills
- Being skilled at interviewing
- Knowing how to converse on video
Trying to master these basics when your next job interview is fast approaching is challenging enough. But attempting to do so while you’re also going through one of life’s most stressful times can be a recipe for disaster.
As the old saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.
Be clear of your market worth
Think about your current salary. Are you being paid what you’re truly worth? Many people aren’t sure—they just hope they are. Some are clear on their value and are getting paid accordingly. But many others have a sense of what they deserve, yet don’t know how to achieve it. This is something you need to understand!
Now, imagine you’re six months into a layoff, and you finally land a job interview. The recruiter asks about your salary expectations. Instead of having a clear salary range in mind, you might find yourself thinking:
Just pay me! I need a ton of money to catch up, but right now I just need to start working before I fall even further behind. Nervously, you ask for $50,000, hoping you don’t come across as greedy. It feels like so much money at this moment!
Lo and behold, they accept! But then you discover your true market value is $80,000. Sure, your mortgage is paid, but how happy are you now? (No need to say it out loud.)
“Your pay is based on two things and two things alone – your value in the job market and what you will accept.”
Ash Norton
When you go into a job interview with a clear number or range, things go differently than they did in the above scenario. Here’s why:
- No matter how stressed you are by a recent layoff, you are giving the same answer you would give if you didn’t feel stressed. That’s because your answer is based on intelligence, not guessing and desperation.
- Because you know what you’re worth, you convey utmost confidence, even for “someone without a job.” You might feel lousy at the moment, but you can trust yourself to respond on automatic pilot because you’re informed.
- You will probably get what you ask (or close) because you knew before you applied what the position was worth, based on your homework. This keeps you from wasting time applying for ANY position beneath your pay grade from the start.
The time to determine your market worth is now. Start by spending three hours on initial research, then take half an hour every six months to update it. Be sure to date and document your findings in your Handy-Dandy Notebook—also known as your Career Journal.
Finding your worth
There are plenty of free resources available to help you determine your market worth, and it’s important to use several of them in your research. Finding your true value isn’t as simple as just entering your job title and city into a site like Salary.com and getting a number.
Your job title is just one small factor in determining your market worth, and on its own, it’s practically meaningless. Think about how many people on LinkedIn have the title CEO—millions, maybe even gazillions. But do they all have the same market value? Of course not. A CEO of a major public corporation has vastly different responsibilities than a CEO running a tiny company. If you rely on title alone, everything looks the same, but the realities are far from equal.
To begin, you need to determine your market value based on your responsibilities. Consider how much time you spent training for or learning each one, followed by the years of experience you have in performing them. Factor in how often you carry out each responsibility and assess your level of proficiency. Finally, think about whether you can prove any accomplishments you’ve achieved through each responsibility.
I hope you’re beginning to see why understanding your market worth is so important, and why now is the time to figure it out—rather than waiting until your next interview is looming and you’re desperately in need of a job!
Find your market worth, enter it in your Career Journal, along with how you came up with the number. Review this every six months, and make necessary changes.
Keep an up-to-date resume
When was the last time you updated your resume? You’ve been with Acme Company for 12 years and haven’t looked at it since? Good grief. Get that resume out now and give it a good look.
Now, imagine that after several years with Acme, you get laid off. You’re stressed. Can you recall everything you’ve accomplished at that company? I’m not talking about just what you did—because doing is not the same as accomplishing. Tell me about your achievements. Remember, it only counts as an achievement if it benefited your team or company.
Companies care about one thing: results. Anything not producing results is irrelevant.
Remember that week you spent hours creating beautiful social media images that only got 50 clicks? Unfortunately, that wasn’t an accomplishment. But that 25-second comment you made on your company’s LinkedIn account that brought in 1,200 likes, 40 shares, 90 comments, and 75 new page followers? That’s an accomplishment. The difference? End results. Companies care about one thing: results. Anything that doesn’t produce results is irrelevant. (Sad, but true.)
Now, years later, you’ve forgotten about that quick comment. But luckily, you recorded notes about your high-engagement posts in your Career Journal—not just in your company’s database—so retrieving those metrics for your resume was a breeze.
Know your strengths and weaknesses
Who knows you better than you do, right? So, when a hiring manager asks about your greatest strengths and weaknesses during an interview, will you be ready to answer this properly?
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Although they’re none of anyone’s business, they will ask you about them and need to be ready to answer properly. Will you be able to do that on a dime during a most stressful time in your life?
Use your Career Journal to write them down, along with examples, and review them quarterly so you are ready for the hot seat.
Which strengths and weaknesses should you prepare?
Let me start by telling you that trying to disguise a strength as a weakness to make yourself look good is a bad move. Hiring managers have seen it all before, and it makes them cringe when a strong candidate sabotages their interview with such a tired tactic. (So, avoid saying your weakness is that you work too hard or care too much about your job, etc.)
To identify the best strengths and weaknesses to share during a job interview, it’s crucial to understand the position and the company culture. Even if you’re not actively job hunting, the next best thing is to practice as if you are.
To know which strengths and weaknesses to share during a job interview, you need to understand the position and the individual company culture.
If you were job hunting, what position would you be aiming for? Find a few job ads that closely match your ideal role. Print them out and add them to your Career Journal. Highlight the qualifications, as well as the soft and hard skills each job requires, and use those as a guide for your own preparation.
Why not pick something unrelated, so no matter what you say, you come out ahead? Because managers don’t care about strengths and weaknesses that have nothing to do with the job. They want to know that you’re aware of a weakness relevant to the role, how you recognized it, what steps you’re taking to improve, and how that process is going.
Once you’ve made your selections, write out your answers for each strength and weakness in your Career Journal, and commit them to memory. At the very least, ensure you’re able to recall the process during your next job interview, so you’re not caught off guard by nervousness or stress.
Stay current on desirable hard and soft skills
To begin, using the same job ads you printed out, make note of the desired hard and soft skills required. Understand why they emphasize each of them. Identify the ones you have, and those you don’t, and need to upskill.
Next, identify the skills most valued in your industry. For example, if you’re in customer service, there are some essential skills that apply across the board. However, a customer service agent for a retail giant needs a specific set of skills, while a customer service agent for a mental health facility requires a different set. Similarly, a customer service agent in a collections company needs yet another skill set. While all of these roles involve connecting with customers, the reasons for those connections vary greatly, and so do the necessary skills. Make sure you understand what these skills are and that you possess them.
Some skills are required regardless of profession or industry. Good communication, for example. Learn what these are and upskill if necessary.
Some skills are universally valued by employers, regardless of profession or industry—good communication, for example. Identify what these skills are and upskill if necessary to ensure you’re ready. Be sure to keep track of all this in your Career Journal.
Upskilling
If you discover you’re lacking a skill or two, now is the perfect time to catch up. There are plenty of online resources available to help you do this, many of which are free. Depending on your profession, earning certificates to showcase your efforts can be valuable—both for your LinkedIn profile and to include in your Career Journal.
Webinars, seminars, college courses, and professional associations are other great ways to upskill. Take advantage of these resources while you have a few “extra” dollars and are not under the stress of urgently needing a job. There’s no time like the present, as they say.
Be a skilled interviewee
Are you skilled at interviewing? Most people aren’t. One reason is that they confuse being skilled with being rehearsed.
Rehearsing is an important part of building job interview skills, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. If all someone does is rehearse before an interview, they might come across to a hiring manager like a B-rated actor: insincere, inauthentic, cringeworthy, and just not that likable. This happens because they haven’t learned to self-regulate well enough to manage their nerves, which can negatively impact their interview performance.
Someone with strong job interview skills possesses three key elements that hiring managers look for and are eager to hire. In order of importance, they are:
- Likability
- Body language
- Preparedness
Likability
Kind of subjective, right? Not necessarily.
“Likability is not an inherent quality. It can be developed. You as a job seeker can actually learn to be likable. And it’s not just about being ‘nice,’ or ‘charming’ or ‘friendly.’ Likability involves knowing that there are certain qualities to abandon.” (Fast Company)
While likability can be developed, it’s true that it comes more easily to some than others. That’s why practice and rehearsal are so important. In a rehearsal, like a mock job interview, you learn much more than just the “right answers” to certain questions.
Because every hiring manager is different, there are no perfect answers. It’s all about building rapport. For instance, likable people:
They are active listeners. They don’t interrupt or finish others’ sentences. Instead, they validate others’ thoughts and feelings. They nod their heads and say “mmm hmmm” during a conversation to show they’re paying attention. They also repeat parts of what they hear to confirm their understanding.
They practice good business etiquette. They show respect toward those in authority. (This doesn’t necessarily mean they respect them as individuals; they simply acknowledge the difference in position and show deference because of it.)
When they meet someone, they smile, make eye contact, and offer a firm handshake. They are also presentable. This doesn’t mean being fashionable or having specific physical characteristics—it simply means being clean, neat, and smelling pleasant without being overpowering.
“Likeability during an interview will automatically take you to the next step towards being screened for competency. Once you pass the likeability test, your background and experience are viewed in a more positive light because interviewers naturally tend to be less critical when they like you,” writes Kimberly Thompson on MSN.com.
Indeed, if a person isn’t likable, excelling in every other area doesn’t count for much.
Body Language
A significant part of likability is conveyed through body language. Whether in person or online, it’s the first thing a manager notices and processes—your first impression. This includes your smile, of course, but also a range of other cues that unskilled interviewees might overlook or forget once their nerves kick in.
While interviewers understand that candidates may be nervous, it can be frustrating to see someone overwhelmed by their nerves. Fidgeting behaviors like hair touching, face touching, scratching, crossing arms, or shaking a knee or foot are all distracting body language that a skilled interviewer avoids. And, like fear, anxiousness is contagious—your nerves can make the interviewer feel unsettled too.
On the flip side, sitting slouched or acting too casually—like greeting someone with “Hey, how’s it going?”—can be interpreted as not taking the job interview process or the position seriously.
Coming unprepared
There are varying degrees of being unprepared and disorganized. If the likability factor is strong, some mistakes may be overlooked. For example, failing to bring extra copies of your resume or forgetting a pen are signs of disorganization, but an interviewer might excuse them as “just nerves” if they like the candidate.
Other not-so-tolerable areas of failing to prepare include:
- Not having a clear answer about why you want the job can be a dealbreaker. Unless you’re a rare find, don’t expect the hiring manager to sell you on the position. You need to articulate why you want to work with them.
- Failing to demonstrate that you understand what the company is about—its history, mission, values, what they do (business model, goals), and who the key people are—can hurt your chances. Being knowledgeable about these aspects shows that you’ve done your homework and are genuinely interested in the company.
- Not being able to provide clear answers to behavioral questions or discuss your accomplishments in previous jobs can significantly undermine your interview. Hiring managers expect you to be able to articulate your past experiences and successes confidently.
- Not asking thoughtful questions after the interview signals disinterest in the position and suggests that you’re more focused on simply getting hired than on the job itself.
- Not knowing your desired salary or how to negotiate salary and benefits demonstrates inexperience or a lack of confidence.
Being likable
If possible, arrange a mock interview with a friend or family member and have someone record it from the moment you walk in until a few minutes into the conversation. Then, review the recording. While it may not fully replicate an actual interview, you can still learn a lot from it.
How is your body language? What expressions are you using? What’s your overall impression of yourself? Based on just a few brief minutes, would you want to spend more time with someone like you? Document all of this in your Career Journal and note any areas where improvements are needed.
Consider investing in a few professional mock job interviews. According to an IT upskilling site, Clarusway, “Since your mock interview simulates a real job interview, it helps you to learn how to answer specific interview questions and get comfortable with those answers. Additionally, practice interviews help you to develop appropriate strategies for the live interviews by refining your communication skills (especially for non-native English speakers), and reducing your stress by practicing all of the possible scenarios that could come up.”
Keep practicing (and learning) until you master the art of making a likable, great first impression. Start now—don’t wait until you’re in the emotional state we discussed earlier in this article to give yourself a crash course!
Get comfortable talking online
If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s how to make use of technology—especially communicating online with a camera. As a Gen X-er, I’ll be the first to admit this wasn’t comfortable for me. I’ve heard from others my age—especially women—that this was a significant adjustment.
But online interviews, client meetings, and other business functions are here to stay, so I had no choice but to adapt. If you’re someone who still hasn’t needed to converse online in front of a camera, it’s time to start.
Your next job could be remote, meaning most of your meetings will be online. Even company social gatherings might be virtual. And even if they’re not, more and more companies are conducting interviews online rather than in person. You might not meet anyone in person until the final round of interviews—or even after you’re hired.
Remember that likability factor we discussed earlier? You need it online, too. But now, you have to project it through the camera. Even naturally likable people can miss an opportunity if they’re not skilled in online interviewing.
Being likable during an online job interview
Anytime you meet someone, eye contact and a pleasant smile are crucial. On camera, however, you have to “make contact” through the screen. So where should you be looking to ensure you’re making eye contact? This is something you need to know!
Otherwise, your eyes will wander around your monitor, searching for the sweet spot that makes it look like you’re giving eye contact. But from their perspective, your wandering eyes will seem like you’re glancing around the room instead of focusing on them. How would you interpret someone who won’t look you in the eye and seems to be scanning the room? Not very likable, right?
Another potential challenge is seeing ourselves on screen. Whether due to vanity or concern, it’s easy for our eyes to keep darting up to our own image. This is noticeable to the other party and can be distracting. Plus, it can shift your focus if you spot something in your background you wish you’d moved, or if you notice a few hairs out of place that you want to fix.
“A lot of people feel it can be distracting to see themselves on the screen for hours at a time,” writes Suzanne Degges-White Ph.D. “For the more vain among us,” she continues, “they will take special care to make sure the lighting is right, the tilt of the screen just right, and they are wearing their best colors from the waist up. They can actually take a lot of pleasure in admiring their image on the screen. Others of us, though, have a hard time being ‘OK’ with our cameras on and we can feel ‘exposed’ in ways that we don’t normally feel in group situations.”
Getting comfortable online
One way to get comfortable being on camera and learning to ignore your own image is to practice. Start by using a children’s storybook and reading it aloud to yourself in front of the camera, only glancing down long enough to catch the next sentence. (Yes, at first, you’ll hope no one hears or sees you!) If you do this repeatedly, you’ll eventually memorize the book and be able to recite it without looking down.
Record everything you do this so you can review your progress, making notes in your Career Journal.
In a short time, you’ll notice that you stop glancing at your image in the corner. You stop clearing your throat. Your hands relax, and you begin to gesture naturally, just as you would in a comfortable conversation.
You’ll also discover what works best for your hair, clothing colors, background, monitor angle, and more. By the time you have a real conversation (and by now, a job interview will feel more like a conversation), you’ll exude friendliness and confidence, and your focus will be fully on the other person.
And you will be likable.
Wrap Up
With so much ground to cover, can you see why it’s crucial to prepare for a job interview now? I have deep respect for those who are facing the stress of a job loss while trying to tackle these preparations at the same time.
Incidentally, creating your Career Journal will benefit you even in your current job. Knowing your worth, for example, isn’t just useful for landing a new job—it gives you a significant advantage when it comes time to ask for a raise or promotion.
During a performance review, your Career Journal can highlight accomplishments that your supervisor might “accidentally” overlook. You’ll have detailed records, including undeniable metrics, that will boost your confidence by providing clear evidence of the value you bring to the company.
“You aren’t paid what you’re worth; you’re paid what you can negotiate.” —Randstad
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