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Interview Strategy

Interview Strategy

For your first few interviews, or at least until you are feeling very comfortable, focus your efforts on remaining calm and collected. Listen carefully to what the interviewer is saying and respond promptly and thoroughly to his/her questions. Do not try too hard. If you have been practising your responses, you should be able to offer appropriate answers without too much difficulty.

Once you begin to feel more confident about interviewing you may wish to think strategically about each interview. One effective tactic is to adjust your speed of speech to match that of the interviewer. People tend to talk at the speed at which they like to be spoken to. If you can adjust your speech rate to that of the interviewer without sounding unnatural, he/she will probably feel more comfortable (after all, interviewing others isn't much fun, either) and have a more favorable impression of you.

Another strategy is to adapt your answers to match the type of company for which you are interviewing. For example, if you are interviewing for a job at a large product marketing company that emphasises group decision-making and spends much of its energy focused on battles for market share with its competitors, you might want to talk about how much you enjoy team sports - especially being part of a team and competing to win.

When filling professional career positions, few companies will make a job offer after only one interview. Usually, the purpose of the first interview is to narrow down the field of applicants to a small number of very promising candidates. During the first meeting, then, the ideal strategy is to stand out from a large field of competitors in a positive way. The best way to do this is to subtly emphasise one of your key, distinctive strengths as much as possible throughout the interview.

During later interviews, the competition for the position will drop off and employers will tend to look not for strengths, but for weaknesses. At this point you should focus on presenting yourself as a well-balanced choice for the position. You will want to listen carefully to the interviewer's questions so you can determine her underlying concerns and try to dispel them.