Written by Samantha Madigan Reading time: 3 mins
One of the key steps to landing your dream job is making sure that you are prepared for your interview. By doing your preparation you’ll feel more in control, have anticipated what questions may come up in the interview and learnt a lot about the company you’re applying for. On top of this you'll come across as cool, calm and collected to your prospective employers!
So how do you make sure you're prepared for your interview? Read the top tips below to help you ace your interview!
Our Top tips
1. Find out the interview format
Make sure that you find out what the format of the interview is and who the interviewer or interviewers will be, this will help you to structure how you prepare for the interview.
2. Research the company and your interviewer/interviewers
Look at the company's website, learn about what they do, their values, customers and anything else that is relevant. If they have a career section see what career development opportunities they offer. Look at profiles on LinkedIn, this is useful to determine who works there, how long they have been at the company, and to get an idea of their background. This can be helpful to establish rapport too - for example, you may have gone to the same university or have connections in common.
3. Read the job specification and be ready with examples to prove you have the required skills
Make sure that you fully understand the responsibilities of the role and what skills/competencies they are looking for, this will help you to prepare a list of examples to use in the interview.
4. Prepare questions for the interview
At the end of your interview the interviewer/interviewers will likely ask if you have any questions for them. It's important to have some prepared questions to demonstrate your genuine interest in the job and the company, as well as reassure the interviewer that you have done your homework. We recommend preparing at least 5 questions, as some of these may get covered during the interview.
5. Practice makes perfect
Practise, practise, practise – whether this is with your family, friends or by yourself (we recommend practicing out loud in front of a mirror). As you’re practicing think about your posture, pace and body language.
The last thing is to get a good nights sleep before your interview and remember that you’ve got this, they wouldn’t invite you for an interview if they didn’t think you could do it!