12 Job Hunting Tips for the New Year - Part 4
Practice, practice, practice
An old colleague of mine once said to me, life is one long interview. If that’s the case then we should always be prepared. There is no point waiting for that ideal job to come up and then to go into the interview cold and make a mess of it. Practice along the way every day.
Why not treat each networking conversation as an interview? Treat each conversation as a trial run in all sorts of ways - your brand, why you left your previous role, what you are looking for, what you stand for and articulating the impact you can have. Try specific phrases, ideas and learn to listen and listen hard.
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Case study - One of my oldest friends has always encouraged me to just “go and have a chat”. This approach has multiple advantages; of course it’s a great networking opportunity, but also, as we all love to give advice, you’ll get some good ideas on the way through and nearly always for free! It also has the advantage of putting yourself in an interview situation before your interview. Listen to other perspectives and learn what’s going on out there. Try things; different ways of talking about yourself and your ambition to test and learn different approaches
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Obviously, you can also try to have formal mock interviews with friends and even professionals. It just doesn’t matter how you get to done, just be ready to talk about you and what you want in the way you want without surprises. Hopefully the only surprises will be pleasant.
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4 年Turn conversations in to practice interviews. I ended up being offered a job recently after asking the person I was talking to (about something totally different) loads of questions. I really wanted to get to the heart of the issue we were talking about. Without realising it, my conversation turned out to have been an interview. This is not the first time this has happened to me.....