 Considering how important the face-to-face interview is in determining whether or not you’ll receive an offer of employment, it would be nice if you had a strategic edge before the interview even begins.
Well, you can! That’s because over the years, hiring officials have asked the same questions so often that they’ve practically become part of the standard interview protocol. With the help of an article on TheMuse.com website titled: “How to Answer the 31 Most Common Interview Questions,” we have a list of the questions you’re most likely to be asked during an interview. Those questions are as follows: Can you tell me a little about yourself? How did you hear about the position? What do you know about the company? Why do you want this job? Why should we hire you? What are your greatest professional strengths? What do you consider to be your weaknesses? What is your greatest professional achievement? Tell me about a challenge or conflict you’ve faced at work and how you dealt with it. Where do you see yourself in five years? What’s your dream job? What other companies are you interviewing with? Why are you leaving your current job? Why were you fired? What are you looking for in a new position? What type of work environment do you prefer? What’s your management style? What’s a time you exercised leadership? What’s a time you disagreed with a decision that was made at work? How would your boss and co-workers describe you? Why was there a gap in your employment? Can you explain why you changed career paths? How do you deal with pressure or stressful situations? What would your first 30, 60, or 90 days look like in this role? What are your salary requirements? What do you like to do outside of work? If you were an animal, which one would you want to be? How many tennis balls can you fit into a limousine? Are you planning on having children? What do you think we could do better or differently? Do you have any questions for us? Not only does TheMuse.com article list all of these questions, but it also provides the best way to answer each one. Be sure to check out the article for more information and advice. The more prepared you are for your interview, the greater your chances of success—and of getting the job! Almost everybody wants a promotion. However, not everybody does what’s necessary in order to get that promotion.
Before anything can happen, including on the job or in your career, there has to be a desire to make it happen. While it’s good to entertain the idea of something positive, it’s even better to take the steps necessary to make that idea a reality. The good news is that the steps you take to get a promotion in your current job are closely related to the steps you take to make yourself more marketable to other companies. In other words, these are habits you can make that will help you achieve greater career growth. Below are six ways to make it easier for others to promote you: #1—Be teach-able. Make a concerted effort to soak up all information you receive and implement that information in the execution of your job duties. That means always asking questions, always asking the right questions, and never asking a question more than once (if possible). #2—Bring a positive attitude. When you bring a positive attitude to your job every day, you create a positive experience for those around you. When you create a positive experience, people enjoy being around you and want to be around you more. People who create these types of experiences are more likely to be the ones who receive promotions. #3—Be a team player. Management likes employees who are able to put the interests of the department (and the company) above their own interests. While it might seem counter-intuitive, the best way to get ahead (i.e., get a promotion) is to do your best to raise others up in the quest to accomplish common goals. #4—Take on more responsibility. Management also likes to see employees who are proactive about doing their job, doing it better, and doing more to contribute value. That doesn’t mean “working yourself to death,” but instead taking on more responsibility where and when it makes sense. #5—Start earlier and stay later. Being proactive also means showing a commitment beyond regularly scheduled work hours. It doesn’t matter if you arrive five minutes before your boss and leave five minutes after your boss. All your boss will know is that you’re always there before they arrive and always there when they leave. #6—Work harder. You figured we would get to this one sooner or later, right? As you might imagine, there’s no way around it. There’s no substitute for hard work. You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “Work smarter, not harder.” Well, it’s really “Work smarter and harder.” Hard work will get you noticed, and hard work can help you get promoted. Performance reviews are a regular part of employment life. However, their effectiveness is limited by their infrequency and the way in which they’re structured. After all, employees often dread them, and it’s difficult to approach anything you dread with much enthusiasm.
Outside of the annual performance review, though, employees need feedback in order to improve their job performance. While this can be a tricky endeavor, namely because of its degree of difficulty, it can pay big dividends if done correctly. Despite the difficulty involved, every company should make the investment of time and energy needed to provide its employees with feedback. Below are five ways to do just that in the interest of increasing productivity. #1—Create and cultivate the correct atmosphere. This is where you “lay the groundwork,” so to speak. If employees aren’t used to a company culture that includes the solicitation of regular feedback, it might take a period of time for them to adjust and be more proactive about the process. Perhaps the most important part of this step is convincing employees that the feedback you’re providing is more “improvement feedback” than “evaluation feedback.” #2—Set expectations. Once you have employees’ buy-in, let them know what to expect in this new culture of feedback. That might mean literally spelling out the steps that are involved, as well as branding the process as an interactive one based on collaboration as opposed to an objective one based solely on the opinion of the supervisor. (Once again, you’re attempting to overcome the “employee evaluation syndrome.”) #3—Make sure it’s constructive. All feedback that you provide should be constructive in nature and tone, since its main purpose is to help employees improve their job duties, and by extension, their output. Not only that, but employees respond in a more positive fashion to constructive feedback, which will also increase their productivity. Anything that smacks of negativity, on the other hand, will backfire. #4—Be encouraging. The feedback should be delivered in a constructive, positive way and in an encouraging fashion. You want the employee to succeed just as much as they want to succeed, and they should be able to tell that’s the case. Use positive language and phrases when providing the feedback, and show enthusiasm and confidence in their ability to implement your suggestions. #5—Create a continuous system. This can’t be an “every once in a while” thing. It must be regular and consistent to ultimately be effective. Once created, this system must contain a schedule for providing feedback, implementing that feedback, tracking results, and providing more feedback based on those results. As a general rule, people want to know what things they should be doing to increase the chances that they’ll make a good impression during the hiring process and land the job.
However, sometimes the best way to know how to do something is to know how NOT to do something, and a job search is no different in that regard. In this blog post, we’re going to approach the subject from that vantage point, and hopefully it will help you to be more fully prepared during your next job search. Below are four sure-fire ways to make sure that you do NOT get hired: #1—Grammar mistakes and/or typos on your resume We’re not talking just about misspelled words here. For example, you could spell a word correctly, but use it the wrong way (“there” vs. “their”). In addition, slang or jargon might slip past you. Your resume is one element of your job search that has to be as perfect as you can possibly make it, and that’s why you should enlist the help of others when creating it . . . and proofreading it. #2—Social media blunders It seems hardly a week goes by without a national news story about somebody committing a huge professional blunder through social media. It doesn’t matter which site we’re talking about, either—Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.—they’ve all been part of costly employment mistakes. Offers have been rescinded and careers have been destroyed due to a lack of diligence about social media. This is not a club you want to join. #3—Failure to follow up Let’s say you have a great interview, and you feel really good about it. The hiring manager might feel good about it, too . . . until you fail to follow up. All it takes is a simple email expressing your gratitude and reiterating your excitement about the position. Not doing so could erase all of the goodwill you’ve created and give the hiring manager a reason not to extend an offer of employment. #4—Dishonesty This one really is the ultimate “kiss of death.” Lying on your resume, or even worse, lying during the face-to-face interview will not only kill all chances of you landing the job, but it could also hamper your job search in other ways. After all, you never know if your name will come up in conversation between hiring managers at two different companies. The last thing you want to do is brand yourself as a liar. Avoid these four sure-fire ways to NOT get hired, and you’ll dramatically increase the chances that you will get hired. |
