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    Interview Success: What You Need To Do to Get That New Job
    Interview Success: What You Need To Do to Get That New Job
    Interview Success: What You Need To Do to Get That New Job
    Ebook157 pages2 hours

    Interview Success: What You Need To Do to Get That New Job

    By David Drennan

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    About this ebook

    Even the best athletes in the world use great coaches to give them an edge over their competition when they really want to win. If you want to perform at your peak in your next interview, you couldn’t have a better coach than David Drennan.

    Here’s all the great advice you’ll get in Interview Success.

    Forget Qualifications – It’s The Right Attitude That Counts
    • How to distinguish yourself in the eyes of the employer
    Stage One - Getting The Interview
    • Résumés, CVs and application letters
    • What a good résumé looks like - examples
    • What a good application letter looks like - examples
    Stage Two - Getting The Job
    • Planning to win
    • What to prepare so you are never caught off-guard
    • Your one-sheet master plan
    The Top 100 Interview Questions – and Great Answers to Them All
    • Questions About Previous Employers
    • Questions About The Job
    • Questions About Pay
    • Your Personal Style on the Job
    • Questions About You
    • Tricky Surprise Questions
    Presenting Yourself on the Day
    • What creates a good first impression
    The Big Event - The Interview
    • How to set a positive tone from the start
    • How to stay in control throughout
    After the Interview
    • Helping your application along
    Do’s and Don’ts
    • Avoiding the traps that could cost you the job
    Final Words of Advice
    • My best advice to you
    The Seven Big Secrets to Landing The Job
    • The stepping stones to success

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Drennan
    Release dateNov 13, 2012
    ISBN9781301085965
    Interview Success: What You Need To Do to Get That New Job
    Author

    David Drennan

    Formerly Special Professor of Management, David Drennan is Chairman and founder of Good People Management Ltd., the international consultancy company. His clients include Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, the Bank of England, General Motors, British Aerospace, Castrol, Her Majesty’s Treasury, Siemens, Volvo and many others. His books include Transforming Company Culture, The 12 Ladders to World Class Performance, and Winning The Executive Job Race.

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      Book preview

      Interview Success - David Drennan

      Interview Success

      What You Need To Do

      To Get That New Job

      David Drennan

      .

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 David Drennan & GPM International

      License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Forget Qualifications - It’s The Right Attitude That Counts

      * How to distinguish yourself in the eyes of the employer

      Stage One - Getting The Interview

      * Résumés, CVs and application letters

      * What a good résumé looks like - examples

      * What a good application letter looks like - examples

      Stage Two - Getting The Job

      * Planning to win

      * What to prepare so you are never caught off-guard

      * Your one-sheet master plan

      The Top 100 Interview Questions - and Great Answers to Them All

      * Questions About Previous Employers

      * Questions About The Job

      * Questions About Pay

      * Your Personal Style on the Job

      * Questions About You

      * Tricky Surprise Questions

      Presenting Yourself on the Day

      * What creates a good first impression

      The Big Event - The Interview

      * How to set a positive tone from the start

      * How to stay in control throughout

      After the Interview

      * Helping your application along

      Do’s and Don’ts

      * Avoiding the traps that could cost you the job

      Final Words of Advice

      * My best advice to you

      The Seven Big Secrets to Landing The Job

      * The stepping stones to success

      Job Questions Summary List

      About the Author

      It’s The Right Attitude That Counts

      * Lots of people go to job interviews with the right qualifications, but most of them don’t get the job. It’s not because companies ignore the value of qualifications, it’s just that first and foremost they want people with the right attitude.

      * REED is one of the biggest job agencies in Europe today, and places hundreds of thousands of people into job roles around the world every year. They asked thousands of top employers what they really look for in the people they hire - the full skill set for the job, or the right mindset? Ninety-six per cent chose mindset before skill set.

      * And that applies to jobs all the way from the most senior level down to those on the front-line. John Timpson runs a well-established company offering services from shoe repairs to key cutting in 900 shops spread across the UK and Ireland. He says: We prefer to give a chance to people with the right attitude, whatever it says on their CV.

      * Stew Leonards is a well-known four-store supermarket chain in the US, quoted by Fortune magazine as ‘one of the best companies to work for’. Boss Stew knows only too well how important the right mindset is when it comes to giving customers the very best service. He says: We can always teach folks how to work the cash register, but we can’t teach nice.

      * So, when it comes to deciding who is going to get the job, companies don’t just look at qualifications, they make an assessment of the whole person and how they will ‘fit in’ in their company.

      * Now you may well have both the right qualifications and the right kind of attitude to get the job you are applying for, but that needs to come across clearly during your interview if you are going to get a job offer. That’s the place where employers make their assessments and come to conclusions about you. It’s the most important event in the whole process.

      * And remember this: Much of the time there are multiple candidates for the same job, and only one person is going to get it. In other words, you’re almost always in competition. So, if you’re going to get the job you have to find a way of distinguishing yourself from all the others.

      * That’s what this book will do for you. Give you the professional advice that will literally transform your performance at interview, and more than triple your chances of actually landing the job. Are you ready for that? Then let’s go!

      But how do you get an interview in the first place? That’s next . . .

      [Note: For ease of reading, I have used the terms ‘he’ or ‘she’ alternately throughout this book; the gender reference is not specific.]

      Stage One - Getting The Interview

      * In today’s hectic job market, it is almost always the case that there will be multiple applications for any job you apply for. What you want your CV, résumé and letter to do in that situation is get you selected for interview from all the other applicants.

      [Note: In many English-speaking countries the term CV (curriculum vitae) is used to mean ‘career summary’. In the US, the word résumé is more common. I will use these terms as appropriate throughout the text here.]

      * Your application can be for an office job, a retail job, a technical job, or a managerial job, but there are certain principles that apply to them all. So here’s the first piece of advice.

      Make It Easy For Busy Interviewers

      * Because interviewers are often dealing with scores of applications per vacancy, they are normally under immense time pressures and working to tight deadlines. They want the facts about the applicants clear and fast. Many will just give their bundle of applications only a 20-second scan to see what’s interesting, and if they can pick out key facts from your application in that time, you are more likely to be put on the pile which says: ‘To Be Interviewed'.

      * Make your résumé easy to read. Don’t be tempted to use fancy fonts or colors on your computer - it’s best to stick to normal fonts like Times, Arial or Palatino, color black or blue, and 10-12 points in size.

      * Make your résumé look visually attractive, that is, neatly laid out, with sensible use of white space. Bullet points can help highlight key points and get a lot of information over on a page.

      * Always put your contact details clearly at the top of your résumé, including your postal address, phone number and e-mail address. After all, you want to make it easy for the interviewer to get in touch with you.

      * Make sure there are no spelling mistakes or punctuation errors. You may not get an interview because your experience does not quite fit, but don’t get rejected for what looks like simple carelessness.

      * You may be at the beginning of your career, and your résumé may not be all that long or complex, but you can still make the document visually appealing. Here are two examples of résumés for two young people in just such a situation, the first a data entry operator, and the other a recent graduate looking for her first job in the business world.

      * * *

      * The advantage for the interviewer trying to sort out a load of applications is that this résumé is clean, neat and clear. She can pick out all the facts she wants to know in just a few seconds. That’s important.

      * And Christian has made it very easy to get in contact with him for an interview - that vital information is right at the top of the page. The interviewer can choose any one of three ways: via his mailing address, his email, or by phone.

      * Christian has created a good impression right from the very first document the company sees, and that is what is likely to get him selected for interview.

      * * *

      * As a new graduate, when you have no work career to list, you can list the subjects you have studied at college or university to show the skills and knowledge you could bring to the hiring company.

      * Kellie has also composed a list of ‘competences’ designed to highlight the kind of abilities and attitude any company would value and welcome. That’s smart.

      * The wording of her ‘objective’ indicates an open-ness of mind and flexibility which will also go down well. She doesn’t think the world owes her a living after her degree, she is obviously willing to learn and adapt. Attractive qualities.

      * Now your situation may be somewhat different. You may have been in work for some years, and are now looking for a new position or an opportunity for advancement. Let’s assume you have seen an attractive advertisement which fits the bill, and you want to structure your résumé so that it gets picked out from all the many applications the company is likely to receive.

      How do you do that? Here’s how.

      Constructing Your Résumé

      * The first point to make is: study the company’s advertisement in detail. Write down the things they say are essential or important in this particular job, and then make sure that you emphasize points in your résumé and covering letter that ring these bells.

      * Use the ‘one minute’ rule. Within one minute the interviewer should be able to see from your letter or résumé that you have the kind of qualifications and experience they have asked for in their advertisement, and would be well worth interviewing.

      * You have two basic options. You can tailor your résumé each time to fit the specific job concerned. This inevitably takes more time, but you may want to do this if it is a job you are particularly interested in.

      On the other hand, you can use a standard résumé and make a bullet-point summary in your covering letter which picks out from your normal résumé the points that you know the employer will be most interested in. In most cases, interviewers read your covering letter first anyway, so that gives you the chance to direct the interviewer where you want them to look.

      Both methods can be effective.

      * Use key words in your résumé which repeat the words the employer used in their advertisement. Apart from ringing bells with the interviewer, some companies actually use computer scanning to detect these key words in their initial screening. For example, qualifications like PhD or ACCA can easily be picked up this way.

      * Keep your covering letter and résumé brief. As you know, CV (curriculum vitae) is the Latin for ‘course of my life’, but interviewers don’t want to plough through umpteen pages - they already have piles of papers to get through.

      As a rule of thumb, make your résumé two pages maximum, and your covering letter one page. Don’t try to cram every last piece of information on to your résumé. That

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