REPORT ON INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES

Introduction General Tips and Advice

Before your interview find out everything you can about the company (read their annual report which can be obtained by telephoning them). Re-read your application, thinking through your own career and the questions they might ask you. You should try to anticipate the general questions which they will ask and also prepare some questions to ask them. To do well at the interview you will need to convince the interviewer you are technically qualified to do the job. You will also need to show that you are sufficiently motivated to get the job done well and that you will fit in with the company's organisational structure and the team in which you will work. You should dress smartly for the interview and should leave home earlier than you need to on the day of the interview - you may be delayed by traffic or for other reasons. Be courteous to all employees of the company. At the interview itself you must be positive about yourself and your abilities - but do not waffle.

Interview Questions You May Be Asked

Before attending an interview you should think about your responses to the following questions. Your answers may depend on the job or company in question, so you should go through your responses just before each interview. Why do you want this job? Think carefully about this question. Stress the positive aspects which have attracted you to applying for this position. Do not mention the negative aspects of your current job or the job in question.
What qualities do you think will be required for this job?

Their advertisement for the job may help you a little bit, but you should also think of the other qualities that may be required. These may include leadership ability, supervisory skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving, analytical skills, etc.
What can you contribute?

This is your chance to shine. Tell them about your achievements in your previous position(s) which are relevant to the new position you are applying for.

Why do you want to work for this company?

Emphasize the positive reasons why you want to join their company, but avoid aspects such as more money or shorter hours. These would not endear you to a prospective employer.
What do you know about this company?

This is your chance to impress the interviewer with your knowledge of their company. Give them a run down of their products/services, sales figures, news, company figures, customers, etc.
What interests you about our product (or service)?

Again, your research into the company should aid you in answering this question.
What can we (the new company) offer that your previous company cannot offer?

Tread carefully here! Again do not mention money. Stress opportunities for personal growth, new challenges, etc.

CV writing advice & tips

You will find lots of free resume / CV writing advice and tips on these pages so please bookmark this site now so that you can return to it in the future. On our other pages you will find tips and advice on how you can successfully find a job and handle interviews, links to over 200,000 jobs and much more. The word Curriculum Vitae literally translated means the story of your life. The words Curriculum Vitae are usually abbreviated to CV or C.V. and you will sometimes see it incorrectly written in lower case as c.v. or cv. The possessive form of Curriculum Vitae / CV should be written as Curriculum Vitae's or C.V.'s or CVs, but not as c.v.'s or cv's. Your CV is a very important document; with it rest your hopes and dreams for the future - that next step up the career ladder, a better position, more money, new challenges, etc. Your CV therefore has to represent the best you have to offer if you do not want to miss out on that job you saw which was 'perfect' for you. These days employers often receive a lot of CVs for each advertised position - jobs advertised in national papers can often attract hundreds of applicants. So your CV has to be just that little bit special to stand out if you want to obtain interviews. The good news (for you) is that most people do not know how to write a CV and only spend a short time preparing a CV. Writing professional CVs is a skill, which these people have not learnt. Of course your CV can continue to work in your favour even after it has obtained an interview for you. It can help you at an interview by carefully focusing the interviewer's mind on your good points and on your achievements. Once you have left the interview it will continue to work

in your favour as the interviewer will probably reread it before making a decision, either on who should be invited to the second interview stage or who the job should be offered to. When it comes to salary negotiations a well written CV can help. If your CV conveys your full worth you are likely to get a higher salary offer than you might have done with a poorer CV. So do not skimp on the time you spend on writing a CV as it will probably be a false economy.

Interview thank you letters - what should you write in your job interview thank you letter?
You should write your job interview thank you letters soon after you have had your interviews. This will make you stand out from everyone else who has been interviewed, because very few people (if any) will actually bother to write a letter to say thank you. In this letter you should personally thank the interviewer for meeting you and if possible provide some additional information about yourself, perhaps positioning yourself as an expert that can solve a particular problem that the company needs a solution to.

Sample interview thank you letter (solving an employer's problem)

In this sample interview thank you letter, we remind the interviewer that we faced a similar problem to the one that they are currently facing and offer to provide a solution. This tells the interviewer that you are someone that knows how to get the job done - which should move you to the top of the pile for the second interview or even help you secure a job offer.

24 Mansfield Drive, Manchester, M23 4DJ. Tel: (0161) 234 1234

Mr Robert Brown, Production Manager, Express Foods Limited, 125 Waters Lane, Crewe, Cheshire, CW3 4FF.

10 January, 2011

Dear Mr Brown, Re. Interview on 7 January, 2011 Thank you for interviewing me last week. I enjoyed meeting you and your team and discussing the possibility of joining your company. I have been thinking about the problem that you are currently having with your new system. As I said to you during the interview we had a similar problem at Dairy Foods Limited. I have spoken to my colleague Tim Bruce about this and will call you next week when he has come back to me with the solution we implemented. Yours sincerely, x.y.z

Group Interview Tests

Group tests are used by an employer to see how you react in a group. They will want to see if you help or hinder the group reach its objectives. An observer will be watching to see how you take criticism, whether you take on leadership roles and involve less communicative group members. If you chair the meeting the observer will be checking on how you plan and keep control of the meeting. If you are leading a group activity the observer will be interested in seeing how good you are at delegating tasks and how much of the work you keep for yourself.

Job Interview Body Language

When you are being interviewed it is very important that you give out the right signals. You should always look attentive - so do not slouch in your chair. Never lie to anyone in an interview, your body language and tone of voice or the words you use will probably give you away - classic body language giveaways include scratching your nose and not looking directly at the other person when you are speaking to them. If you have a moustache you may want to consider shaving it off - people with moustaches can be perceived as being aggressive. You can always grow it again once you have got the job.

Factors that can Cost you the Interview/Job

y y y y y y

Being unprepared for the interview - you should always prepare thoroughly before any interview (this will also make you feel more confident at the interview). Poor/limp handshake - always a bit of a no-no. Saying unfavourable things about previous employers - the employer will be wondering what you will say about them when you leave their employment. Not being able to communicate clearly and effectively. Being aggressive or acting in a superior way - nobody like this so please don't do this. Making excuses for failings.

Job Interview Afterthoughts

If you're not getting the job offers you desire then you need to look carefully at your interview performance. You should try and get as much feedback as possible from the people who have interviewed you. If you have been unsuccessful in obtaining a job ring up the interviewer and ask them where they think you fell down and how they think you could do better. Once you have got feedback you can modify your interview technique and hopefully do better at the next interview.

how to make a resume

This article will teach you how to make a resume, whether you have had previous experience in writing resumes or you have never written a resume before. You may also want to take a look at our resume tips section for other ideas on putting together your resume. We have included additional tips in this section to help you prepare your resume. Once you have learned how to make a resume you may also want to take a look at our free resume examples and then use a resume distribution service.

Introduction
Almost everybody you can ask about how to make a resume will tell you that its job is to sell you to employers. But what does this actually mean? Think about the last time that you made a major purchase. What attracted you to the particular product you eventually bought? To start with, your interest may have been caught by an advert. This would have given you an instant impression of the products appearance, while highlighting its most outstanding features. You then decided to have a closer look, perhaps by looking at a website or going into a shop to ask for more details. Encouraged by what you learned, you may then have tried the product out firsthand, to see whether it lived up to everything youd heard. Now think of yourself as the product and the employer the buyer. Your resume needs to have the same effect as the initial advert and the closer-look information. If it works well, it will convince the employer to ask you to an interview, when they get to check you out firsthand. However, you are an extremely complex product. Your features include not only your past work history, but your potential in your next job, as well as your characteristics as an individual employee. Its not surprising then, that while youre sitting staring at the blank page, its hard to know where to start, or indeed how to start. Here are some basic guidelines that will help you put that elusive attention-grabbing resume together.

Overall format Appearances count as much as content. The way your resume is presented and laid-out will make an enormous difference to how much attention it attracts. If its badly laid out, the employer will not feel like reading more than a few lines. Remember that they dont have time to do more than skip through most applications, so you want to make life as easy as possible for them and encourage them to read yours. The best resumes are usually no more than two pages in length, with critical information summarized in the top third of the first page. Information is presented clearly with plenty of bullet points. Wide borders and white space between paragraphs also help make your resume easier to read. A clear font and simple layout will keep the employers focus where it matters: on the content. Snazzy graphics, a messy, cluttered page and large blocks of text will only make it harder to read and therefore put the employer off. Your profile This part of your resume is like the picture in the advert. But unlike a picture, it doesnt show your face instead its a snapshot of your experience and skills. It sits at the top of your resume, just below your name and contact details. Get it right and it will encourage the employer to read further. In two or three sentences, you need to highlight one or two important areas of your experience and pinpoint two or three key skills and abilities. Make sure these are relevant to the advertised job (you can change your profile to suit whichever post youre applying for). You can also mention your career goals, or what youre seeking in your next job. Make sure this section sounds concise and fairly upbeat everybody is looking for a motivated employee! Achievements Next in your resume comes the Achievements section. Think of this as the extra information that goes into the advert. An achievement is a result that you personally brought about in your current or post jobs. It isnt a fixed responsibility that anybody in that job would have fulfilled its evidence of how you made a difference. For that reason, it tells the employer what you might deliver for them. The best achievements to include are those that can be measured in financial figures, statistics, numbers of people or units, as these show how you can help to bring about results. Achievements can also be differences that youve made to the way systems are set up or how organizations are run. Reports youve written or awards youve won also count as achievements. Likewise, very fast promotions within the same organization are worth including. List around six achievements in order of impact. Career history Going back to our example of a major purchase, this is the extra information that youd find on a website, or that youd learn out by going into the shop. Its the small print that provides the more in-depth information about the product (you).

Start with your current or most recent job and work backwards through your work history. For each job, give the employers name and location, your job title and the dates you started and finished (give the years only, you neednt include months). Next, provide details of your duties for each post. Do this for the jobs youve held in the past 10 years. Start with the most important responsibility and work downwards. List about five or six duties and mention any achievements that arent already in your Achievements section. Use bullet points to keep it neat and clear. If there are gaps in your employment, due to unemployment or raising a family, try to explain these briefly. Education / Qualifications This section is also like the small print. Contrary to popular belief, theres no need to list every examination that you passed while at school. If you took your main educational qualification over 10 years ago, then its not going to be of as much interest to the employer as the jobs youve held since. So simply list what youve attained, along with the place of study and the dates when you qualified. If you have a degree, thats all you need to include theres no need for earlier examinations taken up to the age of 18. If your career is still young and youve only held one or two posts, then it may be worth giving more details about your qualifications, but only if theyre relevant to the positions youre applying for. Also include any professional qualifications and memberships youve gained. IT and Other Skills Depending on the job youre interested in, this is where you can include other skills that are relevant. IT skills are increasingly important in many sectors, so in this section list your software skills and training. If IT is very important in the job, you may want to include further details, such as hardware, operating systems, architectures, etc. If typing and language skills are relevant, include these as well. Personal Details and Hobbies Not everybody includes these more personal sections these days. If you do include a Personal Details section, add it at the end of the resume and include your date of birth, driving license (if relevant), marital status and nationality. The final two details are optional employers dont necessarily wish to see them. Hobbies and interests are not always important to an employer. However, for certain jobs, your outside interests might tell them a bit more about you such as your personality, leadership potential and team working skills.

Also important the language you use So now you know what needs to go into your resume. Next, you need to read it back to yourself. Do you feel that its selling you to an employer? Or is it a series of dull, dry lists? If it doesnt have that buy now! factor, it may be due to the language youre using. As with all effective adverts, the writing style you use in your resume is as important as the factual content. Your descriptions need to be short and to the point, yet they also need to be readable and persuasive from the employers point of view. Try to use effective statements and professional language. Always be positive and keep your language short and punchy this makes the resume a more inspiring read. Make it sound like you made things happen, rather than that things happened around you. Use active verbs for this reason. And always write in the third person, avoiding use of the word I wherever possible. Avoid being repetitive by using different wording to explain similar duties in different jobs. Also, read the description of the job youre applying for and include some of the wording used there. Now check it and double check it Run the Spellchecker on your word processing package to check that there arent any errors in your resume. Then reread it several times. Reading it out aloud will help you to notice where the grammar or sentence structure doesnt work. Ask somebody else to read it for you and give you an honest opinion on whether it sells you to your best advantage. Follow these guidelines and your resume will be a polished, finely tuned document that will considerably improve your chances of gaining an interview.

Resume reason for leaving - should you include reasons for leaving on your resume?
When putting together your resume, it's vital to ensure that this all-important selling document is well laid out, punchy and informative. This means focusing on your key achievements, the principal responsibilities in your more recent/more senior roles and the career progression you've enjoyed along the way, whilst avoiding the inclusion of irrelevant information that will clutter your resume and distract the reader from the most important points. This is often easier said than done, and one area in particular where people struggle to decide what to include is with regard to their various job moves. Obviously, any future employer is going to want to find out why you made the moves you did and how your career has progressed as a result, as well as exploring any gaps between jobs, but is your resume the right place to include such information? In most cases, the answer is no.

General information about straightforward job moves, such as moving to another company to progress your career, should not be included. The wording of your resume should make clear to any potential employer that these were positive career decisions, through a change in job title, wider responsibilities or greater role dimensions. Any information you feel is particularly relevant, perhaps such as being approached by a former boss to join them, or your new company being a more significant player in your marketplace, can be included in your cover letter. But what if all hasn't gone to plan in your career and you have experienced some periods of redundancy? It's still better in most cases simply to summarise your actual employment history, with the relevant dates, rather than going into detail about the reasons for any gaps on your resume. Again, use your cover letter to explain any obvious gaps, which may be a result of downsizing, company relocation or market related problems within your particular industry, for example. Keep the wording of your letter positive and forward-looking, rather than dwelling on what's happened, but be prepared to discuss the detail of any periods of redundancy openly at interview. Although the general rule is that the reasons for leaving a job should not be included in your resume, there are certain notable exceptions. The first of these is if you have taken maternity leave. If you have subsequently returned to your employer at the end of the allotted time period, this should be highlighted as a one-line entry on the resume under the same company heading, rather than a job move as such. If relevant, make reference to any change of conditions on your return, such as becoming home-based, or working on a more part-time basis. If you have taken an extended period of time out to raise your family, simply highlight the dates on your resume, with a description such as "maternity break". Refer to any relevant part-time work or study you may have completed during this period, if appropriate. Use your cover letter to reassure potential employers that you are now ready to return to the workplace and have made reliable childcare arrangements, as well as indicating any efforts you've made to keep yourself up-to-date with developments in your particular marketplace. Other reasons for leaving a job that should be included in your resume are those that actively enhance your appeal to future employers. These would include taking a study break, perhaps to complete a degree, MBA or some sort of vocational qualification, which would be seen as expanding your skill-set and knowledge base, as well as indicating that you are ambitious and have taken active steps to move your career forward. A travel break is also often seen in a positive light, marking you out as someone who has a desire to broaden their horizons and is sufficiently confident in their ability to carve out a successful career that they are prepared to take a break for something that's important to them. Finally, remember that your cover letter, which should be individually tailored for each job application, is the appropriate place to draw attention to any other significant information about job moves that does not properly belong in the resume itself.

Cover Letters
Every time that you send out your resume you will need to send out a cover letter with it, whether you are sending your resume in response to an advert or direct to an employer or recruiter. This cover letter needs to tell the person you are sending it to why they should read your resume. A cover letter needs to say a lot more than just: 'Here is my resume!', which is all some people seem to think a cover letter should say. It needs to tell the person why you are writing to them and outline why you are the ideal candidate for the job. You need to pick out the highlights from your resume that are relevant to this specific application.