Practice Makes Perfect: Rehearsing for an Interview

Going for a job interview makes many people anxious. After all, you’re going to be meeting new people, be in an unfamiliar environment, and need to impress your interviewers in order to get the job.

Rehearsing for a job interview is a way to lower any anxiety. Preparation eases your mind about what to expect, and reassures you that you will handle it successfully.

Here are the best ways to rehearse for an interview.

Develop success stories

Don’t wait for your interviewers to ask you questions. Proactively prepare some of what you’re going to say by developing success stories. Once you have them, you use them to respond to the questions you’re asked.

It’s a very good idea to have specific facts, with numbers, about how you’ve contributed to the bottom line or helped reduced costs. Those are the two major areas that companies are concerned with overall.

Say you work in a warehouse and were part of a team that received a commendation for high productivity in a specific month. Be sure to mention that. Productivity is a contribution to the bottom line.

If you’ve ever had to learn a labor-saving software, be sure to mention that, Labor-saving is a way that costs can be reduced.

Rehearse answering questions

Draft a friend or family member to ask you some standard interview questions. “Why do you want to work here?” and “what would your colleagues say about you?” are examples of common questions.

First, this lets you develop some answers in advance. Second, knowing you have successfully fielded interview questions will help you answer all interview questions calmly and confidently.

Research the company

Interviewers generally leave time at the end for interviewees to ask questions. Research the company enough so that you have some questions to ask. The questions can be about their products, their plans, or their community involvement.

Plan your route

Prospective employees need to get to an interview in plenty of time. Leave yourself at least 15 minutes before the interview time, so you aren’t rushed.

In order to make sure you’re not late, plan your route thoroughly. In fact, drive there a week before, to make sure there’s no construction on the road or other unexpected developments that would make you late. If you’re taking public transportation, take the same transportation you plan to take on interview day.

Decide on your clothes the day before

Rehearse your clothes as well! Take your interview outfit out of the closet the day before. Make sure it’s clean and that your shoes are shined and clean also. If anything needs to be washed or sewed up, do it.

The last thing you want is to find out you should have washed your shirt the morning of an interview. Interview clothes should be clean and neat.

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