Three Mistakes People Make During a Job Interview

Mistake # 1

Not enough confidence – For any job, any field, any industry one thing that an employer wants you to have is confidence. Having confidence does not mean walking into an interview acting like you already have the job and like you own the place. It simply means believing in yourself, your knowledge and your abilities. What you want to get across to the interviewer is that you can do the job. If you think about it there are two reasons that employers want to get out of an interview. Number 1 – Can you do the job? , Number 2 – Will you fit in with the rest of the team? If you can convince the employer of these two things you’re in. When someone is lacking confidence and they are being interviewed it creates other problems that originally were not there, things such as being nervous, losing your train of thought and not giving the complete answer. When applying for a position you should know that you can do the job otherwise you will be setting yourself up for failure. This is the case with a lot of people but we’ll leave this for another discussion. So, if you’re already at the interview stage it means that you have passed the pre-screening process and that the employer obviously liked what they have seen regarding your education and experience which means that you have no reason not to be confident. Many people do not realize that getting the interview is a very big deal and should try not to be nervous and basically should just concentrate on expressing everything that they have on their resumes verbally. This should not be hard if you are really familiar with your resume and if you can think of really good examples of your past work experiences.

Mistake # 2

Too much confidence – I’ll start off be repeating what I said under the first point “Having confidence does not mean walking into an interview acting like you already have the job and like you own the place. It simply means believing in yourself, your knowledge and your abilities.”. Very large numbers of people believe that they are simply the best and that no one else compares to them, this most likely is NOT the case. People with too much confidence come across as being stubborn and usually are not liked by the employers because it makes the employer believe that if you are hired you will refuse certain jobs because you might think that you are above certain things and that you only deserve to do jobs that are considered to be high level. People that fall in this category are often thought of as not being team players and that they will be high maintenance employees because their expectations will be very high. This is something you do not want to do in an interview. Be confident but do not take it too far.

Mistake # 3

Not knowing enough about the position or the company – This might not make a lot of sense to people that are very organized in their job search and to those that keep track of every position that they apply to but it happens more than people realize. This is the one mistake that can be fixed without much effort; all it takes is some organization. Individuals that apply to a large number of positions often forget where they have applied, if they have sent an email, applied on-line through the company’s website or if they simply gave their resume to a friend. Keeping track of your applications is very important. This is the reason a lot of people get confused about the specifics of a certain position and forget to do their research on the company. Employers love it when an applicant comes in and is able to discuss the specifics of a position and also to be able to talk about the direction their company is headed in. It is always a good idea to come to the interview with a few questions which ask about the position and the team that you would be working with as well as the growth possibility of the company and some of the major contracts that they are currently working on. Questions like this show the interviewer that you are genuinely interested in the position and the company since you have done a lot of research and are familiar with their work.