Memorize Answers
Look, I can’t stress this enough. You cannot be in an interview thinking answers on the go. The interviewer expects a direct clear answer and if you’re hesitant the interviewer will think you got no idea what you’re on about.
You could have 10 years of experience in the field but if you cannot formulate an answer properly you’re gonna be rejected.
I won’t tell you to prepare because otherwise I’ll have people asking “how to prepare”.
I’ll tell you exactly what to do: Memorize your answers and make sure you can answer each question without looking like you’ve never thought about it before. It’s cool that it’s in your head but if you can’t talk about it, forget it! you’re rejected. Memorize!
Now don’t be a robot, once you’ve memorized it and you know what you’re talking about you can introduce natural pauses where necessary!
Reiterate & Correct all the time
What does this mean, reiterating in this context means to fix the mistakes you have made. Each time you finish an interview you gonna realize a few things that went wrong.
Do not wait for magic to happen, write it all down, everything that went wrong and correct it.
You’ll soon be in a position where you’ll naturally have a lot of confidence after the interview, this is because you’ve corrected your answers, the way you talk, your words, the way you connect phrases and everything.
You cannot use interview as a way to prepare, do the interview, realize what you did wrong and write it down. Correct it and practice so next time you don’t make same mistakes.
Obviously you’ll never hear the obvious thing online because most people will sell you useless stuff that never works in interviews.
If you really wanna get better correct your answers after each interview, write them down and next time make sure you don’t make same mistake. This is ultimate confidence hack!
Record yourself, seriously!
People might ask you how do you prepare for interview without actually going for the interview? Well you can look in the mirror and practice which works well too.
What’s even better is to record yourself. Answer popular interview questions and watch your recording. You’ll realize how bad your answer actually is and how many times you looked like you had no clue what you were on about.
Go practice, you didn’t memorize the answer properly.. Spend some time, record again… and again until you can look at your recording and think you’ve nailed it. If you’re sh*t, you’ll be as sh*t in the interview, or worse!
Your CV is the ultimate interview guide
Interviewer will read your CV before they talk to you.
They invited you for an interview because they liked your CV and they’ll make sure to ask you questions around what’s mentioned in your CV.
A lot of the times people add a lot more than they know and this is Ok. What you really don’t wanna do is have a bunch of stuff on your CV and then not be able to answer.
I’ll ask your right now, go through your CV and check how much of what’s there is there just to fill the space? This is exactly the type of stuff you gotta prepare for, interviewer will ask you to tell them more about x, y and z.
So don’t leave a single thing in your CV that you have no clue about, if you do leave it in the CV make sure you prepare.
You’re literally giving CV to the interviewer and asking them: Here what I know, ask me anything. So you better know answer to everything.
Direct questions need direct answers but..
Many times they’ll reject you simply because your answer wasn’t direct enough…
You think you answered the question right, you know you spend 5 minutes talking about the details but then why did you get rejected?
It could be many reasons but one is that your answer ended on a bad note!
I don’t care how much details you go into, when you’ve finishing the answer always make sure you’re reiterating the key points of your answer.
You could say something like “So again, to answer your question: bla bla bla” or “so to summarize this bla bla bla”..
Always emphasize the important points of your answers in the end so they remember your answers.
They’re interviewing a lot of people, their energy is drained so if you’re gonna answer in a detailed way make sure you mention the important points in the end of answer, again!
If you haven’t heard back from interviewer chase them, still no answer? Do this..
Asking for feedback via email is important but you won’t always get it, you’ll be ignored many times.
Send them a polite email every 2 – 3 days for a 2-3 weeks.
Title the email differently and make sure you add your name so they can find you.
Either they will block you or they’ll give you some feedback. But they’re likely to just ignore it..
If that doesn’t work do this:
Find out who else works for the company, preferably someone with power. ie CEO, CTO etc..
Email them asking if they would be so kind to ask the person who interviewed you for some feedback. Even if it’s one line. Let me know who interviewed you!
There’s a chance they will forward your email to the right person and get you some feedback.
HR’s job is to basically ignore you if it’s not in their best interest.
Be smart, get in touch with other people.
Be like a Salesman, they always win!
I did a total of 27 interviews and applied for about 100 jobs before I landed my first job despite having 2 years of solid experience building websites. I got job as a junior.
Imagine I stopped applying after failing interview 10th time.. I didn’t stop.
You shouldn’t either it’s a numbers game a lot of the time, sometimes they stop hiring, sometimes they hire someone internally, sometimes your CV never reaches them, sometimes they just ignore your CV because they’re tired..
There’s countless reasons. So be like a hungry salesman and don’t give up, keep applying and going to interviews and know that it’s not always about “this guys not experienced” there’s thousands of reasons why you may not hear back or get rejected. Keep going. Even super experienced people get ignored, they just keep going while noobs quit after failing 3rd interview.
Don’t know the answer to the question?
This will happen and the best thing you can do is to say “Sorry I don’t know the answer”. Ha! JOKES. Seriously don’t!
That’s the worst thing you can do.. We’ve heard that bullshit before, “Be honest”, well being honest doesn’t pay the bills.
If you don’t know the answer don’t ever say “no i don’t know the answer, sorry I’ve never done that before etc..”, you gotta always make sure your answer is positive, always say something, even if you need to BS a little bit, you gotta say something…
Saying something gives you some points, saying “no” give you 0 points.
Add substance to your answers and make them count.
I already explained you that you should list the strong points in the end of each answer. This is important but guess what else is equally important and who’ll be moving to the next stage of interview?
It’s the guy who not only answers the question properly but actually gives solid examples. When did you do x exactly.
Give practical examples, instead of filling your answer with meaningless words to sound clever do actually tell them how you’ve done x.
If you can’t give real examples then you need to go back to drawing board and think what the hell you’ve been doing?
Do you answers have any weight? If they do you gotta be able to tell how, why your answer is worth more than other people.
To make it real, tell them is when you did x, or something similar, and what challenges you faced.
Practical answers win interviews!
Nice ,I think this is really going to help me.Thanks for sharing this,great guy.