Hone your interview etiquette................
Churn the right mix of deportment, attitude
and dressingskills for a great job talk !
Never
make the big mistake of treating an
interview lightly. It's not an impromptu
thing where you depend on
your improvisation skills. An interview
requires careful thought and planning before
you take it. Keeping in mind some basic
attitudes and presentation techniques will
help you sail through it with panache.
So
if you thought that going for an interview
just meant pulling your best suit out of the
wardrobe and updating your resume, please
think again. You are forgetting the other
essentials: body language, basic etiquette
and attitude.
Remember
that you are actually selling an entire
package and the packaging, in this case, is
as relevant as the product inside.
Ultimately you are presenting yourself as a
valuable professional to a new job
environment. And you can't do that without
minding the basic interview etiquette to get
you ahead of the rest of the pack.
An
interview is the sum total of many parts.
It's not just what you say but how you say
it that matters equally. So it's good to
brush up on more than just your training
skills when you do go in for an interview.
ATTIRE
How
you dress for an interview is perhaps as
relevant as the way you lay out your resume.
Says Nina Kochar of Upgrade Management
Services, an organisation which coaches'
executives in the basic rules of corporate
etiquette: "A person who is sloppy in
appearance shows a sloppy personality, so
you have to be decently dressed." Of
course, decently dressed does not
necessarily mean being dressed to the gills.
In most cases, this would mean you would
wear long sleeved shirts and a pair of
formal trousers. In fact, Nina Kochar does
not recommend suits, especially for younger
people. "A lot of young people do not
have the money to invest in suits,
consequently, they wear ill-fitting or
borrowed suits and that looks even worse. A
tie, shirt and pant should do the trick for
most junior level positions."
Most
HR experts would also tell you to mind the
accessories like ties, belts and shoes. To
be sure, badly matched shoes and ties can
have a jarring effect on an interviewer.
Similarly, please avoid heavy jewellery or
personal accessories as they would look
incongruous on you.
ENTRANCE AND INTRODUCTION
Even
though most of us are primed for the basic
grilling that we would face during the
interview, we seldom pay attention to the
way we enter an interview room or how we
introduce ourselves. Says Subhashish Mitra,
deputy manager, Essar Cellphones: "A
lot of people do not think it important to
knock properly while entering the interview
room. They assume that as an interview is
taking place, the panel will be expecting
them. To my mind this is a very major faux pas which really jars."
In
fact, the best way to enter an interview is
to knock, ask for permission to enter and
then wait for a while before you actually
sit down. Few interviewees know this but the
interview panel needs a little quiet time to
discuss the previous candidate before they
get around to the next one. So your silence
till you actually get seated would be very
valuable. Try and keep a bag with you for
all your papers and certificates; make sure
this bag is an unobtrusive as possible.
ATTITUDE AND RESPONSE
This
is a grey area for most interview
candidates. While dressing up and resume
writing are skills you can Go
for a mock exercise before the real talk at
the job table handle
with a little practice, cultivating the
right attitude as an interviewee requires a
lot of patience and reading between the
lines. The usual complaint of most
interviewers is that few interviewees are
able to stri perhaps the best thing you can
do for getting your answer right. Most
interviewers like to give a lead to the
candidate in the way they ask the question,
so it's entirely up to you to note facial
expressions and the tone of the words.
Do you show your certificates immediately to the
interview panel?
Not
till you are asked actually. You might
already have sent in your resume, so you
shouldn't try and offload all your
achievements and skills onto the panel till
a turn in the interview leads to such a
situation.
Try
and take cues form the tonal variations,
facial expressions and thrust of questions
from the interview panel. That in itself
will give you a clue as to where this
interview is heading.
TEN THINGS THAT AN INTERVIEWER LOOKS IN YOU!
1.
Family Background
2.
Education
3.
Experience
4.
Stability
5.
Initiative
6.
General Ability
7.
Interpersonal Skills
8.
Confidence
9.
Aptitude
10.
Pleasant Looks
How
one wished that an interview were a simple
meeting of minds and hearts. Just one casual
meeting where an employee's future gets
sealed. Unfortunately, it's not something as
pre-ordained as you would like it to be;
it's a pre-meditated exercise which fetches
you dividends only if your homework is done
right.
