Today it’s easy to pull up a hundred articles about how to interview well, land the job of your dreams, and prepare for your next important interview. Sometimes the advice seems, well, too basic.
The Six Most Commonly Recommended Interview Tips
- Show up on time
- Dress for success
- Be prepared
- Give a firm handshake
- Be excited about the role
- Don’t speak negatively about former or current employers
Follow Boring Advice for Extraordinary Results
These common tips are centered around impression management, and first impressions make or break job interviews.
The tips sound trite after a while because they appear so frequently in interview advice articles. However, if you follow the basics, you’ll be 80% of the way to landing an offer. (And plenty of salespeople still don’t: the seven most common interview mistakes are all violations of boring advice.)
In the recruiting business, we know: if you’re in the room with a hiring manager, it’s your job to get.
Now it comes down to chemistry, your ability to fit in, and attitude. After all, the better you interview, the more money you’ll make.
How Are You Showing Up?
- Are you communicating like everyone else who works in the office?
- Did you take the time to learn about the organization, or are you just winging it?
- Are you coming across as someone who needs a job, or as someone who’s specifically interested in this job? How are you demonstrating that in the interview?
If you’ve read all the interview advice and you think it sounds basic, you’re missing the point.
Here’s the most fundamental rule of human nature: people want to be around people they like. Applied to the job market, this cardinal rule translates to:
People hire people they like.
Most won’t admit it. And plenty don’t even consciously know they’re doing it.
But the more they like you, the more they’ll want you to work for them, and the more money they’ll offer when it comes time to write up your offer letter.
It’s not necessarily the way it should be, but that’s how it is. You can’t change reality. But you can change yourself.
It’s Your Job to Get
Next time you find yourself across the table from a hiring manager, remember: although it may not seem personal, mostly it is.
You’ve got the skills, or you wouldn’t have been invited to the meeting. Even if you don’t have all the skills, you’re still at the meeting. The real job now is to present yourself well, make a powerful first impression, and land the job you want. That’s also why the candidates who win are the ones who make it easiest to say yes.
So manage your first impression like your livelihood depends on it, because it does. Follow the six recommendations to the letter, and you won’t have to settle for a second-rate sales job.
Life is good when you know how to interview.
The rest of the fundamentals are in the complete sales interview preparation guide.
