Hello there and welcome to the show! We have a very special episode today because we’re talking some seriously smart strategies around interviews. It’s all about the big day, the prep before the day, how you can nail it and land the job of your dreams.
Specifically, what we’re going to talk about is looking at the success mindset – having the right mindset for the interview. We’re going to look at all the preparation that you need to do, preparation on the day, the different types of interviews, first impressions, succeeding on the day, and follow up.
We’re going to finish by looking at the 3 big mistakes most people make. Please go to the website download the checklist.
What is the success mindset? It is how you get into that really amazing headspace so you feel super calm and super confident. To get into the success mindset, there are few things that I look at: 1) inner voice/inner critic; 2) power posing; 3) visualization and affirmations. Power posing was made famous by Amy Cuddy – a Harvard researcher who also has an amazing TED talk. The important piece for the interview is really understanding how you can get really calm so your brain is all powered up thinking and you can come up with great responses. Power posing involves standing in a powerful pose, standing like Wonder Woman. It changes the chemical composition of your body in terms of hormones.
The second piece is visualization – you will not find any athlete that does not do visualization. Basically you want to tap into your subconscious mind and kind of trick it to success. The best times to do visualization and tap into your subconscious are as you’re falling asleep or as you’re waking up. So the days prior to your interview, imagine yourself going into the interview and leaving the interview room and knowing that you have nailed it. So you can bring up an image in your mind; shaking the interviewer’s hand, feeling really confident and knowing you just gave it your all. Visualization is incredibly powerful.
Body language is how other people perceive you and making that first impression and also for how you feel. The key things are: shoulders back, eye contact and a firm hand shake. When you have your shoulders back you will not only look more confident but you’ll feel more confident. Maintain eye contact at least 60% of the time; 100% might be too intimidation or too less you might appear to be shifty. Hand shake – firm handshake. Other things to be conscious of are the speed and tone of you voice. Gesturing a little can actually power up your brain, but be careful not to throw any wild gestures because it will distract people from what you’re actually saying. Affirmations are also very powerful and work on a number of different levels. Early in the day you can do affirmations anytime. These are really powerful messages to really cement in your mind that you’ve got this, you’re capable, great, and you have value. Any positive message said in the present tense to really reinforce that you are an absolute legend.
The next piece I will talk about is the actual preparation on the day. Don’t rock up too early – it really annoys HR people and Recruiters because they feel bad about leaving you at the reception or because you put their schedule out. Arrive about 5 to 10 minutes is ideal so you can get a feel for the place. Have your journey mapped out. Don’t rehearse on the day. You don’t want to come across as overly rehearsed when you’re in the interview – you don’t want the answers to sound scripted. So you prep on the coming days but not on the day of the interview.
Now we’re going to discuss the different types of interviews that you may experience. There is the behavioural and competency based interview where in which people assess your competencies by asking about previous e...