How to ace your first interview ?

smash that next interview

How to ace your interview ?

Reading time ~ 6 min, 10 sec.

What’s Inside ?

• An post about how to ace your interviews

• Interesting “thing” of the week

Interview is a big event in one’s life, especially if it is the first one.

It does not matter if you are attending it to crack a job, get a scholarship, get some funds for your Idea, the first interview is always memorable/ forgetful experience.

Nervousness, felling not ready, occasional forgetfulness make the matter much worse.

In this post, I would like to give you the secret formula that you can use it for almost any interview - including your first interview.

Along with this, I will also share 5 ready-to-apply tips that will help you ace your interview and as a bonus you can use these tips for any of your important conversations - like a discussion with your manager.

So lets dive in !!

Secret Formula

Lets first start with what I call, The “time & tested secret formula”, here you go !

Yes, it is as simple as this. Let me explain this succinctly

The core principle of any interview, irrespective of the type of interview, is the same, the interviewer essentially checks the “white part“ and the “grey part“.

By “Grey” I mean of that which is hidden - your nature, how you perceive things, how you apply things, how you solve things.

This grey part is your preparation.

The interviewer does not really know anything about your preparation - it is essentially “grey” to them. In order to be successful, you should strengthen your grey part by preparing well and showcase it to the interviewer.

The second part is “White” part, By “white”, I mean of that which is visible - like how you are dressed up for the interview, how you speak, how you react, your body language.

The subconscious of the interviewer already makes assumptions and in some cases critical judgements depending on what they see of the “White” part. This “white” part is beaming and bright when you are confident and really sets the tone for the interview.

This white part is how to present yourselves.

So the secret formula essentially is to “present” the “prepared” side of yours to the interviewer.

There you have it - you will be able reflect on this part when I add the vital 5 tips to succeed in an interview.

Tips to ace your interview

Tip 1 - Do your research about the job

The first and the most important thing to do before you start your preparation is to do some research about the job and the company offering it.

What should you look out and how does it help ?

See table below

This research should help you prioritise and focus your preparation on the key topics instead of everything and anything !

Tip 2 - Focus on key topics and make a quick revision

While preparing, it is important to mark important topics and flag them for a quick revision later.

Topics like - frequently asked algorithms, questions related to personality, situational questions, would benefit from a revision before the big day.

Please flag only the topics that require you to memorise and not topics that require problem solving or creativity. For the topics of latter type, ensure you work on them with focus as part of your preparation. This will help you run through them once again when the question actually comes up in the interview.

Tip 3 - Confidence is the key

I can’t stress the importance of this “white” part - How confident are you in the interview ?

To appear confident in words, in physical actions (like a firm handshake), in body language (like having a steady eye contact) and finally in your answers is as good as half the job done.

However, there are two pitfalls that you should be wary of ,

1) source of confidence 2) over confidence.

One may say that their preparation helps boosts their confidence. There is no denying this but please note that preparation is always a relative measure of your capability. It is quite possible (and has happened with many) that one could ace an interview because of their knowledge of the subject gained a few years ago and not preparation alone.

So it is important to prepare well (as the secret formula states) but not to derive the confidence from preparation but rather from your personality.

By deriving and instilling confidence through your personality, you are also building your personality on a long run.

Overconfidence is another killer that should be avoided. A person who is unnecessarily confident shows signs like confidently giving a wrong answer, offering a handshake before even asked to, being too loud in communicating, displaying arrogance in answers.

In summary, being confident and showing right amount of confidence is half the battle won!

The biggest cause of a failed interview is to derive the confidence from your preparation or previous/future outcomes.

Tip 4 - Stay calm

Another significant “White” aspect, is how calm you are before, during and after the interview.

You can stay calm before the interview by simply not thinking about the interview at all and going to bed early a day before. You can also keep your preparation light the day before the interview to not stress your mind.

Staying calm in the interview - especially while you are waiting for your name to be called - soothes your mind and keeps it focussed on your positive energy.

You are building the positive energy all through the process which will help you dodge difficult questions/situations in the interview.

A tip you can use to keep calm is to think about the person/situation that helps you calm down.

Tip 5 - Outcomes are not in your control

There are a number of things that go into the decision making of an interview, your performance definitely contributes to it, but is not the only aspect. Hence it is wise to just not think about the outcome.

Having this attitude helps hugely during your journey - From preparation to the actual day of interview. You can focus on putting your best effort across instead of worrying about the results. You are also not biased by the outcome which helps you bring quality to your preparation.

Another unintended but helpful side affect is that, If you performed and presented well but don’t have a favourable result, focussing on outcomes would pull you down and this process only continues with each failed interview. However by taking out the outcomes and their impact from your thought process, you are much clear and concise in your preparation and presentation.

Hope you had insightful time reading the post, if you would like me to write about any other topic, don’t hesitate to hit reply to this email and send me the name of the topic.

If you would like to give me any other feedback about the content, don’t hesitate to reply either.

Interesting “thing“ of the week

On the topic of interviews, I found this HBR article very useful, please give it a read.