THE BEECHMONT CREST CAREER GUIDE:
SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE CORPORATE JUNGLE
CHAPTER 4: INTERVIEWING AND CLOSING THE DEAL
Do your homework before you arrive
Think of an interview as a test, similar to the exams you took in secondary school and college. Most exams consist of a mix of simple, straightforward material, as well as more challenging content. The key to getting an “A” on these exams is to devote the proper amount of attention to the easy material as well as to the rocket science.
I recall one particularly tragic economics exam from my college years. Throughout the semester, the material had consisted of a fifty-fifty mix of simple, content-based material (example: In what year did Adam Smith publish Wealth of Nations?) and difficult, math-based problems that involved complex formulas.
As the midterm approached, I decided that the exam would focus on the math problems, so I spent all my preparation time crunching numbers, and ignored the more “Mickey Mouse” portions of the textbook. Although I am better at memorizing than mathematics, I neglected to learn the simple definitions and facts at the end of each chapter. I could have easily absorbed this material, but I decided that the professor would consider it to be “to easy” to serve as the basis for test questions.
Can you guessed what happened? I walked into the classroom on the day of the midterm, and confronted an exam that consisted mostly of the “easy” material that I had thought the professor would never care about.
What happened to me in that long-ago college midterm can easily happen to you in a job interview if you neglect the basics. Don’t assume that you can’t get disqualified for something simple just because you happen to have an impressive education or a brilliant track record in your industry.
One of your most basic pre-interview tasks is to do a quick study of the company where you will interview. Visit their website. If you know anyone who already works there, buy that person lunch one day and pick his brain. If you don’t know about the industry in which they are active, then learn about that, too.
Don’t walk into the interview and ask basic questions that indicate a total lack of preparation. (Such questions include: “What do you make?”, “What industry are you in?”, “Are you a large company?” etc. )
Copyright 2006 Beechmont Crest Publishing