8 Essentials for Acing Interviews

Job interviews can be scary propositions: there is usually a better job and quality of life at stake, then as if this weren't enough pressure we shackle ourselves with the fear that failure to land the job is an indictment of our worthiness. Here are eight simple steps you can take to dramatically improve your performance at job interviews. Take them and your ability to turn interviews into job offers is going to undergo an exciting transformation.

Step #1
Focus on a specific and realistic target job: one in which you can succeed once in the saddle. This "being able to succeed" is an important consideration. Being able to do 70%+ of the job will get you in the running for the interview cycle. Less than this and you may need to re-evaluate your target job title; most people don't get promotions to the next step up the professional ladder when they change jobs, because that would mean coming onboard as an unknown quantity in a job they had never done. Typically, most professionals accept a position similar to the one they have now, that offers the opportunity for growth once their mettle is proved. An exception might be when they are already doing that higher-level job but without the title recognition; or it might be the executive who is combining experience and credentials from a number of jobs into a new in-demand configuration.

Step #2
Develop your own job description of the target job by surfing job sites and collecting recruitment advertisements, with the goal of half a dozen relevant job postings. From this collection you now create one single all-embracing job description, with each requirement getting its own bullet on the document. The result will be a document that comprehensively describes your target job and puts in your hands an outline of all probable areas of inquiry.

Step #3
Under each bullet point of your target job description you should enter the relevant skills you use in the execution of this particular responsibility/area of expertise, the education and/or special training necessary, followed by your achievements and contributions in the area.

Step #4
No one is ever added to the payroll for the love of mankind, at some level all jobs are the same in that they all focus on the solution and prevention of problems. Take a few minutes to think about your job in terms of the problems it is there to solve and to prevent, and then go through each of the bullets and identify the problem areas that go along with this territory. In each instance come up with an illustration of successfully tacking this type of problem: addressing the problem's origin, followed by your solution analysis, its implementation and the results.

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