It goes without saying that if you don’t stay focused during your face-to-face interview, it could cost you a job you really want.
Sure, you’re nervous and it’s difficult to concentrate, but it’s crucial that you do so. With that in mind, below are three tips for staying focused on the things you should be focused on:
- Present yourself in the best manner possible. At the heart of this tip is effectively communicating evidence of your skills, abilities, accomplishments, and experience to everybody involved in the interview (or the interview process). However, this also includes the way in which you’re presenting yourself physically, everything from personal appearance to body language and facial expressions to the way in which you answer questions.
- Make sure that YOU ask questions, too. Speaking of questions, you should be asking some of your own. Remember that you are interviewing the company just as much as the company is interviewing you. You want to make as informed a decision as possible, and doing so starts with collecting the correct information through carefully constructed inquiries.
- Remember your number-one objective. That objective is this: to move to the next stage of the interview process or to secure an offer of employment. For the moment, forget about everything else, including whether or not you’d fit into the company culture or whether you could work for the person sitting in front of you. Those are decisions for later . . . and really, they become mute points if you don’t receive an offer in the first place.
Thinking about too many things during your interview can be dangerous. That’s why it’s important to clear your mind and focus only on the things that matter.
Use the three tips presented above to mentally prepare for your next face-to-face interview. They could dramatically increase the chances that you’ll receive a job offer!