I fail to understand why do I get rejected in an Interview?
Now as we have
successfully figured out as to how to answer “Tell me something about
yourself?”, we are successful in creating a positive inquisitiveness in the
mind of our interviewer. Now the interviewer starts thinking in the line like
‘give me a few more reasons to just stamp you as a select’. Hence, what’s next?
Next is the testing of specific skills of yours, suitable for the job. No
matter what sort of questions would be coming up next, they would all be
checking out on your skills on offer - in detail. Hence, here you don’t
necessarily need to mug up 100 different kinds of answers to the most common
interview questions, with an expectation to remember the best one for the time
to come. From heron strategizing the process is what that best works.
Do you know that the biggest challenge ahead
of us is fearless interviewing, because we all have given numerous interviews
and will give more in times to come but we just do not stop fearing the moment.
Do you know why because we are afraid of what question will come next and
though they involve what we have done till now but then also we dread because
we don’t know whether our answer will satisfy the interviewer or not. The
remedy to this is preparation and preparation not in the sense what we have
been told till now by anticipating different types of questions relating to our
skills and experience, formulating answers to those questions and mugging them.
Here we will also prepare but in a different way which will make you geared up
for any sort of interview question anticipated or unanticipated and will make
you fearless in turn.
Let me give you an example to give you
clarity of thoughts. Ruchika once told me that she is not being able to get
through interviews and fails to understand why. She had called me for some
openings for her and divulged her frustration to me. I had known her for quite
some time professionally but had also developed a personal rapport with her. I
asked her about her resume whether it is well written or not. On this she
revealed that she had got her resume professionally written and does get calls
for interviews but the interviews were not turning positive. I have met her
personally and she seemed to be a smart woman with impeccable communication
skills to me and there was no reason that I was able to decipher causing her to
fail. The negative thoughts were also making her wonder whether she is in the
wrong profession. As a gesture to help and also for my own benefit I asked her
if she can meet me somewhere in the same way she approaches her interview.
There was no reason for her to disagree and we decided to meet in a not so
crowded restaurant the next day for lunch. In the meantime she had mailed me
her resume and she looked terrific on paper. She had over 5 years of experience
into sales, also handled a team in her last experience and had handled some
large accounts. Looking at the resume I had no doubt that she can have pick of
number of sales position in the Hotel industry.
As we had planned she walked into the restaurant only after 10 minutes
of my arrival. In the first few seconds, it was clear to me that she had
excellent social skill and she looked confident. She was dressed professionally
and there was nothing to not like about her. It was clear that the first
impression was not a problem with her.
Though we had not decided or planned but our further conversation turned
out to be like a mock interview. I was not asking directly but asked her as
what answer she would give to the certain questions that was coming to me as an
interviewer. It also helped as I was not having her resume with me. Ruchika’s
answers to my questions though technically correct, were loaded with
generalities and gave only a vague impression of what she could offer as a
sales manager. Had I been an employer, I would have doubts whether she could
really perform as well as she said she could and as her resume portrayed. How,
specifically, could she prove her skills?
Like, for example, what did she mean when she said she was “extremely
experienced”? Did she mean 2 years, 3 years, 5 years or 10 years? I said I was
not having her resume at that time and had glanced at it only 24 hours before
so that also contributed to create that vagueness in her answers.
She also said that she has an “exceptional record of service”. What was
it that made her service exceptional? Did she mean to say that she exceeded the
targets? Did she mean that she handled very large accounts? OR did she mean
that there were no adverse remarks during her service?
What did she mean when she said that she has an “outstanding sense of
the needs of the market”? Was she adept in market research? OR how does she
understand the need of a customer before actually meeting him?
I was not surprised when she said that her greatest strength was her communication
skills. Most of us, in fact, believe that we have good communication skills.
But in an interview, we need to prove it.
It was hard to know what Ruchika meant since she did not really have any
specific data or proofs to back up her assertions. No wonder, Ruchika was being
turned down for jobs in spite of her experience and professional demeanor. The
employer before hiring Ruchika for some lakhs of rupees per year would like to
know as to how her skills had produced positive results for the other company
and gets satisfied that she can do the same for his company. You can’t expect
your resume to do the talking or the interviewer to connect between the dots
for you.
This is what I meant when I said we have to prepare our answers with
crucial data which is exactly the kind of ammunition needed to tackle any
question hurled at you in a successful way.
I also had once discolored one of my smoothly proceeding interviews due
to such an answer. The interviewer seemed quite impressed with me until he
fired me with a question regarding how well I was with interviews. To which I
could not understand as to how to answer such a question. If I say yes then how
comes next. Hence, I said that I am quite good at it because the judgment about
70 to 80 percent of the candidates I interview have been correct. It was a
blunder. Nothing was wrong with my candidature for the position but this answer
turned the course of the interview.
Hence, preparing well ahead with what you have is better than preparing
by anticipating what is going to come. And what do we have with us? We have
with us our skills and experiences which we have to make our arsenal with. We
will start with assessing our skills.
Assessing your
skills
I don’t think you will disagree with
me that most of us after coming out from an unsuccessful interview state that
we could not explain properly our skills or what we can do for the company.
Even 90 percent of the interviewers also cite the same reason for not hiring a
candidate. They could not clearly state his or her skills. It doesn’t
mean that you don’t have the skills necessary for the job but they could not
verbally state those skills in a convincing way.
In the coming posts I will explain in
detail the ways to built a constellation of your personal skills and accomplishments
which can also be called your “skills arsenal”.
No question will be able to catch you
off guard because you will be well prepared with offer stories and proofs about
accomplishments and your skills that will impress and maybe even dazzle the
interviewer.
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