I hear countless job search horror stories of people saying they’ve applied to over 100 jobs with no response back or never hearing back after the first round of interviews. The job search is hard and I empathize with anyone going through it because I recently had this experience. At the beginning of my job search, I caught myself doing the apply and prey method in an effort to find anything right away. After, I curated a list of target companies to help me narrow down the type of place I wanted to work at. As the search went on, I found myself making it to the 2nd and 3rd rounds of interviews but never to that offer.
Like anyone, I was filled with doubt as those rejections started to roll in. Trust me it’s easy to say those companies missed out on someone who can add major value to a team, but then I asked myself is it me? Did I do something to not get the offer? Did I not properly highlight my value? Luckily, during these interviews, I would write down the questions and record myself answering them to review later. I then noticed a pattern in my responses, they sucked! I quickly scrapped my cheat sheet of responses and created a new one. Shortly after I had the privilege of having to choose between 3 offers.
I went with the organization that had the best benefits, the greatest opportunity for growth, and honestly the best team. As I went through this experience, I wanted to highlight some common interview pitfalls and my own so you can avoid them.
Rely solely on job posts
Yes, the job description will give you an overall sense of what the job entails but trust me you can dig deeper. You can use websites like Glassdoor to check the reviews of the company and check out possible interview questions you could receive. Bringing in relevant news about the company during the interview will give you more context about your role. For instance, let’s say you find out that the company you’re interviewing at just acquired another company. More than likely that will affect your role in some capacity.
Unclear of your value proposition to the company
This is the sole reason for me getting 3 offers. Early on, I would only talk about my impact on doing the specific job and leave out my value. We all have a unique background so use that to your advantage. My background in workforce development was a major leg up on other candidates because I had experience building and connecting pipelines to employers from scratch. Go into your next interviewing thinking a jack of all trades is a master of none but still always better than a master of one.
Not asking questions
If you don’t have at least have 2 - 3 questions ready to go at the end of the interview, you might as well not expect a callback. We have an article out making the interview a two-way conversation that gives you questions to ask.
Assume you don’t need practice
For most people, interviewing isn’t something that is done regularly, and talking about yourself can be challenging. Practice in front of the mirror to watch and hear yourself. You can also ask a colleague to practice with you. There are hundreds of posts on LinkedIn of professionals offering their time to help. It’s also helpful to make a cheat sheet with some achievements so you don’t forget to mention them.