How to Prepare for a Job Interview on Short Notice

How to Prepare for a Job Interview on Short NoticeHow to Prepare for a Job Interview on Short NoticeWhen youre looking for a job and you get a call from a potential employer asking for an bewerbungsinterview, the natural instinct is to drop everything and make it happen. This instinct is absolutely right. The last thing you want is to miss an opportunity because you were too busy to make it. But with a 24-hour period you should be able to properly prepare for an interview and impress the potential employer. Here are some tips for preparing for a job interview on short notice.1. Prepare your clothingOne-hour Martinizing is your friend. If you dont have time to do your laundry, take advantage of fast dry cleaning. The first impression is a key parte of any interview. You need to look sharp. With a short time to prepare you wont have a chance to get a haircut or buy new shoes that you would under other circumstances, but you can look good in your clothes.2. Practice your elevator pitchY ou should always spend time before interviews preparing responses to typical interview questions. When preparing on short notice, you might not have the time. Rather than rehearsing responses to a bunch of questions, do yourself a favor and finalize your elevator pitch, which is the one-minute message you want to convey about yourself. It should include your accomplishments and what you can offer the company.You want to have this near memorized, not to the point you recite it word-for-word, but to where you know exactly what you want to say. Review the job description and isolate the job requirements and demonstrate how your successes have prepared you to meet this companys needs. When you have your pitch down think a bit about those typical interview questions.3. Study the job description and your resumeCarefully review the various requirements in the job description. Since you are limited on time to prepare, spend the bulk of your time working through the job description. For ever y requirement you want to have an example of your own related ability- be it how youve succeeded at that task in the past or how your previous experience has prepared you.It can be helpful to put your resume right next to the job description and connect the dots.Focus on those elements that relate to the job description. Reread your cover letter in case it comes up.4. Have 1-2 questions to ask the interviewerEvery job interview usually ends the same way, with the interviewer asking if you have any questions. This is the opportunity for you to show how well you understand the job and the company and how well you have been listening. Be sure you take the time to develop some insightful questions. Unless its a major concern or potential stumbling block, avoid the temptation of asking about salary, benefits and so forth. Focus on the job- expectations, projections, items that are unclear in the description, etc. The interview should be a two-way conversation. Have talking points for you r interviewer.4.Review for any front-page company newsIts always a good idea to get familiar with the ins and outs of a company before you go in for the interview. With a short time to prepare youre not going to have a chance to read every press release and browse through every page of the companys website.Review only the latest company press releases and search the web for any recent news regarding the company or the industry. Show your potential employer that you are informed.5. Finalize your scheduleOnce you get the call youll have to make your schedule accommodate the interview. If youre currently working, thats going to be an issue. On short notice, you may have to call in sick. Use this as a last resort. Try to schedule the interview so you can leave work early or arrive late.If you interview before you go into work, wear clothes you would wear to work. You dont want anyone to notice you have a job interview. If you dress like youre going to a job interview everyday, great. Ot herwise, bring a change of clothes.6. Get some restAlthough you may feel the need to spend extra time preparing for the job interview, its also important that you go in fresh, rested, and ready to go. To this end, be sure to get a good nights sleep before you go in for the interview. The rest will ensure that you make it to the interview on time and are sharp and ready to go.If you end up dealing with a job interview on short notice, dont panic. You wont be able to prepare as much as you might like, but youll still have time to make a good first impression.

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills in Business

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills in BusinessThe Importance of Interpersonal Skills in BusinessThe meaning of the phrase interpersonal skills are the skills we use to interact with others properly. In business, this phrase is generally used when seeking an employee with a strong ability to get along with others to complete a job. In recent years, the importance of interpersonal skills has grown in a persons career.In an age of data and technology, when most are connected globally to friends or tribes via cell phones and social media, the importance of interpersonal skills has been given new life.The growing demand for workplace etiquetteOur interpersonal skills (aka. people skills) speak volumes about who we are as people. People, in general, will fasson an impression of you based on your ability to communicate.If you are viewed as someone who cannot communicate, you will be viewed as incapable of learning workplace etiquette. Ignoring the importance of interpersonal skills can lead to a shorter lifespan in a job or not getting hired at all.Everything you do tells a story about youEven the most open-minded, open-hearted individual cannot escape human nature. The way we stand and make eye contact tells others how to evaluate your professionalism.You may be the smartest person in the room, but if you present yourself to your co-workers, boss, or hiring manager in a way that says, Leave me alone, they will give you what you appear to be asking for.More so, how you dress may be accepted by others. But if you appear to be ignoring how your outfit makes others feel, they very well could start to think you do not care about the way they feel. You may be accepted for being different, but if you are ignoring others feelings, they will believe you do not understand the importance of interpersonal skills. You are alienating yourself from the companys culture.The importance of interpersonal skills for interviewsThose with general people skills never have to worry abou t the knowing the followingWhen to talkWhen to stop talkingWhen a job interview or meeting went well or badlyWhen it is time to change the way one is communicatingHow they are making others feel while they speakPeoples boundariesUsing an exampleA guy walks into an interview at a tech company dressed in a suit. He gets some looks from others and he knows the looks are not positive. The company is one of the largest in the world and he wants to impress. As he looks around the geschftszimmer, he notices everyone is dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers. He also notices some of the workers appear uncomfortable by his well-dressed presence.Now, this guy understands the importance of interpersonal skills. Before he is greeted by a receptionist, he quickly leaves the office and heads to the bathroom. Luckily he has been through this before.He wants the job but knows he misjudged the companys culture. So, he takes off his suit jacket and tie. He stuffs it in his bag and changes into a ni ce pair of jeans. He decides it would be best to do this interview dressedbusiness casual.Luckily, he was prepared. There are so many types of business cultures these days and he grew up in a time where everyone wore suits to work. Times have changed and he wanted to be prepared for anything. The interview went well and led to a 2nd round interview.Top 10 Most Important People SkillsThose who have a grasp of the importance of interpersonal skills possess the following skillsRelationship managing (aka. the difference between friends, being friendly, and courtesy)Self-confidenceStrong work ethicListeningCollaborativeAppreciativePositiveHumbleIntegrityPerceptive (almost empathic)Above all, they know the importance of when to apply each one.The secrets to learning general people skillsOne must talk with people in front of them. And it also helps to travel. There are some who believe disconnecting from technology is a good way to learn the importance of interpersonal skills. But the real ity is technology is used as a form of communication. All new technology demands a new way of communicating and it has been this way since the invention of the telephone in the 1800s.Therefore, one must learn to communicate with people, face to face, and through screens. Simply being good at only one style of communication sets limits on the number of interpersonal skills you can learn.If you would like to read more on ways to communicate either in person or on LinkedIn, be sure to check out the Find My Profession blog.

Study Meetings with agendas are less wanted, but they work

Study Meetings with agendas are less wanted, but they workStudy Meetings with agendas are less wanted, but they workMeetings can be time-sucking vortexes that steal our attention and energy. The formality of forced participation and setting an agenda can seem like a needless hassle when you can just communicate what you want over a quick email. But heres some bad news for those of us who hate meetings - they actually work.In a study that compared the formal communication of meetings with the informal communication of emails and phone calls in industrial companies, formal communication came out on top. Across 73 manufacturing plants in 18 countries, meetings, with their standard protocols of timing and set participation, were better at preventing operational glitches that held up supply chains and delayed deliveries than informal emails and phone calls.The relatively inexpensive formal system of periodic cross-functional meetings turned out to be the only effective channel to communi cate and mitigate the impact of internal and customer glitches, business professors Antti Tenhil and Fabrizio Salvador wrote in their paper for Decision Sciences.Meetings remove questions about whose job it is to do whatIf you prefer emails and calls over meetings, you are not alone. Humans naturally prefer the spontaneity of a phone call and email over the coercive, artificial organization-specific protocols of meetings, researchers found, citing previous research. But this preference of communication did not translate to effectiveness. Overall, the researchers found that the formal process of a meeting welches more effective at removing the ambiguity of who was going to address a glitch and how it was going to be resolved.According to our interviewees, formal interpersonal channels are particularly apt at enabling such interactive cross-functional communications, the researchers wrote. They ensure reciprocity while simultaneously enforcing formal protocols, guaranteeing that the r elevant parties receive, understand, and act upon the exception messages.Good meetings with agendas and the right participants hold us accountable to what we say we are going to do. Thats not to say that getting on the phone and calling someone is useless in a company. The researchers suggested that when unexpected events happen, informal communication is useful, but less useful when it comes to day-to-day operations.Emails turned out to be the most popular channel in this study yet they only had a complementary role in the mitigation of glitches, the researchers concluded. All this suggests that the formal communication channels may have a worse reputation than they deserve.