Congratulations. You have successfully been invited to interview. However, it doesn’t end here. You should spend some time preparing for your interview(s).
Do a mock interview
If you are a student, check if your careers service provides mock interviews. If so, book in a mock interview in advance of the real thing and prepare for it as well. If you have already graduated or your career service does not offer such a service call in a favour, perhaps from a mentor or networking contact, from a family contact, or from someone you did work experience with. Alternatively, buddy up with a fellow student and grill each other using example questions.
Revisit your application
Spend some time thinking about your application. Think about how you can expand on the points covered by your application and the key points that you want your potential employer to know for each of these. Think about any potential questions that might arise from your application and prepare for these. Be prepared to answer questions about any gaps, poor grades or lack of experience.
Do your research
the company or firm..
We come back to this again and again – but it is true. Make sure you do your research. You should be able to demonstrate that you know:
- key facts about the company
- the values of the company
- what type of work the company undertakes
- their key clients and/or sectors
- their recent deals / projects
- what they will expect of you
- what their training programme is like
Once you have done you research it is important to identify why these things are important to you or attractive to you. You should have already done this for your application, this is just a refresher and an opportunity to dig a little deeper.
Why do you want to work for us?
This question is usually guaranteed. This is where you research comes in. Use your research to craft some bullet points for answering this question. Once again, practice this question show that you sound convincing and enthusiastic.
Other Questions
After you have practiced the essentials you should also prepare and practice other interview questions.
Prepare a list of questions
You should ideally have a list of questions that you genuinely want answered and that demonstrate that you are interested in the firm or company. Write a list of questions – check that none of these can be answers on the website. If they can you may want to ask for more information on a specific point. Some of these will of course be answered during the course of the interview which is why it is important to have a list of questions to fall back on.