Essential Interviews Tips and Skills To Get You Started!
Essential Interviews Tips and Skills To Get You Started!
Negotiating is an essential skill!
If you make it through the tests and convince them of your fantastic worth at interview, a job offer may be just around the corner and you face having to talk about your financial value. When you are offered a new job, you have a unique opportunity to position yourself as a valuable asset in the organization and to set your level of remuneration accordingly. To achieve this, you need to establish an appropriate asking price–and it is wise to think about this early in case it should come up during your interview. On the one hand, you don’t want to oversell yourself and price yourself out of the market. On the other, you need to avoid selling yourself short, as it is extremely difficult to change your position once you’re placed in a complex pay structure.
There are no definite rules about how to conduct your negotiation. Every situation differs and each employer has their own set of thresholds. Understanding the context in which your negotiation takes place and sensitivity to the culture of the organization is therefore vital. Having said that, there are some practical steps you can take to position yourself sensibly.
Step one: Research the employer
When you are going for a job, you are effectively a salesperson promoting a product, and it is up to you to demonstrate that the ‘product’ is valuable, high-quality, and superior to anything a competitor could offer.
Like a salesperson, you need to know your market and your buyers. Potential employers, or ‘buyers’, will, of course, be looking for the best possible value for their money. However, if you have positioned yourself well and made a good impression at interview, they won’t risk losing you and will be prepared to settle at the top of the market rather than the bottom. If you know what the employer can afford, you will automatically gain an advantage.
Step two: Consult external sources
When seeking an entry point for your salary, there are several
sources that will help you find an appropriate figure. Look at the range of packages offered for similar positions in the adverts online or on the jobs pages. Ask for advice from people in your professional and personal network.
Ask your mentor, if you have one, to advise you—or use his or her own network to access the information. If you are a member of a union, they will have information on acceptable salary ranges for your profession. If everything fails, try some of the free salary calculators online.
Remember that you can put off a prospective employer by pitching too high or too low, so it is important to get your level right. Get a feel for the market rate by drawing information from the above sources. You will also find listings on the Internet that can help you.
Psychometric tests for Interviews
There are three main types:
Attainment tests: These are tests designed to find out how much you have learned from your past training and experience—much like school exams. If you are applying for your first real job you might be confronted with a test of maths, English, or IT skills, for example.
General Intelligence tests: This group and the next are concerned with your ability to learn new skills. Intelligence tests measure your capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning in particular contexts. The items usually cover numerical, verbal, and symbolic reasoning, often in the familiar forms, such as: ‘What is the missing number in this series . . .?’ The tests in most common use are the AH series, Raven’s Matrices, and NIIP tests. The first two have ‘advanced’ forms for use with graduates and managers.
Special Aptitude tests: Some types of work clearly require you to have—or be able to learn—particular skills at a high level. This group of tests is designed to reveal general or specific aptitudes that the employer needs to develop. The most usual types of test are:
-Verbal Ability: including verbal comprehension, usage, and critical evaluation. An example is the VA series.
-Numerical Ability: involving numerical reasoning or analysis of quantitative data. You might meet the NA series of tests, NC2, or the GMA numerical test.
-Spatial Ability: relating to skill at visualizing and manipulating three dimensional shapes, for example. Frequently used tests are the ST series. Analytical thinking: relating to the way in which candidates can read and process complex arguments. These tests are very common among graduates and those applying for MBAs. An example is the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking test.
-IT Aptitude: various tests for technical programming ability and word processing.
-Manual Dexterity: testing special manipulation or hand-eye co-ordination linked to the special requirements of a job. If you are applying for a modern apprenticeship, especially in engineering or technology, you may meet these.
If you want to know more about these test, visit your local library and look up reference books on the various kinds of psychometric tests. They should tell you what the tests measure, what research has been done on them, and provide statistical information on how reliable they are. (Any decent test should have background information on reliability and validity.)
Most importantly, be well rested and relaxed so that you can focus clearly on the questions and provide your best answers.
Are you ready to answer them?
Occasionally, you may be interviewed by someone who asks inappropriate questions.
These may fall into the category of being ‘politically incorrect’ or may just put you in a difficult position. Even though most interviewers are very professional and well trained in appropriate interviewing techniques, you should still work out a strategy to deal with this situation—just in case.
Always never let an interviewer intimidate you by asking inappropriate questions. You have a right to be treated professionally and with dignity.
There are different ways you can answer:
Clarification: Check you have understood the question, by asking them to clarify what they are asking, ‘I’m not sure I understand your question, could you rephrase it for me?’ This also gives your interviewer an opportunity to rephrase the question if it was clumsily posed the first time.
Gentle confrontation: This generally means asking the interviewer, ‘I’m not sure why you’re asking me that. Would you mind explaining the reason behind asking the question so that I can give you a proper answer?’
Compliance: Answer the question.
Avoidance: Ignore the question and change the subject.
Humor: Respond to the question as if it were a joke, giving the interviewer an opportunity to save face and to ask more appropriate questions.
Strong confrontation: Tell the interviewer that the question is inappropriate and that you are not going to answer it, but always clarify that you’ve understood the question and reason behind it first!
Decide which response best fits your situation. Consider the factors below when deciding how to respond to any inappropriate questions:
-Why do you think the interviewer is asking the question?
- How intrusive or outrageous is the question?
-Can you see why this question relates to the job you
have applied for?
-How strongly do you want the job?
- Is this kind of question a reflection of the corporate culture?
Think about all these factors and decide whether the question seems fairly harmless and can be safely ignored, or whether the interviewer’s behavior crosses ethical lines and must be confronted. If you really want the job, you may decide to overlook the question. If the question is so offensive that you know you could never work for this company, you may be more confrontational.
Most importantly, always keep your cool and give the interviewer the benefit of the doubt before challenging them. If you have misunderstood the question, the embarrassment any kind of confrontation will cause may put you off (not to mention the interviewer) and ruin your chances of success in the rest of the interview.
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Posted On: September 12, 2009
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