Top 8 Hacks To Ace Job Interviews

All candidates who face job interviews are anxious about their interviews and even more anxious to get the practical interview tips to ace the job interview and get hired by the organizations they apply to.

If you’re one among them, you have reached the right place. Unlike the old-school tips like ‘dress professionally’, ‘avoid saying your weakness and say I am a perfectionist’, here you would get to know the right hacks that make the cut during the interview process.

Hack for all interview hacks – Preparation

It is important to prepare for the interview before you get interviewed. This is done to ensure you don’t get anxious and freak out during the interview process. Most candidates prepare on how to answer during the interview and build up butterflies in their stomachs when they realize that a job interview is not only about answering right. There are several nuances a candidate has to be aware of. And that is called ‘preparation’.

1. Know more about the company, not just the gist!

When you are getting interviewed by the hiring manager of the organization, expecting the candidate to know about the company is a no-brainer. But several other candidates come prepared for the same. How would you fare better than them?

Read the latest news about the company and the industry. Relate your skills with the recent news as to how you can use your skills to help them out. Talking about these in the interview might impress your interviewer than talking only about your past experiences and skills.

2. Create a cribsheet

A long resume gets rejected while screening because HRs don’t have all day to read stories. They look for specific keywords and shortlist resumes. But if you have a lot to say, you might need another route to exhibit them. Cribsheet!

A cribsheet is a write-up or infographics on your job history explaining your accomplishments in your previous jobs. Now, some think that taking a cribsheet to the interview is a sign of an unprepared candidate. But times change. Companies who invest a great amount of money in talent acquisition want to know the most about the candidates they hire.

Take the cribsheet with you to your interview, share it with your interviewer explaining all your accomplishments. You can even mention your future goals and aspirations in the crib sheet, something you can’t mention on your resume. You can even submit it to the interviewer.

3. Fix the company’s problem

Many companies might be facing an issue which could be fixed with your skills. Probably, that is why they want to hire a person with your skillset. Try to identify if the company is facing any issue pertaining to your skills and create an outline on how you will fix them if you get hired.

In case if the company is not looking for an employee to fix that issue, there is a high chance that the interviewer might get impressed by your commitment prior to the interview.

4. Practice your posture

You would have come across a lot of interview tips saying good body language is required to fare well in the interviews. But they don’t tell that body language takes years to form and years of practice to change.

Remember this is a hack and not a tip. How do you change body language and build confidence in a day? Work on your posture.

A day before your interview, few hours before the interview and five minutes before you enter the office to get interviewed, practice posing brisk with shoulders and back straight. Although this doesn’t change your body language, it will give you enough confidence to carry yourself through the interview.

Now that you know the hacks to prepare for an interview, let’s see the hacks to fare better during the interview.

5. Be nice to everyone

The interview starts the minute you enter the premises of the company. All your actions get evaluated including how you treat other staff. Remember the famous quote by Henry Ford? “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking”.

Why should you be nice to everyone inside the office during your interview?

When you are nice, friendly and professional to all the employees in the office, you develop positive feedback from the employees who observe you. We all know people talk about us behind our backs and we would want them to talk highly about ourselves, especially after the interview. Why?

Hiring managers often employ receptionists, employees of other departments and even janitors as secret screening agents. This is done to know how you behave to other employees in the office when your boss is not around. It gives a better insight into your personality and gives an even better reason to reject you if you have a negative personality.

6. Connect with your interviewer

Before you dive into the nitty-gritty of the interviews, have a small talk with your interviewer and build a rapport. But avoid any kind of controversial topics such as politics, religion, etc.

Talk about something other than your job description to show that you are a friendly and interesting person. This will help the interviewer have a better opinion of you. After all, they are interviewing a number of candidates all day and you would want to strike better than them when they are shortlisting.

7. Master your body language on the spot

Remember reading that body language takes years to change? Well, here’s a hack to develop better body language during the interview. Copy your interviewer.

Just don’t copy every move of your interviewer. It might seem like you are mocking him/her. Hiring managers have years of experience talking to candidates and possess good body language. Try to copy their tone, pitch and posture to fare better. It helps to develop cohesion with the interviewer and indirectly makes them feel better about you.

But if you are uncomfortable copying, just be yourself. Many candidates know this copy hack but when they execute it, they become uncomfortable and start to fidget. Even though you answer correctly, fidgeting during the interview would create such a negative impression that all your words might go over the interviewer’s head.

8. Talk like you are narrating a movie plot

Most candidates prepare for the interview thinking about the kind of questions that will be asked or even have a prepared script for the ultimate first question ‘tell me about yourself?’. Interviewers are humans, after all. They expect a human touch in the answers they hear to connect with the candidate.

Don’t be rigid and answer to the point like a robot during an interview. As an interviewee, you need to grab the attention of your interviewer and keep them interested. Explaining your professional life journey like a movie plot with all the challenges you have faced and how you overcame them. Like most successful movie plots, end your journey on a happy note with a smile explaining why you are looking forward to work in their organization.

This will help the interviewer to have a positive opinion about you and the overall interview session.