Arik Filstein

Arik Filstein

Arik Filstein 31/05/2011

Dear all,

I have decided to publish this post at this very late hour (03:23 am) for a good reason. One of my good friends, manager of a big company, stopped by my house, and we shared some views on the current recruitment era, the methods and the way.

The conversation took a view at the issue both, from a job applicant´s perspective and from the employer’s standpoint.

The way this conversation developed brought us to the topic that makes me personally very annoyed: “Preparing for a job interview or Job interview tips”..

Preparing for job interviews – Background

Many articles explore the topic trying to supply preliminary answers or  prepare the job-seekers in advance to what is expected to happen during the job interview. Putting the cart before the horse, I will state that the recommendations published in the media are very similar, if not repetitive. A significant number of them are based on the principles rooted in the occupational psychology, and the others are derived from common sense.

Many job applicants, especially young ones who have no experience in job interviews, or job seekers who feel anxiety which sometimes even increases above usual in this situation use the Internet in order to work out a tactic of behavior with the interviewer, some imaginary tactic that would ensure the positive outcome of the interview, of course.

Despite the fact that the Internet does provide a lot of data the topic, when one flicks through the articles or any website, one gets a feeling that everybody talks about the same thing and nothing is new or original.

Just for the sake of analogy: “It resembles a situation in a restaurant where the chef’s choice accompanying the permanent menu stays the same every day. The skilled chef doesn’t change the daily tip he prepared and doesn’t take into account that on any particular work day many various diners having different culinary preferences eat in the restaurant.”

It is quite possible that the reason for the chef’s position is that the dish is so good that he doesn’t see any professional need to replace it. Another potential reason can derive from the fact that there is just no other dish, and therefore the dish remains unchanged.

This is the situation at the hot arena of recommendations for “Preparing for a job interview”. The recommendations are fixed and unchanged, and the reason for that is that there is nothing to renew, or “there is no better dish”.

How to behave correctly during job interview

Very simple: Be yourselves! I do not support generalization and have an impression that certain articles on this issue can do more harm than good for certain job seekers since they are designed as a general message, a generic drug for candidates.

I suggest that similarly to having no way for “Winning at Roulette”, there is no way to win a job interview, and not because of probability, but since there is no such professional concept.

Job interview is an event most of which deals with the chemistry between the interviewer and the interviewee, with his suitability to the company, with the educational background of the job applicant and the level of credibility all stages of the interview.

I have written this entire post to convey to you just one insight: there is no article that can teach you what to say and what not, how to pre-program your body language in advance for you to be able to cope with any possible scenario during the interview. No article has the ability to recommend to you what octaves to use when the interview reaches its culmination point.

Dear job seekers:

You know yourselves better than anybody else, and what you need to bring to the interview table is yourselves, and in the last place all the confusing material you have read. Again, be yourselves in the most natural way, so that you feel relaxed during the interview, without prejudice, without theses that have no place in our dynamic world. Be attentive to the interviewer, and the rest depends on you and your suitability to the company.

Yours,

Arik