The Sum

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How to succeed at the job interview? It is an important question we face only when we are looking for a job or change or promotion or review. In other words, it is an infrequent event and in most cases we do not attach importance. On the other hand, if you sit back and think, perhaps you could have done better or much better if you had approached the process of interview differently! That is also the difference between being successful and not so successful. There are professional companies, as mentioned in getting into job market for success who can help you prepare and present job interview(s). There are professional companies which can provide valuable help in creation of resume. If you want to attempt it yourself, here are the pertinent steps:

It may seem that I have not stated anything new. The language expected in the interview process is very different. There is more formality. Questions are more indirect than not. You have to be most courteous. There are obvious questions which are common at most interviews with slight variation. It is always better to prepare your selection of words or vocabulary and that’s where preparing questions and answers and may be memorizing your response or rehearsing works well.

Here are some of the questions:

You are being given an opportunity to state more than what you have already provided. It may also happen when application / resume has not been read. Take this opportunity to briefly state what is in your resume and then go on to add highlights of other experiences, achievements, as well. Repeating only what is in your resume is a lower than average performance.

The answer can be attempted in so many ways but an answer, say, 50k or 50,000 is not necessarily appropriate. You are being asked as to what are you after.

Supposing you are given 50k but there is no growth, from your point of view it would not be good. At the same time, you getting 50k and not deliverying what is expected would not be good from the prospective employer’s stand point.

Consider this that there are some important people working for the propective employer whom you will meet only at the time of interview and rarely would get a chance of meeting, again. At least you would not get a chance to meet where you are nearly on a one-to-one basis, in an impressionable forum.

As such, you want to para phrase in a way to communicate what is important to you, what do find good about the company, what do you intend to bring to the team, how do you intend to contribute towards the growth of the company. In most of the cases, there is a salary block within which you will be accommodated and they will repeat to get the monetary amount.

Typically, you could word your reply as: I value the opportunity to work for your company ( the company name) and the great team (you could name the team or team under so and so). I look forward to the opportunity of being able to directly ( or more directly ) contribute towards the growth of the company especially when it would allow me to steadily grow with the growth of the company. And then say, considering what I currently get (what has been offered to me elsewhere), I would be happy if you could place me in a range of $….. to $…..

It is once again, a chance or an opportunity for you to seize and explain and elaborate how your qualifications and experience make you the perfectly suitable candidate and how you could use your abilities and talents to contribute directly towards the growth of the company.

Unless it is a sports organization hiring a sports person, the idea behind the question is to find whether you are / were a team player or a not. There are jobs where team play is important. On such jobs, in an indirect manner, a candidate is adjudged for his suitability.

These are just examples. In most cases, preparing for a job interview paves way for growth on a perpetual basis.

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Planned entry into the Job Market is an extremely important step. The reason why we are talking here is because it is more important than most think. Your career is like a ladder. You may, in a hurry pick the first ladder but does it take you to the highest point or not, you may not be able to judge. You want to start at the appropriate level not at a level that you feel comfortable. Using the metaphor, you can feel that you need an objective analysis and help to help you understand where and how you need to enter the job market. The “where” is not location but how many steps up on your ladder!

A similar aspect, often overlooked, is how to present ones-self. We are not talking of dressing up but more like “branding”. You may have qualities valuable for the job market but unless those aspects get presented in a proper manner, job market does not respond. You need the stimuli to be created. That is where, a little professional help could go a long way get a better job or better evaluation for a job. Get your resume made from 1-on-1 or from bakosgroup.com or from gotthejob.com or other professional companies. This may cost but the payback is quick because you get called for the interview much sooner. Some of these companies do free evaluation and answer a lot of the questions.

When you put away available money for future we can simply term it as “Savings”. When you invest or deploy the money that you saved, to earn something, it is “investing”.

We all think of future and events which would require a certain amount of money to be made available. Thinking, rationally, we try to set aside some money out of current earnings or available resources. We can do it perpetually.

As a next logical step, you would keep that money in an interest bearing account where money could be available for contingencies but would bear interest. There are Banking Institutions which would pay you good return for keeping the money with them. ING, Bank of America, Citibank are some of the examples.

You might have heard of inflation. Inflation makes your money’s power to purchase lower. As such, when you are saving, you need to examine whether inflation will reduce the future value of your money even after adding up the interest that you might get. When you realize that interest may not be sufficient then as a next step you need to look for bonds which guarantee a return equal or higher than the rate of inflation.

At times we find even that as not sufficient an incentive to forgo today’s needs for the future. Investing is the option that you are likely to examine at this point. Typically, you would either educate yourself in investing or seek help. The basic principle is to buy low and sell high. That’s too simple. How would you know the future price of a scrip so that you pick the right scrip and right time. You have to be, ideally, correct in both. It is more of chance (or luck as some may put) that you are right in both. Through constantly studying the market, the business cycles in respective industry and leading companies you can reach a stage where you can start making good judgment. There are various research publications which have some products which can guide you. But remember, they can only guide you. It is you who will need to assume the risk.