Increase your chances of get­ting a job offer.

Your resume got you in the door, now what? Inter­view­ing requires thought­ful prepa­ra­tion. Wing­ing it sim­ply won’t work. Fol­low these steps to improve your odds of get­ting an offer.

1. Know when the inter­view begins. The inter­view begins with the first con­tact you make with a com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tive.  This could be the admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant who sched­ules your inter­view or the recep­tion­ist at the front lobby. Each will be eval­u­at­ing you.  Some­times you may not even know when the inter­view begins. Take Elysa Rice for exam­ple, who landed a job after tweet­ing dur­ing a panel at the South By South­west con­fer­ence. A week after the con­fer­ence she received a mes­sage via LinkedIn ask­ing if she’d be inter­ested in inter­view­ing for an open Com­mu­nity Man­ager posi­tion. After agree­ing to the inter­view, she learned the inter­viewer dis­cov­ered her via her Twit­ter con­ver­sa­tions at the con­fer­ence. He spent a few days view­ing her online engage­ment skills related to the job he was hir­ing her for. So, essen­tially Rice was being ‘inter­viewed’ before she even knew about the position.

2. Do your home­work. With so much infor­ma­tion avail­able on the inter­net, there is no excuse for not being fully informed about what the com­pany does, the mar­kets it serves and its com­pe­ti­tion.  Check out Google Blog Search to find out what is trend­ing about the com­pany.  Review Glass­door, which has over 270,000 com­pany reviews and 13,000 inter­view reviews and ques­tions.  Use LinkedIn to ‘fol­low’ your com­pany and gain access to pro­files of peo­ple who have pre­vi­ously worked for the com­pany.  These folks are much more likely to be can­did about their expe­ri­ence than a cur­rent employee.  Con­tact them for insider infor­ma­tion before your interview.

3. Ana­lyze the job descrip­tion. Iden­tify key require­ments includ­ing skills and com­pe­ten­cies, and build your accom­plish­ment sto­ries around these to demon­strate why you are the best fit for the job. Your sto­ries should be struc­tured around the C. A. R. for­mat. C.A.R. stands for: Chal­lenge, Action, Result. What chal­lenge or prob­lem were you faced with? What action steps or deci­sions did you make? What were the results? The results should be quan­tifi­able show­ing how you made or saved the com­pany money; or how you expanded the busi­ness. CAR sto­ries should include spe­cific examples.

4. Pay atten­tion to body lan­guage. 80% of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion is non-verbal. How you say it can actu­ally have more of an impact than what you say in an inter­view.  Things like hand ges­tures, tone of voice, eye con­tact and facial expres­sion can either make or break an inter­view.  Pac­ing your inter­viewer is a good idea so your body lan­guage does not over­power theirs. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant if you ‘talk with your hands’. Intro­verts who have dif­fi­culty mak­ing eye con­tact should look their inter­viewer in the eyes when begin­ning a point; then, look just below the eyes or to one side of the nose. Then fin­ish by look­ing the per­son in the eyes again at the end of their statement.

5. Always fol­low up. Fol­low­ing up is not only the polite thing to do; it shows your inter­est and gives you another chance to mar­ket your­self.  Per­haps there was a point you for­got to make dur­ing your inter­view or an inter­view ques­tion you could have answered dif­fer­ently.  The fol­low up note is the per­fect place to address such things. Email is accept­able.  A hand writ­ten note is best depend­ing on time constraints.

Remem­ber inter­view­ing is an art not a sci­ence. It is highly sub­jec­tive. You may be the best fit tech­ni­cally for the job but if you can­not con­nect with the per­son on the other side of the desk, your inter­view will have been in vain. Estab­lish­ing rap­port is a key com­po­nent of a suc­cess­ful inter­view.  Good Luck!  Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Lun­cheon inter­views have the advan­tage of allow­ing you to build rap­port with your inter­viewer in a more infor­mal set­ting.  How­ever, the lunch inter­view has its own set of pit­falls which you must be aware of if you are to mas­ter this type of inter­view. While the goal of any inter­view is to deter­mine fit and tech­ni­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tions, the lunch inter­view is all about your social skills.  Here are 7 tips to help you avoid any awk­ward mis­steps and ace the interview.

1. Do your research.  Your focus should be on get­ting the job; there­fore you don’t want to be stress­ing about the venue and what meal to order.  Look up the restaurant’s web­site and famil­iar­ize your­self with the menu ahead of time.  Check out the dress code and set­ting too.  That way, you can focus on being social dur­ing your inter­view and not be fret­ting about what to order.

2. Let your host take the lead. Not sure what to order.  Ask your host for menu favorites. Use the sug­ges­tions to deter­mine a safe price range.  If your host rec­om­mends the Coquet St Jacque you can feel safe order­ing some­thing a lit­tle more expen­sive.  Remem­ber you are jug­gling eat­ing and talk­ing, so order some­thing that is not messy and some­thing that you can eas­ily and grace­fully eat with a knife and fork.  In other words stay away from spaghetti, spareribs and big fat sloppy sandwiches.

3. Choos­ing bev­er­ages. Your inter­viewer is likely to let you order first.  What­ever you do, stay away from alco­holic bev­er­ages. Instead, con­sider either sparkling water or ice tea.  Both are grown up and non-alcoholic.

4. If you have a port­fo­lio. If you have a resume or other doc­u­ments you want to share men­tion that you have them up front and drop the sub­ject.  Let the inter­viewer decide when to bring them out.  Typ­i­cally after the plates have been cleared is a good time.

5. Remem­ber your  table eti­quette. This inter­view is all about social skills and a great time to remem­ber all those table man­ners your mom drilled into you.  So, don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t put your elbows on the table. And, use a nap­kin.  Eat­ing small bites that you can eas­ily chew is also advised.

6. Treat your servers with respect. Always be polite to the servers even if your meal is not up to par. The way you treat your servers says tons about your char­ac­ter.  If some­thing isn’t quite right, let it go.  This meal is not about the food, it’s about how well you con­duct your­self in a pub­lic setting.

7. Clos­ing the meal. When you are fin­ished with your meal fold your nap­kin and leave it by your plate. You are not respon­si­ble for the tab.  Remem­ber you were invited!  Gra­ciously let the inter­viewer pick up the tab. Of course, remem­ber to men­tion the meal in your thank you note.

A lunch inter­view requires that you jug­gle a meal, good man­ners and answer inter­view ques­tions per­sua­sively.  You will be eval­u­ated on sev­eral fronts includ­ing your tech­ni­cal com­pe­ten­cies and social acu­men.  It may require more prepa­ra­tion than you think.  Don’t be caught off guard. Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Get con­trol of your job search with this web based tool.

When it comes to orga­niz­ing your job search, the days of 3 ring binders and Excel spread­sheets are gone.  What tools are you using and how are they work­ing for you? If you are spend­ing more time look­ing for your net­work­ing notes than net­work­ing, something’s not working.

With so many web based tools avail­able there is no excuse not to try them out and get your job search under con­trol. One web based tool that I par­tic­u­larly like is Jib­ber­Job­ber. This is a Per­sonal Rela­tion­ship Man­ager for your career, as Jason Alba, CEO and Founder explains. It allows you to man­age and track all of your job search activ­ity, net­work­ing con­tacts and other career man­age­ment infor­ma­tion. Because it is web based, you always have access to it, now and dur­ing your next career transition.

I par­tic­u­larly like the fact that it allows you to track all of the infor­ma­tion you col­lect dur­ing a job search.You can log where you have sent resumes as well as the sta­tus of each job as you go through the hir­ing process.  It even allows you to develop and save all of your inter­view prepa­ra­tion mate­r­ial includ­ing resumes, power state­ments and accom­plish­ment sto­ries for interviews.

I also like the fact that Jib­ber­Job­ber allows you to man­age and track crit­i­cal rela­tion­ship infor­ma­tion over time includ­ing com­pany and net­work con­tact infor­ma­tion. Because all of your infor­ma­tion is web based it is eas­ily acces­si­ble and pre­vents you from hav­ing to start from scratch when you launch your next job search. It nicely allows you to import all of your LinkedIn con­tacts. You can rank rela­tion­ships, log notes about your rela­tion­ships, cre­ate action items and tie each to com­pa­nies. Most of these fea­tures are not avail­able on LinkedIn.

Best of all, the basic ver­sion of Jib­ber­Job­ber is free.  The pre­mium ver­sion offers a few bells and whis­tles like expense track­ing. How­ever, I find the basic ver­sion is pow­er­ful enough for any­one who is eas­ily over­whelmed by man­ag­ing their job search.  Give it a try! Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Does your resume look like a job grave yard?

If your resume is only focused on the past, chances are your phone is not ring­ing off the hook for inter­view invi­ta­tions.  No one is inter­ested in read­ing line after line of bor­ing job assign­ments.  Hav­ing said that, you still want to high­light your accom­plish­ments from past posi­tions but describe them in a way that posi­tions you to take on your next chal­lenge.  Let me give you an example:

Let’s say you are an IT man­ager with 15 years of work expe­ri­ence who is ready to make your next career move to CTO. Maybe you haven’t held that title to date but you have man­aged mul­ti­ple IT dis­ci­plines such as wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cloud com­put­ing, finan­cial ser­vices net­works and tech­nol­ogy eval­u­a­tion.  In addi­tion you have worked at sev­eral start-ups, tak­ing each through IPO…accomplishments that would cer­tainly impress an employer look­ing to hire a CTO.

Your resume must be ‘for­ward focused’.  What I mean by ‘for­ward focused’ is, it should empha­size how your expe­ri­ence has pre­pared you for your next career step. Ask your­self the fol­low­ing ques­tions before you begin writing:

1. Who are you now?

2. Who do you want to become?

You will want to posi­tion your resume in a way that mar­kets you for your job tar­get rather than focus­ing on those aspects of your expe­ri­ence that will just get you more of the same.  In the case of our exam­ple, our IT Man­ager should present her­self as ‘CTO ready’ oth­er­wise she will just be tar­get­ing  more IT Man­ager jobs.

The con­cept of devel­op­ing a for­ward focused resume also applies to your LinkedIn pro­file or any other on-line bio you may choose to write.  Tak­ing this approach will pre­vent your mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial from look­ing like a job grave­yard. Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Prac­tice makes per­fect when prepar­ing for a video interview

While phone inter­views may be the norm, more com­pa­nies are start­ing to use video inter­views to screen appli­cants. If you are apply­ing for a posi­tion requir­ing crisp pre­sen­ta­tion skills you will need to be well pre­pared for the video inter­view.  Here are some tips that will help.

1.  Eval­u­ate your space. Make sure your work­space is unclut­tered so that noth­ing detracts from your video pre­sen­ta­tion. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the space behind you.  Too many pic­tures on the wall or a clut­tered book­case can be a distraction.

2. Do a dry run. Ide­ally, do a prac­tice video ses­sion the day before your inter­view at the same time of day as your sched­uled inter­view. This will help you deter­mine proper light­ing for your video ses­sion. Do this with your coach or a good friend. Check all equip­ment to be sure it is work­ing prop­erly. You don’t want any mishaps on the day of your interview.

3. Be aware of light­ing and angles. Light­ing is impor­tant.  Adjust light­ing so that it is nei­ther too bright nor too dark. The for­mer can wash out your face and cause a dis­tract­ing glare.  Too lit­tle light and your face will appear obscure and dif­fi­cult to see. It is best if the light comes from behind the cam­era.  Angle the web­cam so your head and shoul­ders are in the same frame. Place the interviewer’s win­dow directly below the web­cam so your eyes will nat­u­rally look in the direc­tion of the interviewer’s win­dow.  Exper­i­ment ahead of time with your prac­tice coach to get angles and light­ing correct.

4. Elim­i­nate poten­tial inter­rup­tions. If kids and pets are in the house, arrange for some­one to look after them. Close win­dows if there is a lot of street noise or bark­ing dogs. You don’t want any out­side dis­trac­tions to detract from your video presentation.

5. Check your attire. Dress pro­fes­sion­ally as you would if you were going to meet with the inter­viewer in per­son. Avoid dress­ing from the ‘waist up’ only.  When you dress pro­fes­sion­ally you will come across that way in your inter­view. Besides, if you have to sud­denly get up for some rea­son your shorts or jeans will not project the type of image you had intended! Avoid pat­terns and plaids. Stick with solid col­ors if pos­si­ble. Beware of white shirts and blouses as they can over­power the screen and your appearance.

6. Be aware of glasses. If pos­si­ble avoid wear­ing them as they have the ten­dency to reflect.  If you absolutely have to wear glasses try pro­ject­ing light off to one side if you see any glare on the screen.

7. Don a lit­tle makeup. This applies to guys too! Light can reflect off the oils on your face. Try using a light, translu­cent powder.

There you go. Video inter­views take a dif­fer­ent type of plan­ning than con­ven­tional face to face inter­views. How­ever if you prac­tice ahead of time, mak­ing sure your equip­ment is func­tion­ing and your set­ting is adjusted, you will be ready to give it your best.  Good luck.  Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.