Jobs And More

You have been expecting an important call about a job application you made a few days ago and now it has come. What jubilation! But wait, don’t be so happy yet. The bigger chasm is still yawning wide in front of you. You have to still face the interview and do well in that. The call means nothing if you fall flat on your face during the interview. You have to put in your best efforts in being prepared and even rehearse a little bit as to how you can make a favorable impression on the people who interview you. Always keep in mind that there will be other people vying for the job as well and you have to outshine them if you want to land that job.

Now, if you find this a very daunting task, it might put you at ease to know your own expectations properly. When you are being interviewed for the first time, you won’t be discussing the monetary aspect of things in most probability. They won’t tell you that and you shouldn’t ask that either. Don’t even ask about what perks and incentives you will get. All those things are discussed later, when both you and the interviewers are sure that you are good matches for each other. Let them first check you out, and you check them out as well, and when the equations have been set, they will ask you how much you expect. Or probably they will come right away and tell you what compensation they can provide.

So, during your first interview, make all attempts to showcase your talents and your qualifications. These are the things they want to see. Slowly, but surely, try to market yourself to the employer. They have to see that you will be an asset for them. Speak eloquently about your achievements so far and, if you liked doing something, make sure you mention that. But don’t be too brazen about that because that indicates overconfidence. Your prospective hirers want to get the impression that they are doing the right job hiring you and that they aren’t hiring an egotistical person who, though good at work, will be a tough nut to crack.

There will be some difficult questions thrown about. Any unflattering things on your resume will be looked into minutely. Prepare yourself to answer these questions so that when they are eventually asked, you don’t have to think about the right way to answer it. However, give honest answers because they are the ones that really work. At the same time, always play your pros and try to correct your cons. Your employers want to see you as a person who has a lot of strengths and doesn’t mind correcting weaknesses.

These are the things you have to prepare when that all-important call for your first job interview comes. Go with confidence and you are sure to garner a lot of attention.

Your CV might be a great professional document, but it will do nothing if you don’t do well at your interview. The CV can only go as far as creating a first impression, but that impression needs to be concretized when the prospective hirers decide to meet you in the flesh. If you are not confident and if your personality is not what the hirers are looking for, you will still not get the job. This is especially true about legal jobs where a good personality is part of the profession. Now, there are a few things that can help you here.

Do Your Background Check

As soon as you get the call, try finding out as much as you can about the company. Find out things like when the company was begun, who founded it, what their main clients are, how many employees they have, the kinds of cases they take, their successes and failures and so on. While researching, you get a good idea of whether or not you want to be a part of this company. Also, this knowledge will help you understand what the firm is looking for.

Rehearse Selling Yourself

You have to sell yourself to the potential employers and they have to buy you. This is how jobs are acquired. In selling yourself, your main intention should be about telling the employers why they should have you. Tell them in what ways you can take their firm forward. You will also be quizzed intricately about everything in your resume. Be ready to expand on anything there and be ready for some unflattering questions as well.

Demand to Know

In our present times, interviews are more of interactive sessions where both the interviewer and the interviewed ask questions of each other. In any case, you will be spending time at the firm and so you need to know a few things. Ask about your job responsibilities. Ask about how they expect these responsibilities to be fulfilled. Ask them where you would fit in if you were hired.

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse!

Even though all interviews are different, at the core of them all, they follow the same routines. Prepare them well. Look up on the Internet for sample interviews and think about how you can manage those questions if they were asked to you. Some of the things you will be asked include:-

1. Points about what you can do best and what you detest doing,
2. Your intentions behind taking up the legal profession,
3. Your intentions behind applying to that particular company,
4. A problem that presented itself to you in the past and the way you dealt with it.

So, for all legal interviews, these are the common things that are asked and then they are elaborated upon. Think about these questions in your perspective from every possible aspect. Remember that it is your impression that counts, and this impression is built from everything you are, from the way you speak to the clothes you wear

One of the most important things you need to have when you are facing an interview is confidence. Your interviewers are going to judge you at every step of your interaction with them and your confidence is something that will be looked at minutely. However, there is a thin line between confidence and overconfidence and you don’t have to jump that.

It is wise to do a little retrospection on what being confident really means.

1. Think about what confidence means to you.
2. Have you ever been confident? What made you confident at that moment?
3. Is there someone you know who seems to be always confident? What are their specific mannerisms and gestures?
4. How does that person carry out their specific tasks?
5. In what fundamental ways are you different from that confident person?
6. Can you emulate the good points of this confident person’s behavior?
7. What will you stand to gain if you can work on your confidence levels?

These are the things that you have to think about. If you know what to work on, you will be moving towards becoming a more confident person, which you will definitely need during your interview.

Most essentially, remember that only your talents and qualifications are not enough. You have to come across as someone who can handle the job assigned to them. You have to impress upon the interviewer that you are an actionable person who does not flinch from taking some risks.

Even the way you wear your clothes matters. If your top shirt button is open, you come across as a flirtatious and open-minded person. But if you have buttoned up the collar button of your shirt as well (without tie), then you come across as someone who doesn’t like to do things that don’t fit within a particular mindset.

It also pays to be a reader of the human mind. You could assess a lot from the way the interviewers are conducting themselves. You should look at the expressions of their face, their body language, the way they position their arms, the way they move their hands, the way they place their feet, their general posture and so on.

Expressions of the face can be a very good indicator on what kind of person you are dealing with. A head that is inclined more outwards than needed might mean that the person is a critic and very hard to please. If the person doesn’t make too much eye contact, it means they don’t have much confidence themselves.

You must keep your eye out for these expressions. They tell you a lot about how the person you are interacting with is building an impression about you.