Preparing and Rehearsing for a Job Interview

Rehearsed Job Interviews Result in Better Actual Interviews

Practice cannot make perfect, but it is guaranteed to make better. The more interviews you do, the more adept you are at doing them. Go to your first interview with the poise that comes with having done five or six interviews by engaging a friend to becoming an interviewer to your applicant and stage a rehearsal.

This rehearsal is designed to simulate the process of an interview, from time you get off the elevator until you get back in the elevator to leave the interview. You should practice answering anticipated questions before you do this full-scale dress-rehearsal.

A dining room or home office can be an office. The interviewer can be a trusted friend, a former co-worker, or an acquaintance who has conducted job interviews. You and your “interviewer” need to decide together what the script of the interview “play” is going to be and what your lines are. Arrange for housemates, children, and others not involved in the rehearsal to be out of the house, or find another location where there will be no interruptions.

The day of the dress-rehearsal, do everything you will do the day you head for your first real interview. Dress in your interview costume and do a complete pre-interview grooming for the rehearsal. Yes, put on the suit! Ask your “interviewer” to do the same. Put your papers in your briefcase or portfolio. Walk out your front door and stand on the stoop until your cue to knock and enter the “office.”

To make your rehearsal as realistic as possible, have your interviewer ask you the kinds of questions you anticipate you will be asked in a real interview. These ought to be questions you have already researched and prepared answers for. During the first rehearsal, it is OK to use index cards to help jog your memory about your answer; by the third or fourth rehearsal, you ought to give the answers without help.

Ask your “interviewer” to surprise you with some unexpected events, like incoming phone calls or staff bursting into the room. These are real world events and you can prepare a graceful response if you have practiced.

Stage the rehearsal so that you have time at the end to ask questions of your own. Again, prepare these in advance.

Some possible questions to ask are:

“What characteristics does a successful person have at your company?”
“Describe the typical first year assignment.”
“What have been some of the major contributions made by individuals who have held this job previously?”
“What are the problems I will be expected to solve?”
“What is the career path for this position?”
“Could you tell me about the people with whom I will be working directly?”
“How is an employee evaluated?”
“When may I expect to hear from you regarding my candidacy?”

When you end the staged interview, do everything you will do at an actual interview; shake hands, give the interviewer another copy of your calling card, and thank them for their time.

Such elaborate preparations may seem excessive, but believe me, they make all the difference in how well you carry off the real thing.

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