The big question in any interviewee’s mind is “What are managers looking for during a job interview?”
This
is a very hard question to answer for every other interviewer because
each of them have different expectations in a candidate.
Listed below are six qualities that generally make a good interview candidate:
1. Self Confidence – Candidates
must be sure of what they are doing, and to show this one must answer
questions articulately while stating facts as they are. This will
involve saying no to something you do not know. A candidate with low
self confidence will run into situations where he won’t take risks or
make “the tough calls” just because he is afraid of being wrong.
2. Common Sense – Many
at times, candidates need to make decisions based on incomplete pieces
of information and the only way to succeed in this task is by having a
good level of intelligence and common sense. Every candidate does not
need to be a genius (it won’t hurt either), but the candidate needs to
at least display the ability to think and reach conclusions even when he
doesn’t have all the data in his hands by extrapolating and “tying
loose ends” in order to draw for himself a clearer and bigger picture.
3. Communication Skills – This
is a must for most jobs. Good communication is the ability to explain
and communicate an idea to someone who is not in your immediate working
context. This is even more imperative of a candidate who needs to
explain non-trivial things like tests, and even potential risks related
to the technical tasks they can perform to people that will need to make
important decisions based on these explanations.
4. Knowledge (basic or advanced) of his subject -
If you want to be a good candidate make sure to understand what an
interview is about (at least in theory!!!). Today there is no excuse
for not having some idea about the principles surrounding interviews
since everything (literally everything!) can be found on the Internet by
doing a quick Google search.
5. Some Knowledge of the Company they are Interviewing for –
As an HR executive, it may sound strange but you always want to know
the person in front of you is curious enough to learn (even a little)
about the company they are interviewing for. In the mind of an
interviewer anyone who comes to a company without knowing their basic
business is not interested enough in order to get the job at hand.
6. Truthfulness – This
last one is maybe the most important one, an HR executive needs to
trust the person in front of him/her. If during the interview he
reaches a conclusion that you are making things up and lying just to
please him then he won’t be able to trust you in the future.
HR
will always be willing to compromise on some of the other attributes as
long as they feel the person in front of them will be able to fill the
gaps by investing his time and efforts, but if someone is not truthful
then they won’t be able to trust him or his work.
Lastly,
and to make sure you have the whole picture, there are always
extra-points for technical knowledge in the field in question, and this
may even be a requisite if they are looking for an expert in a specific
field but most of the times this is one of the attributes with less
weight in any interviews.
Careerstom