By Selipha Kihagi
Job interviews can be tricky and intimidating, especially when your interviewers are the difficult kind who will interrupt you mid-sentence or scroll down their phones when you’re trying to explain something.
This can cause you to become demotivated even when you were to excited about the interview, leading you to a series of mistakes that you don’t even realize. “Just from someone’s body language you can tell who is serious about the job and who is not,” says Sheila Cheptoo, a Recruitment Manager at Corporate Staffing Services.
Interview mistakes can range from a number of things, and the unfortunate thing is they can cost you the job depending on the interviewer.
5 Interview Mistakes To Watch Out For
1. Assuming that the interview is all about you
While a job interview is scheduled so the employer or recruiter can get to know you better, it is not the only thing expected from the interview. An employer or recruiter will be more interested to know what you can do for the company and not how much qualified you are or the extensive experience you got.
If you focus too much on yourself, you could miss out on what is important and decrease your chances for the job.
2. Not explaining your achievements
Listing your achievements in the CV is one step to get you to the interview but convincing the recruiter that the achievements were actually yours is another story all together. One of the interview mistakes that candidates make is not coming out directly to the employer,
When explaining your achievements, have a real example ready to tell in the interview. The recruiter will relate more to a personal story than a general one.
3. Putting across your former employer in bad light
Whenever a recruiter poses the question “why did you leave your previous job”, be careful what you say in response. The interviewer will be keen to hear what you say so avoid as much as possible to appear negative, despite how cruel or uninspiring your former employer was.
Focus on challenges you faced as an individual instead of problems the company had.
4. Trying too hard to impress
While the baseline of passing any interview demands that you impress the interviewer, trying too hard can be one of the interview mistakes you need to avoid. For example, being confident is a good thing, but being overconfident is not, being outspoken is a good thing but being too talkative and interrupting the interviewer to give an opinion or answer is not. Find the thin line and don’t cross it.
5. Not asking questions
This may not come out as part of interview mistakes to all interviewers but to be safe, it is best if you can prepare to ask questions at the end of every job interview. Why? If your recruiter thought you were disinterested in the position, that perception will change and it also makes you appear inquisitive, which is important in every job.
Whenever you are going to an interview, challenge yourself with various interview questions or take part in an interview preparation session with a professional.
