Prepare for your Job Interview Using Your Resume

Prepare for your Job Interview Using Your ResumePrepare for your Job Interview Using Your ResumeYou have spent time writing a winning resume and applying for jobs, now it is time for the final stage, the job vorstellungsgesprch. They can be nerve-wracking and there are many traps that candidates fall into during the process.However, correctly preparing for a job bewerberinterview you can significantly improve your chances of success. If you can anticipate which questions will be asked, you will not be caught out by surprise questions and be able to give considered answers.It is vital to understand the importance of the resume in the interview. Knowing how to prepare for your first job interview by using the job description and yourprofessional resume, can improve your wertzuwachs in the interview.By this stage you should have already produced an attractive, professional-looking resume. If not, use a resume builder to make sure it is up-to-scratch.Research the companyDoing some homewo rk on the company is essential. Go onto the companys website and find out as much as you possibly can about them before the first interview. If you appear not to know anything about the company it will seem like youre uninterested in the job.Researching the company ahead of time will help you target your answers to fit what the employer is looking for, it will also help you to ask some insightful questions in the latter stages of the interview.Prepare answers for resume based interview questionsFirst of all, make sure your you know your resume backwards. Familiarize yourself with every detail including job titles, dates, and responsibilities. If you get these details mixed up in the interview it will give the wrong impression.Secondly, the trick is to imagine you are the employer looking at you resume. Often employers follow the resume in a job interview or prepare the interview using the resume.What questions would you ask? Have you got any unexplained gaps on your resume? By antic ipating the job interview questions it will be easy to prepare answers.Thinking of a good answer to an interview question is easy when you have time and are not under pressure. Try to anticipate as many of the questions as possible to avoid finishing the interview wishing you had answered a question differently.This is a key part of how to prepare for a job interview.Analyze the job and match your skillsRead carefully through the job posting and identify the required skills, attributes, and work experience. Use the keywords in the text to help you. Then make a comprehensive list of all the qualities required by the employer.Using your resume, think about your strengths and how they match those wanted by the company. Think of specific examples when you have demonstrated skills and abilities and prepare yourself to talk about them.The interviewer will ask you to give examples of when you have shown certain qualities. This preparation technique of using your resume to prepare for a job interview will help you to answer job-specific interview questions.Practice the job interview using your resumeThe main thing you want to avoid is being caught out and having to rack your brains for a job interview answers. Review typical job interview questions and spend time practicing answering them. Follow our top job interview tips to make sure you are fully prepared.Think about how to answer job interview questions about your resume and focus on your strengths. It is important to practice actually speaking your answers too. This will help you to give more concise answers in the actual interview and it will give you confidence.Ask someone you know to give you a mock job interview using your resume and the list of questions you have prepared. If it is a phone interview, do it over the phone.

Be so interesting you cant be ignored

Be so interesting you cant be ignoredBe so interesting you cant be ignoredIn 2007, Steve Martin stopped by theCharlie Roseshow.For those who dont know, Martin got his start as a comedian, and he later built that into a career spanning across television, movies, music, and even writing. He is known for his offbeat and eccentric style.He had recently releasedBorn Standing Up, a very personal memoir and the conversation with Rose centered around how Martin first found himself in front of a stage, the relationships in his life, and the rest of his career.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moraThe interview is both touching and funny, but its perhaps fruchtwein fascinating when Rose asks Martin to explain the followingSomebody once stood up in the audience and asked you how to become successful, and you said thatyou have to be undeniably good at something.Martin looks at him for a second, n ods a little, and then sharesWell, people always ask me how do you make it in show business, or whatever.What I always tell them, and Ive said it many years, andnobody ever takes notebecause its not the answer they wanted to hear.What they want to hear is Heres how you get an agent, heres how you write a script,...but I always say,Be sogood they cant ignore you.Simple and somewhat obvious, but also very profound.You cant fault the advice. In fact, Cal Newport wrote abookabout exactly this topic arguing whydeveloping skills and optimizing yourself to be good at something is a far better career path than waiting for your passion.That said, I think it can be further supplemented.The Limitations ofGoodThe world we live in today is heavily dictated by theattention economy.There are far more stimuli in our average environment than there has ever been at any point in history.Our senses are constantly bombarded withnoise.This is particularly prominent on the internet, where the amount of in formation and data produced continues to grow exponentially, but the digital reality is far from theonlyplace where this is true.Think about the buildings, advertisements, and attractions of the average large city in the world and compare that to how it may have looked 50 to 100 years ago. The chances are that you wouldnt even recognize it.What this has done is that,withso much competition for our attention, its put a premium on dedicated engagement.Indeed,to many companies, our attention is the most valuable metric to measure such engagement, and this fact has perpetuated a cycle of even more noise.While its true that the market rewards whats good and valuable over time, with the increasing noise, that time frame is getting longer and longer.In the words of legendary economist John Maynard KeynesMarkets can remain irrational a lotlongerthan you and I can remainsolvent.Very broadly speaking,beinggood alone isnt enough.We live in a world where being able to signal that competence is almost as important.Marketing yourself in some form is a necessity.The Power of InterestingThe best marketers in the world dont tell you theyre marketers.They tell you a story,theyengage you with genuine excitement, and theymostlytreat you like the human being you arerather than a number.It goes beyond that, too, though. Doing these things will take you far, but even so, in a noisy world, there is a particular quality that rewards some people over others. Its why they are able to capitalize on their competence.To be sure, tactics and hacks often do work in getting someone to pay attention to you, but building long-term trust in your competence takes more than that.It takes adegree of interestingness.The term interesting is fairly broad, but thats exactly its strength in this case.In order to get the attention you deserve you not only have to be so good they cant ignore you, butyou also have to be so interesting they cant ignore you.Interestingis whatmakes you stop and look twice. In teresting is what inspires you to dig deeper.Interesting is how you stand out in the noise.Once you capture interest, your competence can do the work for you.The beauty of using this term is that it describes an output that always gets a response, but it can be accomplished through a multitude of inputs.You dont need to know the depths of every absatzwirtschafthackin the book, nor are you circumstantially confined.All you need to do is optimize whatever it is youre selling, whether it be yourself or a product, for interestingness.More often than not, thatsdone bycapitalizing onwhatmakes youunique.The World MadeEasyWhile what weve talked about is most relevant to careers, all of this is far broader than that if we loosen up our definitions a little bit.Most people have a very narrow view of marketing because theyve been forced or tricked one too many times into having their time stolen.When you really break it downmarketing is justthepsychologyof getting someone to give you a moment oftheirfocus.Nothingmore, nothing less.When youre giving a presentation at work or school, youre marketing.When youre at a bar hoping to make eye contact, youre marketing.Whenyoure telling someone a personal story, youre marketing.In each of these instances, youre vying not only for someones time but also their attention, with the hope and possibility of something more.The only way they are going to give you something more, however - whether it be their money, their company, or their empathy - isifsomething about you makes them take a second look.Something thatmakes them pause.How good you are at something isnt always visible even after the first glance.Toget someone coming back enough times for them to noticeyour competence, you have to add a bit of intrigue.Be so interesting you cant be ignored.This article first appeared on Design Luck .You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you sa y, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

How to Tell if an Internship Will Be Meaningful - The Muse

How to Tell if an Internship Will Be Meaningful - The MuseHow to Tell if an Internship Will Be Meaningful Weve all heard the internship horror stories. Those grueling days working with little to no pay in the heat of summer, trekking to get coffee for a terrible boss before organizing filing cabinets all day.But dont worry, that doesnt have to be the case. You can land an awesome internship, but to benefit, you have to do your homework.And to help you with said homework, we spoke to Melanie Kollmai, a Campus Recruiter for Philips in the greater Seattle, WA area. She gave us the scoop on how to find an internship that will help launch your career. So read on to start your first professional chapter on the right foot.Dig Into the Job DescriptionThe job description is the first thing you see for any role, and the details (or lack thereof) can say a lot about the substance of an internship. And the more specific an employer is about the job responsibilities and the team, the better. Esta blished organizations follow a specific template, and hiring managers should be just as clear in a job description for an internship as they are with any full-time position.Look for a specific format a clear background on the hiring company, an overview of the role, a detailed description of day-to-day tasks and an optimal candidate profile- followed, of course, by application instructions. Make sure that youre looking at the team specifics and any projects you may be working on, in particular, says Melanie.Sometimes, companies bewerberinterview interns in the fall for the following summer, so they may not know the exact focus of your work. That said, there should be clarification on the scope of the work, which helps ensure you will get real value out of your experience.Red FlagsVague or short job descriptions, little to no detail about the purpose of the internship, very few details on day-to-day responsibilities.Ask the Right QuestionsThe interview is your time to shine and to fi nd out more about the internship and the hiring company. Melanie explains why this second part matters Its important to remember that, not only is a company interviewing you, youre interviewing them, too. It may be your first interview, but its important that you ask a lot of questions.Here are some interview questions that will give you valuable insight into the roleAs you go through each step of the selection process, try to gauge the extent to which the companys answers align with your growth. The best internship serves as an introduction to professional life, and gives you structured opportunities and regular support.At Philips, interns have a mentor and a manager- they go to meetings and benefit from one-on-one collaboration, even with other teams, Melanie explains. They are expected to act as if they are full-time employees by taking ownership, driving their projects forward, and working seamlessly within their team and others. Internships like that are endlessly rewarding, an d set you up for a bright career.Red FlagsUnprepared interviewer, vague or incomplete answers to your questions, an unstructured program.Talk to Former InternsBeyond talking to the hiring manager, theres another way to get really good intel on an internship straight from the source. Consider asking the hiring manager if there are any former interns you can speak with to learn about their experiences. Given that theyre a year (or more) ahead of you, they can give a longer-term view of whether the internship contributed to their career and if so, how.Youll want to ask about the specifics of their day-to-day in the role and whether the internship aligned with their interests or degree. Its also worth checking whether this temporary gig turned into a job offer, and if so, how theyve found the company since then.Nervous about asking the interviewer directly? Do some digging on LinkedIn. With the right search, you can find a few people who worked at the company in a similar internship and team. Reach out and ask if they have 15 minutes to talk about their experiences or if they could answer a few questions over email. Their insights will give you a neutral perspective from someone who has been in your shoes.Red FlagsFormer interns think the program was a waste of time, negative feedback about the position.When an organization invests in a strong internship program, theyre investing in you as a long-term employee. These mutually beneficial situations can set you up for a career that builds on your degree and opens a door for your next steps.