WCIYP (Tips About Interviewing For A Job)

In Chapter 4 of What Color Is Your Parachute, a comprehensive list of sixteen tips for interviewing for a job are listed and explained. For the purposes of this blog post, I will list each of the sixteen tips below, as I found them to be very informative and beneficial for the job-hunting process.

Here then, are the tips I recommend taking a look at:

1. There is no such thing as "employers"
2. An interview should be prepared for, before you ever go in
3. Honor agreements
4. An interview for a job is a lot like dating
5. Questions to expect from them, then questions you can ask 
6. During the interview, determine to observe "the 50-50 rule"
7. If answering the employer's questions, observe "the twenty-second to two-minute rule"
8. The employer is primarily concerned about risk
9. It's the small things that are the killers, in a job interview
10. Be aware of the skills most employers are looking for, these days, regardless of the position you are seeking
11. Try to think of some way to bring evidence of your skills to the hiring interview
12. Do not bad-mouth your previous employer (s) during the interview, even if they were terrible people
13. Throughout the interview, keep in mind: employers don't really care about your past; they only ask about it, in order to try to predict your future (behavior) with them, if they decide to hire you
14. As the interview proceeds, you want to quietly notice the time frame of the questions the employer is asking
15. Before you leave the (final) interview, there are five questions you should always ask
16.  Thank-you notes must be sent after every interview, by every job-hunter

My personal favorite tip among all sixteen offered from this chapter is surely number 15, as I have found it sometimes difficult to end an interview. Below are the five questions that you should always ask before you leave an interview:

• Can you offer me this job?
• When may I expect to hear from you?
• Might I ask what would be the latest I can expect to hear from you?
• May I contact you after that date, if for any reason you haven't gotten back to me by that time?
• Can you think of anyone else who might be interested in my skills and experience? (Only ask this if the employer responds not to the first question)