Your Career, Your Choices - How positivity leads to interview success
A weekly column for job-seekers By Fidelma Wallace, Sli Nua Careers
“To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are”
(Muhammad Ali)
Being positive is so vital in interview that you really can’t be anything but!
Obviously, preparation, appearance and body language are all key factors in helping you secure the post, but positivity is tremendously significant.
Charles Swindoll once wrote “Life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you react to it”, and it is something that we need to be aware of at all stages of the job searching process.
A positive attitude will help you enjoy the interview more and, more importantly, let the interviewer enjoy you more.
Job hunting can be a laborious and morale-draining process. Many companies do not reply to the large quantities of candidates applying for jobs. A lot of candidates find this extremely frustrating and upsetting.
Take a step back from travelling down the same route and look at innovative ways of improving your job search. Seek out networking opportunities and surround yourself with positive people. Even purchasing a book on positive thinking can have a very uplifting impact on your positivity.
When you attend an interview, remember to always be POSITIVE.
You may have had 10 unsuccessful interview attempts before this but the interviewer does not care. It’s blunt and it’s direct but it is the truth.
Do not tell the interviewer about your unsuccessful attempts or your length of time out of employment or your horrible work experiences in the past. They are looking to recruit you and this will harm your chances of being hired.
By being optimistic and having a positive attitude, you'll demonstrate to the interviewer within the first few seconds that you are a go-getter who will fit in with their organisation. The interviewer is at all times envisaging how you will fit in with their organisation, how you will interact with the team, and most importantly how well you will respond to supervision. This question is common to interviews and reference-checking forms.
Interviews are very traditional and not the most effective way of recruiting an individual but they are still tremendously popular.
Why?
Just as a buyer likes to see and ‘try’ a product before they buy it, interviewers like to meet and talk to the person before they recruit them. They like to get a ‘positive feeling’ about the person before they make any decisions.
It is very common for interviewers or agencies to completely change their opinion on a candidate after meeting them face-to-face at an interview. We have often met individuals and said afterwards, “I have a ‘good feeling’ about him/her.” On the flip side, we have also said that ‘we didn’t feel right about the person but couldn’t put our finger on it’.
We are being bombarded by stories of company closures and people losing their jobs. This cannot be ignored but we do have a choice either to be negative or positive.
Finally, take a few quiet minutes and visualise yourself in the interview. Envisage you being confident and feeling positive. Positive visualisation is a powerful tool in creating a positive mental state. When your mind sees and feels things clearly, your body will be able to carry them out and will react accordingly.
Sli Nua Careers (tel 094 95 42965, www.SliNuaCareers.com) are based on Main Street, Headford, Co. Galway, and carry out CV Preparation, Interview Training, and Personal Branding. Fidelma has extensive industry experience in the area of human resources, interviewing, and career training. Sli Nua Careers offer readers a Free CV Critique – just email your CV to fidelma.wallace@slinuacareers.com