In order to accomplish this goal, you've got to exchange information. You will learn about the job, company, and industry; an employer will learn about you, about your background, about your goals. However, a lot of that will be done in the preparatory phase. You'll learn much of the objective information about the organization from their annual report and other printed materials. They will find out about your qualifications from your resume. Employers generally only interview people who they know can do the job. Certainly, completing a bachelor's degree indicates you have the potential for almost any job. The interview allows an employer to observe you. It allows you to observe the employer. Indeed, the interview is a two-way street. And that is the point. The interview is an information exchange with each party having an equal role.
What to Expect
Generally, for each job you can expect a minimum of two interviews of 45-60 minutes each. The screening interview, conducted by a personnel specialist, will determine if you meet the general characteristics for the position and the organization. The hiring interview, conducted by a line manager or supervisor - the person you will work for - will judge your technical qualifications for the job. In a small company, the screening and hiring interviews may be one and the same, conducted by the same person. On the other hand, the hiring interview in a large organization may be conducted by a series of people - near peers, and more senior management, or a panel of interviewers.
Don't panic. The rules are the same. There are structured interviews in which you will be asked a standard set of questions in a more or less prescribed order. There are unstructured interviews in which the inter viewer pursues whatever line of questioning seems appropriate.
How to Prepare
Careful preparation will give you more confidence and boost your overall performance and will, therefore, give you the edge over your competition. You must prepare for each interview separately, using a job at a particular company as the parameter within which you will frame your response. Your preparation will fall into two familiar categories: self-assessment, and labor market research.
Self-assessment
Sit down with your resume and think about what you want to stress in the interview. If you left out some information from your resume that seems to have an application for a particular job, make note of it. Develop a clear understanding of your education and experience, and their value to you and to an employer. Identify your skills, abilities, and interests in such terms as intelligence, creativity, leadership qualities, motivation, communication skills, interpersonal skills, and technical skills. Be prepared to cite examples that will bring these qualities to light. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses, personal aspirations and goals, values and attitudes, and expectations. Pay attention to your accomplishments and how you may relate them in a specific situation.
Labor market research
Once again, this part of the process is where you gather information about the job and the organization. Many of you will have already completed this research way before you set up an interview. You've either done it when you were interviewing for information, or perhaps when you wrote a letter to a direct contact. But if you haven't, it's crucial that you do it now.
The most effective way to proceed is to start out by gathering generalized, unbiased information from standard library resources. Then read the company-produced information, and complete the process by talking to people in the field. This preparation need not take days. A little preparation goes a long way, if it's the right kind.
In order to find out as much as you can about the particular position for which you are applying, start with a general publication about careers, such as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a publication of the U.S. Department of Labor which can be found in the reference section of most libraries. This publication (DOT) gives general job descriptions that include all the possible duties ever performed in that job category. An actual job will differ in that all the duties will rarely be included and a priority of tasks will be expected. But you need some generalized idea of what the job will encompass before you walk in the door, so you don't sound like a moron in the interview. It is obviously far more impressive to ask an interviewer questions like, "Which functions are given priority in this job?", or, "Will I be spending more of my time making cold calls on the phone, or in the field?", than it is to say, "What does a salesperson do?"
Once you've learned about the job, learn about the company. Start with their annual report and also consult other published literature: directories such as Standard & Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives, and current periodicals such as Business Week, Fortune, Venture, Inc., and many others. These magazines will give you an insight into the organization's most recent activities, including new products or services, new directions, or problems. Also read trade publications.
You may also want to talk to people you know - particularly if they are in a related field - who may have information about the company or the person you're interviewing with. Personal contacts may yield de tails not available in the library, such as the actual working environment, turnover rate of personnel, and reputation.
Specific information you will want to have includes the size of the organization, its divisions and subsidiaries and where they are located, the structure of its departments, the age of the company, its past and its future. Current problems and needs may be more difficult to identify, but will be valuable data for the interview.
Your research should center on relating the information about a job and a company to your own experience. You need to be able to answer the following questions in an interview: "Why do you want to work for this company? What do you know about the job? The company? The industry? What interests you about the products or services the company offers? Why do you think you would like this job? How does this job fit into your long-term goals?"
