Why Not to Wear your Pants from 2005!

You’ve sent out resumes, networked, improved your LinkedIn, and finally landed an interview! You’ve made it—piece of cake from here, right?

In preparation for your interview, you search the internet for answers to interview questions. You get hundreds of thousands of hits and don’t know where to start. You find a YouTube video that looks interesting. It’s not. But there is a funny Carpool Karaoke video you start to watch. An hour later you remember to think about getting ready for the interview tomorrow but it’s time to go to bed.

The next morning you pull out the pants you wore to an interview in 2005. Hopefully they still fit.  You find they are a little tight but it will be okay if you “suck in your stomach”.  As you put on your dress shirt, you realize there is a button missing. You are starting to panic because your interview is in 30 minutes and you still haven’t looked up the address of the business.

By the time you get to the interview, you are 15 minutes late. When you walk in and are greeted, you blame the bad traffic for your tardiness. You are out of breath because your pants are too tight, and you are not ready to present your best interviewing self.

This scenario could be avoided with some simple steps for interview preparation:

• Write 3-4 Success Stories that illustrate how you’ve saved your company time, resources, money, or some combination of these. Use those stories to answer interview questions and provide concrete examples.

• Practice your success stories OUT LOUD with another person. When you practice out loud, you are better able to commit your answers to memory. However, don’t feel the need to memorize your answers word-for-word. Be familiar enough to have the basic outline of the answers roll off your tongue.

• Try on your interviewing clothes at least 1 week prior to the interview. If your clothes are not comfortable, DON’T wear them. Breathing is important. You need to feel comfortable and confident. Besides, if the clothes don’t fit, you have an excuse to go shopping!

• Arrive to an interview no earlier or later than 10 minutes. Make sure you know exactly where you are going and determine parking availability. Give yourself plenty of time to get the lay of the land. You might have to sit in your car for a few minutes, giving you time for some deep breathing which is easy because your pants fit!

Interviewing can feel high stress and high stakes, so take the pressure off by preparing beforehand and giving yourself breathing room. Before you know it, the interview will be over and you can get onto the next part of job hunting—following up and stressing over not hearing anything!

Career Solutions Group offers interview preparation and mock interviewing as part of our career success formulas. Email us at info@careersolutionsgroup.net to learn more. We offer free initial consultations, and have helped hundreds of career changers make successful transitions.

By: Leslie Arnold, Career Solutions Group