Interview: You can only sell what the buyer wants

Let us face it. Everyone is nervous before an interview and it is a rare person who is not anxious during one. Just like a little bit of tension is actually good for health; a little nervousness is not necessarily harmful for your chances of success in an interview. Nervousness is normal. So just go with the flow and know that it is not easy for the interviewer either. Like any other form of communication, every type of interview is a two way street though here we will restrict ourselves to job interviews. Failure to identify the right candidate for the right job is as much a failure of the interviewer as it is of the interviewee.
So, you as an interviewee just need to remain generally upbeat and positive. The whole idea of the interview is for the organization to pick the right person for the right job. You have to just help the interviewee to get to know the real you as well as it is possible in the short duration of the interview – a task which is not easy by any means. It is not such a stupid idea when you are sometimes asked to spend some time to know yourself and practice articulating what you know about yourself. How, for example, will you describe your strengths and weaknesses; what are your likes and dislikes; what are your goals and dreams or what strategy do you have to achieve them? Is your strategy in sync with the goals and dreams? Do you have a strategy at all? Preparing yourself for a job interview is a lot about getting to know your own self and being able to communicate it to the interviewer on the day of the interview.
Sometimes candidates memorize answers to questions and rattle them off like a parrot would. In preparation for an interview there is nothing worse you can do. If a person cannot talk about himself what else can he really talk about? An interview, unless it is designed for some specific objective where a different approach is required, is a conversation and not an interrogation. The onus of keeping an interview conversational lies with both the interviewer and the interviewee. If the interviewer fails to keep it at that level, you as the interviewee should try and bring it to that level by being absolutely honest and disarming. So do not memorize answers to questions but certainly know what points you would like to cover in answer to a question. You could rehearse answering questions with your friends or even alone. Make sure you keep the tone conversational. Make sure you never memorize the exact language. Be natural. Be your self. It is ‘the you’ that the interviewer is looking for in you - the real you.
It may be common knowledge for marketing people but is perhaps the most well kept secret when it comes to cracking job interviews. It goes like this: find out what people need and help them satisfy that need. For getting a job find out what an organization or a Company wants and help them get what they want. In other words you must have the qualities that the employer is looking for in the candidate for a particular position. You can only sell what the buyer wants. So it is not just about you it is about the position. You must match your abilities with the needs of the employer. To be able to do that you must first know what is the employer looking for or what does he want. You have to find out what is the buyer buying. And the best way to do that is research the job being offered; research the company and the industry. If required ask a few questions in the interview itself. Yes you read it right. You can ask a few questions in the interview.
To crack an interview find out what the employer wants and give to him.

Price of Success is Not Negotiable

No one ever found himself on top of the Mount Everest taking a morning walk. It requires a dream, a goal, a strategy, training, practice, determination, commitment and execution of the plan to reach the summit. All these things are equally important. You can’t leave out anything or ignore even one of these. The price of success is not negotiable. You can add a few more things like focus, teamwork and good communication and interpersonal skills to the list depending on what field you are working in. As the Olympian's motto goes 'No pain no gain.

It is easy to admire a Sachin Tendulkar bat like a champion because he makes it look so simple. But people who know Sachin will tell you how disciplined he is and how long he practices in the nets. I have seen Jeeve Milkha Singh practice at the Golf Course in Chandigarh for hours on end when he was a teenager. One look at him and you knew here is a champion in the making. Navjot Sidhu’s rise to stardom as one of India’s best opening batsmen along with Sunil Gavaskar was a through the same route called hard work. I watched him practice in the Gymkhana Club in Patiala and would be amazed by his commitment and focus. Abhinav Bindra’s single-minded pursuit of his goal should be an inspiration for everyone and encourage us to set big goals and reach them.

All these sportsmen know that spectacular success is always preceded by not so spectacular preparation. There are times along the way when you could feel lonely and disheartened. What keeps you going at such times is if you visualize yourself at the victory stand and everyone in the stadium applauding you. So it is important for you to visualize your self as a successful person even before you are successful. I remember when I had set myself a goal to lose twenty kilos of extra weight that I had put on I visualized myself as having Mohammad Ali’s body. I even pasted a picture with his body and my face in my dream book. It took me a year to lose the twenty kilos and though I did not acquire the same muscles as Mohammad Ali I have never looked fitter in my life. To be able to say that at 57 is some achievement. Every time I wanted to give up my workout I would look at my goal and the visual and would be encouraged to spend those minutes on the treadmill. Age is no barrier to achieve what you set out to achieve as long as the goal is reasonable. We will talk about reasonable goals another day.