Guest Post - Neharika Kadali

Neha is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here she writes about job interviews.

With hundred and one ways to land a job interview, it is quite exhausting to choose the perfect path to search for a job. The compelling question that haunted me day in and day out in my initial stages while I was applying for an internship was which course of line should I be taking. I had expertise in programming, should I be a Programmer? The courses I would be taking are more management inclined, should I be looking into relevant jobs? The most important thing that I love about life is the story behind every face I come across, should I be incorporating the same motto in my job search and look for jobs that require my interpersonal skills? I realized I was doing it all wrong. Rather than thinking in every way all at once. I should break it down into piece by piece and analyze. The questions I should be asking myself are, what is the best for me? How useful I could be for the company?

The questions came easily to me but finding solutions for them took some effort. To be critical on oneself would be the hardest part, as one has to narrow down his/her choices. I am everything that happened to me in the course of time. Like your behavior depends on the way you were brought up and circumstances you have faced. My professionalism depends on the skills you have acquired, the lessons you learnt the hard way in a professional atmosphere, the projects you have done and the passion you developed towards the kind of work you did. Once I have taken this approach, it was easy for me to pin down the industry I wanted to work in; the kind of job I wanted to do.

Once the life’s hardest question is answered; I thought it was going to be easy from here. Keeping the industry in mind, I made a list of jobs I was interested in and where my acquired skills would be useful. I developed my resume around the kind of work I have done, my experience, class projects and my extracurricular activities. I started applying to the jobs and simultaneously started working on my interview.

The first thing I did when preparing for my job interview is to know as many things as I could about the company. The culture of the firm, how the company has evolved, what kind of markets it is in, what’s the motto of the company etc. I made sure I was up-to-date with the current ventures of the company. I practiced introduction in front of the mirror. I incorporated everything the employer should know about me in 5 logical and concise lines. When I was doing the research, I was bombarded with lots of questions. I noted all of them and screened the ones, which would be useful for me to understand the company better. Given a chance, I could ask these questions to the interviewer during the interview process to keep the interviewer engaged. The interview should be an exchange of ideas, a pleasant interesting conversation that leaves the interviewer disappointed when it is finally coming to an end.

From my personal experience, I strongly believe feedback is as important as the interview process. It helps you in not repeating a mistake. Sending the interviewer a ‘thank you’ note is the best way to get it. It also gives you another chance to woo the interviewer. If there is a particular question he asked in the interview which you weren’t satisfied with the answer, writing him about it might give you a shot at the job. It also conveys you are genuinely interested in the job.

On the day of the interview, rather than hurrying with so many things in head, you have to relax. It is going to be a good conversation; you will learn a lot of things from the interview. The best that could happen is you will get the job; the worst would be you have gained enough experience to try the next best one.