Practice, Practice, Practice

There is an old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  The answer, “Practice, practice, practice.”  The same is true to the question, “How should you prepare for an interview?” but it’s not as funny.

All kidding aside, here is what I encourage you to do.  Find a list of the most common, or the best interview questions.  You can Google it, or there is a list of my favorites in the back of my book.  For each question, write our answers. Really. Don’t just think about them.  Write them down.  Work on your answers until you like the way they sound. Then, and here comes the strange part, say them out loud, over and over.

Several things are happening.  When you read the question and think about your response you being to create a short-term memory.  The more you roll that answer around in your head, the more you are likely to remember it. But, if you then write it down, the writing part engages different parts of your brain because now it’s not just a thought, now, you have to cause your hands to move in relationship to the words.  FYI the research supports that hand-writing is even more effective than typing so tell that to your student who is taking notes on their laptop.

Now you’ve thought about that answer, and written down so you’ll have a better chance to remember it.  The next step is to practice saying it.  The act of speaking the words out loud will do two things. One, as you hear what you wrote, you will probably find that you need to change a few words so it sounds like you.  More importantly, you’ve now engaged more parts of our brain and that answer will locked in concrete. The more your practice, the more comfortable you’ll get.

It is very unlikely that an interviewer will ask you exactly the questions you have prepared answers for, but you will know the material well enough that you’ll easily be able to put things together on the fly.  You will come across as thoughtful and well spoken. You’ll be ready for any interview.

This is all about the power of practice – not just thinking about things, but writing them down and then really practicing them out loud.  Your dream job is out there and waiting for you. Get ready for it by practicing.  If you are struggling, this might help.  https://im-fired.com/about-the-book/