Job Interviews are one of the most stressful activities for people who are already busy in their current jobs. They often don’t find time to do the preparation which results in showing up to the interviews without much confidence. This results in failing in the interviews which leads to further stress. The rejection may trigger a lack of motivation to move on to the next job with increase in pay and senior in role.

But preparing for job interviews using certain techniques and process will help reduce the stress and increase your success rate. We’ve analyzed many professionals who has consistently succeeded in their interviews within and outside of their organizations.

We found that the below job interview techniques played a major role in their success and you can achieve the same level of success if you follow these processes before your next interviews.

1. Understand and Analyze Job Description

Every job posting has a detailed job description which is widely called as JDs. The JDs capture all the important information about the job which includes the roles and responsibilities, required skills for the job etc. Most of the candidates don’t go through it fully and only skim at the high level.

Before your interview  go through the JD completely and capture all the important information relevant to the job. For example if you are interviewing for .NET developer then understand if role is for web, cloud or mobile app development. Then map the role to your expertise and identify the areas of gap that needs to be worked on before the interview. The same goes for required skills and other areas mentioned in the JDs.

This mapping will help you self evaluate your strength and weakness even before the interview and gives you enough time to work on your weakness.

2. Preparation and Practice

Its no brainer that the preparation and practice are the most important things for your interview. But still I’ve seen many people shows up to the interviews without enough preparation as they think that they have many years of work experience in the role.  But work experience alone will not help as the interview process may validate the basics (For ex Data Structures for Software engineers etc), communication, architecture design skills etc. 

Hence make sure you put enough effort and time to prepare for the role, skills mentioned in the JD along with your presentation skills. You need to dedicate at least 24-32 hours for the preparations for the interview. Once you are done with the preparation, practice multiple times with sample questions and exercises.  This will strengthen your time management and communication skills along with the core skills required for the job.

3.  About the company

You are going to work for this company and you need to know about this company in detail.  Go through the company website and read about their industry vertical, customers and the products/services they deliver to the customers. 

If possible try to match the JD with their product/service and you may get an insight about the job and its expectations from the candidate. You can customize your preparation based on this insight.

4. Questions at the end

Every interviewer ends the discussion with the question like “Do you have any questions for me?”. This sounds simple and you may think that  you can ask some question on that time and it doesn’t  require any preparation.  But it would be prudent to go prepared with a couple of questions based on the roles and responsibilities in the JD,  company’s product/services etc. 

You don’t need to ask dramatic questions which you find in the internet but some relevant questions based on JD would be sufficient . The right questions are like cherry in the cake and it may leave a good impression in the mind of the interviewer.

Interviewers  generally wants you to do well in the interviews so that they can fill the job quickly. So if you follow the above job interview techniques and process you can attend any interviews without much stress and come out on the top of the selected list.