Whether you are just out of school or have already been working for a few years, you’ll always want to be confident in your interviewing skills. The reason I say this is mainly because interviewing is nothing less than a gateway to scoring that great job you’re trying to …score land.

Basically, you are judged as a person, against peers, on both your ability and your potential to perform at a task (under pressure) in a matter of maybe 30 minutes to an hour. This is the most cost effective way for an employer to filter through many candidates and pick someone they can feel confident about. Nail that shit.

1. Know your audience! - The best way to really F* up an interview is to start talking about something that the interviewer doesn’t care about. You are saying

I’m about to start talking about something you don’t care about for a few minutes, so feel free to start nodding your head and pretend to listen!

Knowing your audience means 3 things. Know who you are interviewing with, know their business, know yourself and know the position you are going for.

Knowing who are interviewing with should usually be possible if you just ask the recruiter. Basically, all you need to do is think to yourself for one minute and consider what you should talk about. If you were talking to a sales manager, do you think they want to hear about your coding ability? Always keep in mind exactly who is asking the question. Your answer should be different depending on who it is. [Note: obviously not because you are lying – It is because different people are interested in different sides of the same story.]

Knowing the business is as simple as understanding what it is the company cares about. The best ways to do this are: read the company website – find out how the company perceives itself and presents itself to its own customers, read the news – find out how people really perceive the company and what its main struggles and triumphs are, look at the company’s financial information – understand where the company makes its money, how its doing, where its spending too much. All these things will help you best position your existing experience into amazing answers/response to the interviewers questions. Make what you say relevant to the listener!

Knowing yourself and the position really means being able to map your entire resume to perfectly fit the job description! It’s a no-brainer. Who ever is interviewing you is going to be doing that anyway, so why not know the story in your head prior to the interview and spew it out so the interviewer can write down your beautiful story Think… “How can I make myself easy to hire for this person?”

2. Be physically and mentally ready – Nothing could be worse than going out and getting wasted before your interview. Get enough sleep, please. Act as though you were going to run a marathon the next day. Silly as it may seem, getting proper rest and eating the proper diet helps immensely both in actual performance and confidence (which may or may not be important in an interview……………..).

3. Have good questions to ask – This is a dead easy way to make yourself seem smart and show off any existing skills you may or may not have gotten a chance to display in your actual interview.

When you are asking a question, make sure it shows that you are smart, critical thinking, and understand the business. Don’t ask a dumb question just to ask a question. Here’s a couple good ones I’ve used.

“What is a day like in the life of [position for which you are applying]?”

“How is [significant news article] affecting your business? Have you considered that [competition x] is doing [activity x]?

Just remember, when you are coming up with the questions, make sure that they convey 2 things. 1, that you are smart and analytical – 2, that you are highly interested in working for THIS particular company. Both of those questions above do this.

4. Be prepared to regurgitate [your value]!! – One thing you really hate to see happen to a perfectly good job candidate is when they don’t know their own resume. As an applicant or interviewee, every bit of text on your resume should literally be an opportunity for you to say something awesome about yourself that the interviewer wants to hear. I would even take this concept as far as practicing your ability to take ANY question that you are asked, address it, and bring it back to one of the key points conveyed on your resume. Make sense? With this skill finely honed, you can ensure that no interview question ever stumps you. You’ll be able to easily take any question and answer it with the perfect answer that you already know.

A good practice for this is to take a couple minutes and brainstorm (or have a friend help) all the different questions you might encounter in an interview…they all revolve around teamwork, leadership, conflict, resolution, communication, ETC. Then take each of your resume bullet points and categorize them (they may fit under several) under the questions. Now for each question, you can easily remember several examples.

5. Know how awesome you are! – This may seem like the most inspirational-speaker-esque thing to say but its true. If you don’t have the self confidence to know that you alone are the perfect candidate for a position, then you should turn that frown upside down, because you are. Write down a list of things that remind you why you are perfect for the job, the company, and the industry. Be passionate and even emotional if you like. Help yourself BELIEVE!!!! Now go stand up, recite it, say it to your parents, your friends. Build up that confidence!! Go in swingin’!! You want this job as badly as Ariel wants to be human!

After hours of work editing your resume, weeks to months finding companies to interview with, and years of building up the experience you’ll actually need to perform the jobs want, you will ABSOLUTELY want that 30-60 minutes of interview time to be something you can be confident in – In fact, you’ll want that time to be spent absolutely dominating the interviewer; assuring them that you really are as great/talented/smart/awesome as you said you were.

Not being good at interviewing is like working your whole life on an important speech but not practicing it out loud ever. It’s all a moot point if you can’t hit it home. Be the best they interviewed, not the most mediocre. Go get em!