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Job interviews are always a testy experience simply because of the anxiety that they rile up in candidates. With good reason, you want to shine and give your best shot and secure the coveted position. However, you just don’t know what the recruiter thinks about you. They usually adopt a neutral cold face that shows no emotion.
In this article, we will educate you on some surprising things that employers are looking for during job interviews. You will get into the mind of a recruiter and notice the seemingly insignificant things that they use to qualify or dismiss you as a suitable match for the role.
You will also learn how to incorporate them so that you can ace that job interview and get your job. Here are the things you should be attentive to:
Soft skills
Small things such as creativity, integrity, empathy, dependability and adaptability are things that you need to culture and nurture within you. Any hiring manager looks beyond the technical skill and ability to do the job but also how you will gel with your teammates and colleagues. Ensure that you demonstrate these soft skills during the interview.
According to Indeed, soft skills are interpersonal and behavioral skills that help you work well with other people and develop your career.
Examples of soft skills are teamwork, communication, empathy and others.
Interviewers look for thoughtfulness
When answering questions you need to exhibit critical thinking. Before you answer questions take time to reflect and evaluate your answer before you release it. You can even ask the recruiter to give you additional information so that you can get more context to answer the question.
Your answers should be thorough and you should also guide your hearers through your thought process. It gives the hiring manager a more in-depth perspective of the mental models you employ and your thinking patterns.
Expectations
What do you expect from your potential employer? What expectations do you have for your new workplace? And also most importantly how do you expect your working there will impact your overall career growth and progress?
Your interviewer more often than not will gauge what your expectations are so that they can see if they align with the company and the role you’re being interviewed for.
Open-mindedness
Since you made it to the interview stage, it already means that the recruiters consider your expertise and your qualifications for the role as good enough to potentially work for them. Therefore, your skill is not in question here. But the interviewer will be interested to see how open you are to changing your mind and doing things differently if duty demands that you do so.
For example, media consumers back then were used to traditional media such as print publications, television, radio and the like. But the advent of social media changed everything and it gave the audience a chance to be generators of news. Consumer patterns radically changed. If an expert in media rigidly stuck to the strategies that they employed in traditional media, the company would end up dwindling because of not shifting with the seasons and times.
An employer will definitely test your flexibility. Effectively you should show that you’re malleable enough to try out new solutions.
Body Language
This may be a surprise to many but body language communicates a lot of things about you as a person. What is body language? Oxford dictionary defines it as the conscious and unconscious movements and postures by which attitudes and feelings are communicated.
Body language is all about how you present yourself in the interview. It helps you emphasize your points and tells the interviewer that you’re relaxed and confident. You can convey body language through hand gestures, posture, tonal variation (volume and tone of your voice) and facial expressions.
What does body language communicate during job interviews?
Through your body language, your interviewer can tell if you’re confident, passive, pro-active, passionate, focused and more.
Confidence
It’s surprising to know that an employer will test how confident you are in what you offer during job interviews. In layman's terms, if you don’t believe in what you offer, what will make someone else buy it? The employer wants to see if you recognize your value and can confidently communicate it to your hearers.
It shows whether you’ll do an effective job when you’ll be required to rise to the occasion and sell your company’s products and philosophies.
Likeability
You need to be aware of this simple concept because it makes you stand out. The recruiter has evaluated numerous experts and qualified candidates for the job. Therefore, to spice up your skills, work experience and technical abilities, focus on being likeable. It will give you an edge ahead of other equally qualified candidates.
How do you become a likable candidate?
Think about traits that people appreciate and those characteristics that people like. For example, someone who is polite, empathetic, real, confident, funny, pays keen attention to detail and so much more. Embody those traits and you will be well on your way to getting that job.
Authenticity
Unfortunately, a lot of candidates walk into job interviews with rehearsed and crammed answers that they probably lifted from internet YouTube videos. As a result, they miss out on the opportunity because they lacked the authenticity that the employer was looking for.
Your potential boss needs to know who exactly they’re dealing with and the uniqueness that you bring to the table. Even when a man is approaching a woman trying to get her attention, they have to be themselves to prove that they’re completely different from the pack of other regular men out there.
Be yourself in an interview and communicate your ideas and how only you can. Thea Watson of recruiting company Hays says that if you aren’t yourself, the interviewer won’t get a true picture of whether you are a good cultural fit for the team and the company or not.
Conclusion
Tell your friend to assume the role of a mock interviewer and ask you the expected interview questions. Record the whole session and replay it to see areas in which you need to improve. Let your friend(s) also critique your performance. This will help you fine-tune even the seemingly negligible aspects that a candidate should embody.