How to Sound Confident? 8 Simple Interview Preparation Tips
Every company hires a confident employee. Sometimes, exuding confidence in an interview often helps you to cover up your shortcomings too. Especially for freshers, a disadvantage they have to live with at the beginning is inexperience. By exhibiting confidence in yourselves and your skills, you persuade the interviewer to develop confidence in you.
Here’re a few interview tips to help you gain confidence while preparing for an interview :
1. Focus on what your body speaks, when you don’t.
The phrase, ‘first impression is the best impression’, applies perfectly to an interview set up. An interviewer might meet hundreds of candidates in a day, so putting your best foot forward and leaving an impression with good non verbal communication is important. Thus, before appearing for an interview, practice and improve your non verbal communication skills, such as a firm handshake, proper eye contact, etc. Good non-verbal communication projects the level of confidence you carry.
2. You may not be Nikola Tesla, but do your research.
The day before the interview, do thorough research about the company you’re interviewing for. Run through the company’s goals, strategies, vision, mission, work culture and other details available on the website. Read up on the skills, qualifications and job description carefully so as to understand the company’s requirements. Knowing such details will help you be confident while you talk and also showcase that you care.
The background knowledge about the company will definitely help you in framing better answers.
Familiarity with the company and its functions is an ingredient strong enough to boost your confidence!
3. Prepare good answers
Practice frequently asked questions and prepare well framed answers beforehand. Listen to the answers, structure them better and add more points wherever needed to support your answer. This is an important part of preparing for any interview, because you’re aware of your capabilities, but the interviewer isn’t. Interview is the opportunity for you to convince the interviewer that you’re the best suited candidate for the position and that decision will be made partly based on your responses. Good answers play a relevant role in making you seem confident. But do not ever by heart and then recite the answers in parrot fashion. Maintain your natural self during the interview.
4. Eliminate the tendency to appear desperate
While preparing for the interview, ensure that the responses do not make you sound too desperate to bag the job. There’s a fine line between appearing interested and desperate. Practice to maintain your calm and cool self while attending the interview. Desperation makes an individual appear less confident. Also, the interviewer might assume that your desperation comes from not obtaining job offers anywhere else which instantly leads to the question of capability.
5. Know your CV
You should not put yourself in a position where you seem unfamiliar with your own resume information. Browse through your resume and pay attention to what’s written about the past employment experiences. Refresh your memory and brush up on the details. Also, spare some time to look up the most recently asked questions about resumes on the web. Your resume is important to support your profile for the job.
6. Few questions for the interviewer
As much as you need the job, the company needs a suitable employee too! So do not shy away from asking genuine questions. In fact, in most of the interviews, the interviewer will prompt you to ask them questions. It is always suggested that you shouldn’t say no when they do. Ask questions related to your responsibilities, daily work routines and organizational activities. This will show that you’ve done your research, you’re eager to understand more and add confidence to your overall persona.
7. Breathing techniques to calm your nerves
At times of anxiety, our blood tends to flow away from our brain. This in turn affects cognitive functioning. Thus it’s important to take a few deep breaths a while before the interview to calm down and relax. Try to maintain focus solely on your breathing at that point, this will bring back the oxygen supply of your brain and you’ll be able to think clearly. To appear confident, a calm exterior and relaxed mind is relevant.
8. Just sit down, relax and imagine.
Yes, we aren’t joking. According to author and interview coach, Margaret Buj, imagining yourself succeeding at an interview plays a significant role in increasing our confidence level. Imagine walking into the room to attend the interview, shaking hands with the interviewer and answering each and every question with confidence and grace. This is a great technique to relax the pre-interview stress and improve your self esteem to an extent.
Confidence is key while giving an interview. If you lack confidence, the company will not consider hiring you ever, no matter how variant your skill set might be. Nobody is born with confidence, it’s a trait anybody can consciously develop over time. If it’s an immediate interview that you’re worried about, the above mentioned tips and techniques will help you in hiding the lack of confidence when you present yourself for the interview.
