Interview with the employer. Secret of success

You have probably already seen it for yourselfexperience, how difficult it is to find a job in our time. That is, of course, you can do it, but it is not a fact that such work will be interesting, highly paid and stable. The path to the coveted position always lies through an interview with a potential employer, which is different from meetings with a recruiter or HR manager. What are these differences, and how to successfully pass such a test?

Features of the interview with the employer

The employment process is divided intoseveral stages: an interview with a representative of the HR department, with the immediate supervisor and with the CEO. The applicant usually meets with all these people, but there are exceptions when he immediately has an interview with employers. What could this be related to?

managerial post
position of personal assistant
key department of the organization
interview in a small company

If the person conducting the interview subsequentlywill be your immediate supervisor, he/she will inevitably be interested not only in your professional but also in your personal qualities. Of course, because you will have to spend a lot of time together, which means there should be a certain degree of psychological compatibility between you. So do not be surprised by questions about your hobbies, leisure time or favorite media - it is better to prepare for them in advance. An interview with a manager regarding a position in some important division for the company is also not uncommon. You understand that this is due to the fact that this department brings the company the bulk of its profits, and it does not want to lose income due to the possible incompetence of an employee. In a small company, as a rule, all interviews are conducted directly by the general director. The specifics of the business in this case are such that only he/she is aware of all the intricacies and nuances of the company's activities, and is also responsible for its organization. Such companies do not have separate HR managers, and the director is guided only by his/her own experience and professional intuition when selecting one. Your task is somehow guess and understand his criteria.

Secrets of success

What is the point of conducting an interview withpotential employer? It is so that you can evaluate each other, understand how much your mutual hopes will come true. It is very important for your future boss to know how well you will fit into the team, how quickly you will gain trust, whether you will be imbued with respect for the other members. There are a number of key points by which both you and your potential employer will draw conclusions about the prospects for further cooperation. Firstly, this is your awareness of the company and the market situation in which it finds itself. What does this mean? It means that before meeting with the CEO, try to collect all the available information about him and his company: what he said or did in the media, where he studied, what is his main area of activity, with whom the company most often cooperates, etc. ... In this way, you will be able to create a psychological portrait of the person you are going to meet and try to somehow impress his imagination. Another important point is psychological readiness for testing. A modern interview rarely goes without some kind of tests. It is not necessary that you will be tested in the literal sense of the word, so do not imagine a sheet of paper with a list of two hundred questions. Most often, the case method is used to check a person's competence and personal qualities - a practical solution to specific problems. There is no need to be afraid of this: the employer does not want to use your time and experience for free, it is just that cases are the best way to quickly and correctly assess your thinking style, activity, persistence, determination and other professionally important characteristics. The third point on the list, but not in importance, concerns the non-verbal features of your behavior. You need to pay a lot of attention not only to what you say, but also to how you say it. Intonation, posture, gestures, facial expressions - all this can have a serious impact on the formation of a good impression of you in the employer. And a bad one, unfortunately, too. For example, an organization is looking for a chief accountant, imagining a respectable lady of about fifty years old, calm and unperturbed. And a twenty-seven-year-old girl comes to the interview, who, although she knows her business, greatly overdoes it with emotionality and “hand waving”. Most likely, she will not get the position, and all because she does not match the image that has formed in the head of the boss. Fourthly, it is very important to demonstrate your stress resistance to the potential boss (probably only the deaf have not heard of its importance in the professional world). To be honest, at the interview you can face anything: a request to draw a diagram of how an electrical outlet works, a desire to speak English, a discussion of the latest works of Viktor Pelevin and much more. You need to be prepared for all this, because most of these “tests” are a banal test of stress resistance, adequacy and a sense of humor. Demonstrate them - and the job will be yours!

Questions to be asked

Any conversation with a potential bossends with an “interview in reverse”, that is, with your questions to him. But you need to ask them wisely, otherwise you risk ruining the good impression that you have probably already made. It also happens that applicants ignore this important point, and in vain. Based on the information you are interested in, the employer will draw a conclusion about your motivation, attitude, and mood for work. “If there are no questions, then none of the above is there,” he will think and cross you off the list of candidates for the position. All the things that you can ask an employer about at an interview are divided into two groups: firstly, this is what you can do for the organization (list of job responsibilities, assessment of their performance, as well as force majeure situations), secondly, this is information about what the organization plans to do for you (working conditions, salary, various bonuses). Of course, it's best to ask questions in this order, otherwise you risk being branded as a self-absorbed egotist, and people don't really like that. So, what should you ask a potential employer at the end of a meeting?

Be sure to clarify how your possiblethe chief sees the results of your activity. It happens that he represents you in the role of a sort of superhero who can do absolutely everything and even more, and then terribly disappointed when it turns out not at all. If suddenly the interviewer has no direct relation to the evaluation of the employee's performance at the post in question, then specify who will do this and what are his criteria. The inconsistency of such representations can be fatal for your future cooperation, even if its beginning is mutually beneficial.

Don't forget to clarify anything that you don't understand.the nuances of the job description, because it is better to know about them in advance than to waste time on this during the work process (and also look like a complete fool!). It may be that the employer considers overtime and overtime to be the norm of life, and you have a slightly different vision of this issue. And what to do in a situation when you encounter this problem, and the boss refuses to help you solve it? All these aspects are also better clarified in advance: perhaps you will want to work in the discussed position even more or, on the contrary, decide to run away from it wherever your eyes look - this happens.

Ask questions about your status andauthority. Will your employees be subordinate? If so, how many? How do you evaluate the results of their work? How can you encourage and stimulate them? The answers to all these questions are of great importance, because the effectiveness of your activities directly depends on the quality of your team, so you must have some levers of influence on all these parameters.

Start talking about money only afterevaluation of your work, which, incidentally, is impossible without a full and deep understanding of their job responsibilities. Therefore, perhaps you have to come up with an answer to the question of salary right in the course of the interview. No, of course, you will need information on the actual cost of such employees in the labor market, but the real contact will be crucial with the potential employer.

Even if you came across a vacancy through a recruiter,to whom the employer has already voiced the salary level, the question about money will most likely still be asked. And your task is not to screw up and not to miss this only opportunity to make your own adjustments to the discussed figure. Do not worry about your image: an adequate manager understands that a worthy employee knows his own worth and almost never goes below it. The information you voiced should not be perceived as a strict guide to action - rather, it is a list of key points for discussion. Agree, any uncertainty is frightening, and we help you get rid of it by drawing a more or less clear picture of what awaits you behind the doors of the potential company's office. Remember that your professional qualities, such as education, experience, skills and abilities are much more important than all the words you say to the employer during the interview. There are many stories when a candidate made a mistake at an interview, and he was still offered a job because he was worthy of it. This does not mean that you can take a “slack approach” to preparing for a meeting with a potential manager. It’s just that the level of your anxiety should not exceed some reasonable limits. Get nervous, inhale, exhale - and go charm your potential employer!