Preparing For The Interview
Interviewing Skills | Office of Career Services

Practice Interviewing

One of the best-proven ways to improve your interviewing skills is to practice. The Office of Career Services provides mock interviews, which allow you to interview with a career professional on videotape with a follow up critique. This allows you to see how you present yourself and discuss ways of improving or polishing your interviewing skills.

Prepare Questions

Using the information from your research of the organization and industry, prepare questions that you want to ask during or at the end of the interview. See Questions You May Want To Ask Potential Employers for additional suggestions. Also, refer to Questions NOT To Ask During An Interview. It is professionally acceptable to take this list with you to the interview and refer to the questions when asked if you have any.

Visit The Interview Site

An excellent resource for information on an organization is the organization itself. You may want to call the secretary and tell her/him that you are doing research on the company for an interview. Ask them if they have any information regarding the company that you could come to pick up such as an annual report, brochures or marketing materials. This way, you are not causing more work for them by asking them to send it to you. It also gives you an opportunity to find out how long it takes to get there, exactly where it is, where the parking is and how much it costs, and where the nearest bus or train station is. One of the best ways to make a bad impression on a job interview is to arrive late. This will make you more confident and allows for less opportunity for getting lost.

When you arrive, you may want to consider asking the secretary how he/she likes working there to see what their response is. Another suggestion is to see if you can meet anyone in the department where you will be interviewing to see how the people in the department like working there and to get an idea of the company structure and culture. Scheduling an appointment ahead of time is a good idea. Ideally, it would be great if you could find out whom the person is that’s leaving and schedule an appointment to interview him/her if they are still working there. This is a great source of information about the company and the position. A person who is leaving a job often will reveal information that you would not normally be privy to.

What To Bring

You may want to purchase a leather or vinyl portfolio to use for interviewing. This can also be used for seminars, business meetings and other professional activities in the future as well.

Inside your portfolio, include several copies of your resume and reference sheet, a pad of paper, two pens and any reference letters you may have. Also, bring your professional portfolio when applicable.