and if you haven’t prepared, you probably won’t get the job.

One of the most important things to do before a job interview is to practice answering interview questions.

You’ll have better answers and you’ll be more relaxed,

opening the door to a greater connection with the person interviewing you.

Today we’re going to sit down with three experts who will talk you though common interview questions,

how to answer them, body language, and some Do’s an Don’ts of interviewing.

This is a long video because there’s a lot to cover.

You’ll learn how to talk about transitions between jobs, what to say if you’ve been fired,

what to say when you’re not sure how to answer a question,

the right way to follow up, the right body language, and much more.

Being prepared WILL get you the job.

At the end of the video, there will be a lesson for my non-native English speaking students on vocal tone.

You may be absolutely wonderful at what you do, and have a great cover letter and resume.

But interviewing is its own separate skill.

Cindy has hired hundreds of people for the non-profits she ran in New York City.

Now she works as a recruiter and she interviews people all day.

She says, before your interview, it is extremely important.

To practice your interviewing skills.

Do mock interviews because it makes you more comfortable,

and the more comfortable you are in an interview, the more likely you are to have a connection with somebody.

If you walk in nervous, and you're not yourself,

then the interview doesn't get to see who you are, which means that they may miss something.

You don’t want the interviewer to miss anything about how fabulous you are.

Everyone I spoke to stressed practicing.

Laura is a career advisor at a prestigious American college.

The most important thing is to prepare as much as possible.

Practising your interview ahead of time in front of a mirror with a friend.

Steve is a small business owner who does a lot of hiring.

I asked him what makes a good first impression at the beginning of an interview.

They are anticipating that they're going to be asked some questions.

Some standard questions across the board or during an interview process.

And if they have good answers for those, what I mean by good is that they're they've thought about these,

they know how to answer them, then to me, that feels like, okay this person's, this person's been aware,

and is prepared for... prepared for this interview.

Employers CAN tell when you’ve prepared: your answers are clearer, more interesting, more thorough.

And they appreciate that.

If you haven’t prepared for the interview, they’re probably going to question if you’re really prepared for the job.

In the next three videos that follow this one, we’ll study mock interviews

and discuss how you can put together you own best answers for common interview questions.

For the rest of this video, we’ll continue to hear from Cindy, Laura and Steve.

They’re giving you insider information: what does an employer want to see in an interview?

First, it’s common for employers to ask you to share a little bit about yourself outside of your work life.

Why do they do this, and what are they looking for?

Does it matter if you prepare an answer to this one?

Yes. Listen to what Steve says.

We usually ask what other things do you do outside of work?

We're looking for what kind of well-roundedness are you.

Of a person are you, and even what other activities are you involved with?

What might you be involved with within your community?

And more of that giving back to the community kind of a way.

But oftentimes, that'll lead to additional questions where, okay, we've got maybe a common interest,

and all of a sudden, you're going down a path of asking a whole bunch of different other questions.

Have you ever asked someone this question and they really

didn't have anything else that felt like their thing that they could talk about ?

Definitely.

Had situations where they were the reply was: well, I sit on my couch, and watch tv, you know.

It's something that's....It's some... That's another activity, all right, but it's,

for me, it's not, doesn't feel like it's a real one, exciting one, or one that, if I were in that interview position,

I would say that. That would be my response.

So yeah, we've had...We've had people that are just like: well, I...

I don't know and I just I just kind of work. I work all day.

And those people probably would have had an answer if they thought about it ahead of time.

Yeah, that's true.

So it's all about being prepared.

Right. Right. If you had thought about that beforehand I'm sure those applicants wouldn't have said:

I just kind of sit...I sit at my sit on my couch and watch tv.

There’s nothing wrong with loving TV, but think of a more exciting way to say it. “I’m a huge TV buff”, for example.

DO have an answer for ‘tell me about yourself’, but DON’T get too personal.

Many interviews start with two general questions.

One being: tell me about yourself, a lot of people hate that question, but a lot of people use it.

And be prepared for that.

Tell a little bit about yourself. And what usually they're asking for is not to tell your resume,

they're asking for you to say a little bit about yourself, personally.

Like what, what would be, I mean, personally, there are so many things.

Oh I have two kids, or I love opera.

Like, is there any one thing that you think stay away from that? Or...How would you answer that?

I mean, yeah, I would stay away from anything that's like

super personal, that would be weird to say to somebody that you don't know very well.

But I think personal is good and so I think the things you just said are really interesting.

Like, I live in...I live in richmond, I have two little girls, and we moved down, I used to work in a non-profit,

I've just now switched careers, like, whatever.

I mean, just something about yourself that gives them a little bit of context of who you are.

So like something that you would feel comfortable saying to somebody that you're sitting next to on the bus

or something?

Yeah. Yeah. Or that you've just met at a dinner party, or you know, something like that.

Short.

They're not asking you for a long answer.

The other thing that a lot of interviews will start with is that you do a walk-through of your resume.

Now we’re moving onto a major topic you need to prepare for an interview: walking through your resume.

Both Steve and Cindy said this is something they ask interviewees to do.

Bring several copies of the same resume you submitted for the job.

Keep one for your own reference and hand the rest out to the people interviewing you.

What does an employer want to hear in a walk-through of your resume?

So I would say: I would love you to walk me through your resume.

Talk, start at the beginning.

Talk through the roles that you've held, key responsibilities at those roles,

would love for you to highlight your key successes in each role,

one of the things I really want to understand is your transition, so as you move from role to role,

would love to understand what prompted you to leave one place and go to the other.

And then, you know, if your career was long, I would love for you to spend more time on your more recent stuff,

but start at the beginning because I want to get a sense of your full career arc.

I want to get a sense of how it all connects, how you got from, you know, at the beginning to where you are now.

And then depending on the role, sometimes I will also say,

you know, when you start getting to the place of your career where you are managing teams,

or supervising staff, let me know how many people, the construct of your team,

and if you're managing budgets, what size of a budget? So I can capture that information.

I'm happy to like, you know, stop you as you go along if you forget anything but that's what I'm looking for.

And do that in about 15 or 20 minutes.

And that's awesome because that is something that anyone can practice ahead of time,

and can really, you know, time themselves, make sure they're not rambling on too much with any one thing.

And something that people will often do, I mean, there's errors on both sides,

some people go so quickly and don't actually note the information that I asked,

that I have to go back and ask questions all the way through. That's sort of annoying.

And then the rambly is also really annoying.

So some people will start and they'll...

They'll pause after their first job and say like: am I giving you the right level of detail?

I love that because I don't want to interrupt people.

It's not, you know, it doesn't always feel good to do that especially when people are nervous,

and they're interviewing.

So it's always good to check in and say like: is that the detail that you want?

And somebody asks me, I may very well say: actually, you know, feel free to go a little more quickly,

or you didn't know XYZ.

Talking through your resume in this kind of detail

is something you’re going to be able to do a lot more clearly if you’ve thought about it

and practiced it ahead of time.

One part of your resume that matters a lot to employers is timing.

Be prepared to talk about gaps in your work history, short tenures at jobs, and transitioning between jobs.

One of the things in particular that I'm looking for is is gaps in your work history.

If you're giving me dates of when you worked, and you have a one-year gap, I want to know why.

What's going on? What happened? Or didn't happen? Or why did, why is there a year off or six-month period off

on your work history? That's probably one of the bigger things that I'm looking at.

Transitions between jobs.

This is a really important piece.

A lot of workers they just care a lot about it

because they want to understand if you were asked to leave, you were fired,

if your very short job tenures on your resume, that's a red flag for a lot of organizations,

and actually could be a reason why you didn't get an interview.

But be prepared to talk about your transitions.

If you do get fired, figure out how do you want to talk about that.

And if you didn't, then talk about what was it that made you leave one organization and go to another.

And while you're doing that,

you want to make sure that you're never speaking badly about one of your jobs or organizations.

It's another flag that happens in a job interview.

And you know it's okay to talk about a rough transition, or a rough year,

but you want to do it very carefully,

in a way that you would feel comfortable that if somebody from that organization were there,

would, you know, generally understand and feel comfortable here.

If you are bad-mouthing an organization, or a previous boss, or anybody really, in a job interview,

that's gonna make people think it's possible that you would do the same about them, about the, you know, job.

Do prepare to talk through your resume, do prepare to talk about gaps in work or transitions between jobs,

but don’t ever talk badly about an organization or an employer you worked with in the past.

How can you gracefully talk about being fired?

Let's say I was fired from a job.

From your experience, what is a way that I can talk about that, that you feel okay about it?

I guess it depends on why I was fired, right?

It really does.

It does depend on the situation.

I mean ultimately, what hopefully you can talk about is a situation where there was just not a good fit

with an organization.

And to be able to explain why something wasn't a good fit,

and how that transition was done in a way that was really respectful on your side, if you were able to.

So, in other words, you know, we realized that that it wasn't the right fit,

at which point, I worked another two weeks, you know, to make sure that I helped with the transition.

And somebody's gonna dig into that.

What was it that wasn't a good fit for you?

Well, it wasn't a good fit because I...

You know, I just had my first baby,

this was a culture that required, you know, a lot of overtime.

I wasn't able to give it. Ultimately, my boss and I were able to sit down and have a conversation

about that, and we decided to, you know, part ways, sooner rather than later.

Okay. That's helpful.

If they don't ask you the direct question: did you get fired? Or they didn't ask you about your transitions, right?

Like, I wouldn't say you should offer it, if it's not being asked for.

If somebody says why did you leave that organization, then you need to be honest.

Talking about being fired without bad mouthing the organization or lying could be hard,

but if you work on it beforehand, you’ll likely be able to come up with a way to discuss this

that you’re comfortable with that's also truthful.

Both Cindy and Steve talked about the balance of talking about your accomplishments without sounding arrogant.

So if someone would come in with confidence and humility,

that would maybe endear me a little more to that person and say, boy,

I think this person could probably fit in our organization.

So I feel like I understand how someone can present themselves with confidence.

Can you think of anything of that a person says or does that makes you sense humility in them?

>> I mean, that's sort of a tricky, tricky one. >> It really is.

I think not over promoting yourself,

listening, truly listening to the people that are you're interviewing with,

not going on and on, talking on and on about yourself ,about your compliment, accomplishments,

about everything that you've done,

how wonderful you are, but still being able to talk about these these accomplishments, and...

Yeah. It's a fine line. It's a little tricky. You have to be able to speak well about what you've done,

but then also know at what point it's gotten to be too much.

Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.

Cindy agrees.

She has a great tip on how to do this.

I think one of the most, like, noted

characteristics about somebody on the turnout side is somebody who is just a know-it-all,

overly confident, speaks very highly of themselves.

and again, like, it's tricky because part of the job interview process is talking about what you've done,

but being able to do so in a way that exhibits humility, super-important.

I have interviewed people who have amazing resumes, who, you know, have done amazing work,

who are more than qualified for a role, and I've decided not to advance them in the process

because culturally, they are not going to be a fit in an organization where humility is valued...