lystn

Interviews are strange things you are basically talking about yourself to somebody who you don’t know so it’s very difficult to come across as being relaxed, my remedy for this is to wake up early on the day of the interview and go for a walk or read a newspaper or watch the news on the TV so that your brain is buzzing and you’ve got something to talk about. So making you feel good in interviews, don’t forget every time you have an interview which doesn’t go well that’s just a learning curve and bringing you closer to the interview that will go well, so it’s always a good idea to try to program a few interviews to get yourself up and running .... if you go into a nightclub and you just stand on your own people won’t come up to you but if you hang out in the bar near a crowd, eventually people will eventually start talking to you, it’s the same for job interviews, if you get active and you go to one job interview and you’re able to come out with a sentence “yeah last week I was at Sony” or “two weeks ago I was in Thompson” it gives you more dynamism and shows that you are active and meeting different people, like a sculptor using different tools to sculpt a piece of stone and you will be sculpted by your encounters with people and that will give you an edge. The training for a Bond movie for example Daniel Craig involves language studies, karate, swimming, driving, learning how to fall, learning how to ride, running, learning how to hold a whiskey tumbler, there’s so many things to learn and so many things to know so keep yourself active. When you get to the interview you look like you’re ready for the action. First contact with an influential person.... What it comes down to is being able to talk to different types of people about all sorts of things. If you don’t seem interested or if you have nothing much to say it can kill a conversation in a few minutes. “Oh I must go and say hello to a friend I’ve just spotted” “excuse me a moment” would be the sentence you might hear coming during some lifeless conversation between you and another person. This is to be avoided. Here are the rules of making conversation: find out about the other person’s hobby and let them talk about it. After speaking to someone who listens carefully, the reaction is positive “at last someone who is interested in me that’s nice I want to know when I can see that person again”. They will rate you as being patient, friendly and no doubt will be happy to talk to you again. The occasional nod or “yes absolutely” or even a chuckle or a smile can egg them on. Then keep up the conversation by adding to the same subject in a rational way, try to avoid being too off-the-wall; that is unless of course the conversation is a bit mad and fun and then you might want to go down that path. You might meet a threshold of their attention span and wish to break away from the situation so as not to bore that person or to embarrass them so don’t hold a conversation too long so it gives them the opportunity to maybe go and do something else if they have other engagements. Always have a business card at the ready in your top pocket which you can take out and give to them at the moment when you see the conversation has come to it’s natural end. A “nice talking to you” and then without any further fuss off you go.