{"id":3626,"date":"2017-05-14T00:08:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T00:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/?p=3626"},"modified":"2017-05-14T00:08:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T00:08:03","slug":"selling-yourself-in-an-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/selling-yourself-in-an-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling Yourself in an Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was looking at interview tips and I came along some tips for selling yourself in an interview. I thought these were some helpful tips and they could relate to our class.<\/p>\n<p>1. Be the solution<br \/>\nCompanies fill or create positions because they have problems they want to solve &#8212; for instance, ineffective advertising or long customer-service lines. So prepare for an interview by identifying the problems hinted at in the job ad. (If there&#8217;s no job ad, research the company and industry.) Then, prepare examples detailing how you&#8217;ll solve those problems &#8212; and how you&#8217;ve solved similar problems in the past. Practice telling stories about specific results you&#8217;ve achieved.<\/p>\n<p>2. Be specific<br \/>\nAvoid empty clich\u00e9s. Be prepared to back up your claims about your skills or characteristics with relevant and specific stories. For example, don&#8217;t just say you &#8220;work well with others&#8221; &#8212; talk about the types of teams you&#8217;ve worked with and what you&#8217;ve learned from them. Or if you plan to say you&#8217;re &#8220;detail-oriented,&#8221; come to the interview prepared with a story about how your attention to detail saved a former employer money (or otherwise saved the day).<\/p>\n<p>3. Prepare sound bites<br \/>\nPrepare three or four effective sound bites that highlight your skills and past successes. A sound bite is succinct and direct, so it&#8217;s catchy and easy to remember &#8212; for example, &#8220;I&#8217;ve designed logos for three Fortune 500 companies&#8221; or &#8220;My efficiency plan decreased product-delivery times by 15 percent without costing the company a cent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>4. Prepare to talk about your resume<br \/>\nYour resume and cover letter will likely form an outline for at least part of your interview. Because a resume has to be brief, it probably says many things that could be elaborated on or explained in more detail. Often a resume explains the &#8220;what&#8221; (for instance, &#8220;supervised two people&#8221;). Use the interview to talk about the &#8220;how,&#8221; as well as skills you gained, praise you received and so on.<\/p>\n<p>5. Be aware of nonverbal communication<br \/>\nYou say a lot about yourself with nonverbal language: your posture and your facial expressions, for instance. Sit up straight &#8212; leaning forward can make you seem closed off, as can holding a briefcase or purse in your lap. Maintain eye contact when answering interview questions, and smile frequently. Also, practice your handshake with a friend: An overly aggressive handshake can be as off-putting as a limp o<\/p>\n<p>6. Be positive<br \/>\nAvoid complaining about a former employer or laying blame at a former manager&#8217;s feet &#8212; doing so will likely make you seem difficult to work with (or disloyal). Even if you quit your last job in a rage because you had an incompetent manager, saying something like &#8220;I felt I was ready for a more challenging position &#8212; like this one seems to be&#8221; turns a potentially interview-killing situation into something that makes you look very attractive to a hiring manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was looking at interview tips and I came along some tips for selling yourself in an interview. I thought these were some helpful tips and they could relate to our class. 1. Be the solution Companies fill or create positions because they have problems they want to solve &#8212; for instance, ineffective advertising or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}