Prepare for a Job Interview

Every selection process for any job vacancy implies an interview at the end. That is because the employer needs to make sure of choose the right candidate, and the best way to attain it, after having reduced the number of applicants, is meeting the prospective employee in person. An interview enables the employer to state that the interviewee is what the organisation requires by observing his/her performance. So, as Ashley (1990, p.42) points out, "[The interviewer] is interested in you [the applicant] as a person … He will be interested not so much in what you answer but how you answer".   This is the reason someone who is applying for a vacancy needs to prepare the job interview in advance.
Ashley (1990), Fletcher (1992), and Skeats (1994) have equally drawn attention to the fact that an applicant must do some research about the job itself and the organisation which offers it before attending the job interview. However, both Ashley (1990) and Fletcher (1992) indicate that this research should be done even before applying for the job and also again after had been given an interview, but this time the candidate must research more conscientiously, "furthering this knowledge [about the job and the organisation]"(Fletcher, 1986, p. 54). It is of common sense that a person interested in a job wants to know more exactly what it involves and how the organisation for which he/she is planning to work is. Correspondingly, an interviewer is more likely to consider an applicant as serious if he/she shows interest by pointing out his/her knowledge of the job offered.
As far as the interview itself is concerned, the interviewee must remember, as Ashley (1990) perceptively stated, that the key issue is the way the answers are given. This opinion resembles the Skeats‘s(1994) one who warns   the candidate   on showing his/her "weaknesses in a positive light … as long as you [the candidate] won't seem too clever or arrogant" (p.15) On the other hand,   this recommendation is not... [continues]

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