In my time spent doing work for my other company, Intellectual Capitol (ICAP), we do a lot of recruiting, vetting, and hiring for clients all over the country. Over the many years of doing this, we’ve employed a couple of different strategies to prepare candidates for interviews.
We compiled these to share with you because everyone deserves a shot to get closer to their goals, land their dream job, and land at a company they love.
We wish you all the luck in your job search!
Suggestions:
- Make sure the camera is on and you’re looking at the camera. Even though this can be awkward and counter-intuitive, you don’t want someone looking at your chin, your forehead, or up your nostrils when they should be focusing on what you’re saying.
- If your desk is in front a window, close the blinds especially if you have glasses. This reduces glare.
- Minimize all of your windows and tabs on your desktop. In some web conferencing browsers, if you touch something other than your web conference, your screen could show as ‘unavailable’ during the web conference it’s called attendee attention tracking
- Have a copy of your resume handy and email it to your interview proctor before the interview. This seems pretty self-explanatory, right?
- Make sure your background is appropriate and (maybe) a little bland. In an interview, you are the focus. Make sure that you give the interviewers no other option, but to look at you and focus on what you’re saying. You don’t want them wondering why you have a Dalek model and a Pokemon on the same shelf. Weird example, but it’s happened.
- Use headphones if possible. Background noise is thing. Everyone’s working from home with (likely) lots of distractions. Whether it’s the laundry, dishwasher, or children fighting in the other room, a best practice is to use headphones to minimize distractions.
- Keep handy some of the key achievements or things you think are relevant to the job or the company. When you’re in an interview, you can often anticipate certain questions particularly about certain technology skills. When asked about situations or how you would handle things, make sure to have a couple of responses that really illustrate how you are a good fit or how you take the project to a higher level.
