Step-up your chances of getting selected

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

                                                                              Harper Lee, To kill a Mocking Bird.

First things first.. How the words written below are different from the zillions of interview related tips found over the internet? Well the answer is that the words are the outcomes of an honest effort to share a first person experience that the author encountered very recently and moreover, it is coming from a person you know. Though catching a single fish in the river cannot guarantee the genius of the fisherman, but the learnings of the exercise can be valuable.

I can understand that these days are of utmost importance and might seem that 24 hours are less in a day. So, I am going to summarize the whole thing in some bullet points, which might be helpful to those who think a blog is the last thing to read during these slog hours. If you find the tips intriguing or confusing, then spend few more minutes to go through the elaborative part. So, following are the things that I learnt and I would like to suggest, truncated to bare minimum:

1. Be adequately prepared,
2. Sound convincing,
3. Be enthusiastic,
4. Relate what you have learnt with the job description.

Yeah, that's a real short list. Now, the subsequent words are for the folks who have still got enough endurance to read through the whole blog. I am going to elaborate the above mentioned points in detail as in what is my take on these banal points. I know I have not said something unprecedented. Here I go...

1. Be adequately prepared: Adequate because you don't have to prepare too much. Exactly, you got me right. "Nothing much, nothing less" is the mantra. I strongly believe that what we have been doing so far, I mean in our course, have prepared us and the only delay is to realize this fact and figure out what exactly we have internalized. There is no need to mug up things especially for the interview. However, I would suggest that make your arsenal more formidable by including some "power concepts" into it. By "power concepts", I mean to say that there are some concepts which are very relevant in regard to the company that you are applying to or to the present business scenario. Some examples would be CRM, SCM, Social Media etc. The point is as an interviewee you have to ensure that you will be ready with some very specific, relevant and intriguing concepts or topics, that might bedazzle the interviewer and you are going to use them anyhow in the words that you are going to utter in front of the interviewing panel. This will finally help you to steer the interview into your field of expertise.
2. Sound convincing: The objective is to make the interviewer feel very satisfied with whatever you are speaking. Confidence will definitely help you, but whats the point of being confident if you are not convincing. To sound convincing is to make the listener feel that what ever you are saying is something which you yourself believe ardently. At times smart people can disguise this with the sheer strength of their eloquence, but I feel its always safer to be self-convinced first and then, flood the listener with your words. The best thing of sounding very convincing is that you can camouflage your lies. Yeah, you might have to lie at times, just ensure that your lie is not harmful to anybody including you. Keep in mind that your lies should be in sync with the whole conversation that you have initiated. Never stretch the lied part too much. Use your lie as a tool to bridge certain gaps (if any) in your answers.
3. Be enthusiastic: You would agree that you are not the only person being interviewed that day. There will be plenty of them. So, your chances of being noticed and thereby getting selected depends on how you are able to remove the monotony of the interviewer. Although this can be done in many possible ways but enthusiasm is the "shortest cut". This is because if right from the instant of telling your name, through the many answers that you give, till the last words that you utter, you are able to retain an optimum level of enthusiasm, then you indirectly tell your interviewer how excited you are about the whole ritual that is being followed. This adds to your personality as well. Nobody wants to talk with a boring person and that to at the zenith of monotony. So, be very involved in whatever you speak and speak earnestly with enthusiasm.
4. Relate what you have done till now with the job description: The job that you are applying to will certainly consists of a job description(JD). The job description helps you to envisage what you will be doing if you get selected. The JD can also serve as a very important weapon that you have got without asking for any. Now, prior to the interview just try to relate rather glue, any of the things that you have learnt or any experience that you have got with the corresponding pertained points given in the JD. So, this way you are equipping yourself to answer the dreadful questions " Why should I hire you?", "Why do you think that you are best suited for this job?" and many more similar questions.

Finally, do believe in yourself and the Almighty. If the stars did not favor you one day, they will definitely do so in someday or the other. Always remember that on the very day of your selection, something very strange will happen that only you would be able to figure out and everything will seem fortuitous. So, prepare well and don't let disappointment even dare to touch you if you ever have to taste failure.

May God bless everybody...

P.S.: The list is of course not exhaustive, but includes some very personal experiences. The tips can be considered as addendum to the umpteen tips that you have imbibed during rigorous hours of preparation.