After responding to the job offer of your dreams, you have successfully passed the first stage of the CV selection. Now you need to prepare for the famous job interview. While some people are very comfortable talking about themselves, for others – shy, introverted, hypersensitive – it is a real test.
Also Read: 15 Qualities that Recruiters Appreciate in Job Interviews
What is the important information to convey during a job interview? How to describe your career path well? How to talk about yourself while showing your motivation for a job? Discover all our advice for approaching your next recruitment with confidence.
How to introduce yourself in a job interview?
Introducing yourself means first of all explaining who you are. The very first step of the job interview is therefore a formality: it is simply a matter of stating your identity.
First name, last name, age, current occupation: even if your interviewer is supposed to know who they are meeting, it is always a good idea to remind them at the start of the interview, especially if they are meeting several candidates during the day.
How to present your career during recruitment?
The second step of presentation during a job interview is to talk about your background: studies, first positions, professional choices, expatriations, and career development. Here, the difficulty is to succeed in not reciting the lines of your CV but rather to make an effective pitch.
Since the company has selected your application, it means that it has already validated your professional background. At this stage, it, therefore, seeks to know a little more, and the recruiter often asks questions like ” Tell me about yourself”.
Shedding light on his professional career
The simplest way is to opt for a chronological approach. The goal: is to make the recruiter aware of your educational background, your professional past, and to legitimize your candidacy for the position. It’s up to you to make your presentation lively by explaining your choices, your successes and your failures.
What was your professional project when you decided to continue your studies after your Master 2? Why did you join a small family business in the region rather than a large Parisian consulting firm? What lessons have you learned from each of your professional experiences?
Don’t hesitate to highlight your qualities by citing concrete examples and measuring your successes. For example: “Being agile and pragmatic, I was immediately able to adjust the management of my team and my business objectives at the start of the Covid-19 crisis”. It is then important to illustrate each example with concrete successes.
So don’t hesitate to highlight your successful projects and give figures. This will allow the recruiter to measure your performance and you will thus make the difference compared to other candidates.
Inform the recruiter about your profile
During the job interview, the recruiter seeks to answer three questions:
- Where does the candidate come from?
- What did he do?
- What does he want to do?
For him, the exercise also involves ticking boxes to verify that you are well-suited for the job and meet the managers’ requirements.
So, when you present your background, try to highlight the experiences, qualities, or skills that are important for the job you are applying for.
Reassure the recruiter about their potential doubts. For example, if you have a gap in your CV, do not hesitate to explain the project you carried out during your two years of inactivity: community involvement, supporting a sick relative, world tour. Whatever the cause of your career break, it can be valued and must be readable for the recruiter.
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How to talk about your future career in a job interview?
If you are invited to a job interview, it is because you want to give new impetus to your professional career. Thus, the challenge of the job interview will be to know how to subtly approach your professional future, by mixing your wishes with the opportunities offered by the position to be filled.
How to present your professional project?
The goal is to prove to the recruiter the consistency between what you are today and what you aspire to be tomorrow.
In your presentation, you will therefore need to be able to perform this
intellectual ping-pong game between your current skills and those required for the future position. To do this, find out as much as possible about the job description.
For example: “After having held the position of recruitment manager, I was promoted to HR manager. In addition to recruitment, this position covered payroll, training, and management of a team of 5 people. After 4 years in this role, I developed my legal knowledge and trained in CSR issues. This is why I now aspire to improve my skills in an HR manager role.”
What does a recruiter assess in your professional project?
“Is this candidate the best person for this job and this company? ” You usually have an hour of interview time to prove to your interviewer that the answer is “ Yes.”
If the consistency of your CV (career path, experience, hard skills) is validated a priori, it remains to convince the HRD of your motivation.
By selecting the experiences and skills that you present, you prove that you have understood the stakes of the position to be filled. Indeed, there is no need to detail your past as a recreation center facilitator (unless you have identified a key skill for the position). On the other hand, mentioning your interests is important because it allows the recruiter to get to know you better. And in particular to assess whether your values are in line with the company culture and whether you are compatible with the rest of the team.
4 tips for presenting yourself well during a job interview
- Prepare for your interview in advance
To be as comfortable as possible and avoid the academic side. Take notes on the essential points to cover during the job interview. Objective: to master your speech, not to get lost in the details, and to avoid forgetting things. Also remember to quote a few keywords, drawing inspiration from the important concepts mentioned in the job description.
- Practice speaking before the big day
To gain naturalness and assess your timing, rehearse your recruitment interview at home.
In particular, learn to adopt the right tone: relaxed without being familiar, serious without being boring, assertive without being pedantic.
- Interact with your interlocutor
You are not here to recite a poem, but to exchange with a person. And the more you master your speech, the more you will be able to pay attention to the signs sent by the recruiter.
Frowning, nodding, looking away, smiling: this nonverbal communication provides you with a lot of information to know how to adjust your speech. For example, slowing down or speeding up the pace, going into less detail, or on the contrary explaining a subject.
Read Also: Questions to ask the recruiter during the job interview
Using the DISC method, you can also guess the mode of communication that will be best suited to the profile of your interlocutor.
- Practice the art of storytelling
To help the recruiter follow your thought process, organize your ideas into a funnel: from the most general to the most specific.
Practice the art of storytelling by incorporating details, examples, and anecdotes that will personalize your presentation and set you apart from other candidates. This will also help legitimize your remarks and dispel any suspicions about overly declarative speech.
