A Practice Interview Gets Job Seekers Ready

So you didn't do a practice interview before the first round job interviews and the employer was still impressed enough to call you back for a second interview.  You can also do a practice interview, otherwise known as a mock interview, if you make it past the first round and really want to turn up your presentation for the second or even third round job interview.

Best Reasons to Do a Practice Interview

One of the cool things about doing a practice interview is that you get to walk through job interview conversations, not just in your head, but in real life.  You get immediate, real-time feedback on your interview responses which helps you improve on your responses in a very dynamic way.

A practice interview can teach us how to sync our responses with the information that was already included on a resume.  During the practice interview process we can hopefully get a better  sense of which of our stories about achievement might have the best impact in the job interview.  As part of a good practice interview, we will also get the opportunity to develop the list of questions we want to ask the recruiter in the real interview.

If I am helping a job seeker with a practice interview, I always ask them to share the job announcement with me.  This way  I can tailor my questions based on what the recruiter is probably going to be looking for in an applicant for that specific position.  If you are doing a practice interview in the career center on your campus, ask the career coach if you can send the job posting ahead of time.  This way the career coach gets to prepare specific questions appropriate to the job and not just generic interview questions.

Finally, if you are not able to work with the career center on your college campus, seek out other professionals such as career coaches, interview coaches and human resources professionals.  I do practice interviews on the How to Interview Like  a P.R.O. technique that I developed years ago.  Other interview coaches use the Behavioral Interview approach.  Regardless of which method the interview coach will use with you,  your interview performance will definitely improve after a practice interview.