“The world is full of people who have dreams of playing at Carnegie Hall, of running a marathon, and of owning their own business. The difference between the people who make it across the finish line and everyone else is one simple thing: an action plan.” John Tesh

You’ve made it over the first hurdle in your job hunt and been asked for an interview. Now is not the moment to relax.

Getting a new job is like running a marathon. You need to keep going right to the finish when you have a signed job offer in your hand. If you don’t then you’ll not complete it, wasting all of your effort to get this far.

Getting asked for a job interview is really just covering the first part of the race. Now that you have been asked for an interview you must be sure to do the right preparation to ensure that you perform at your best.

Amazingly only 10% of people spend two hours or more preparing for a job interview. They spend multiples of that complaining about their job but then don’t put the time in when they are called for an interview.

You can use this hugely to your advantage however. Many people believe, wrongly, that success in job interviews is about confidence and charisma. It turns out that this isn’t right. Research shows that 93% of employability in a job interview is determined by the level of a candidate’s preparation.

If that doesn’t encourage you to prepare well for your next interview I don’t know what will. Just one evening of focused preparation will get close to putting you in the top 10% of candidates before you even walk through the door.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that it is worth spending the time to prepare for your next job interview. This helpful infographic from Acuity Training explains how to break down preparing for a job interview into the five key areas that all interviewers will want to understand.

It also offers a vital tip for what to do straight after the job interview. As we said at the start you can’t relax until you have the signed job offer in your hand!
looking at them before you have the basics sorted. If you do the basics well you will also go into your interview relaxed and confident. That will come through to your interviewer.