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“What are your weaknesses?”. Best way to answer the #1 “Notorious” question.

Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

One of the most common and notorious questions that interviewers ask is – What is your greatest weakness? Or What are your weaknesses? It is a tricky question to answer and it’s not always easy to come up with a good answer. This question can also be difficult to answer if you’re not prepared for it. We’ll also do a post-mortem of what is the intent behind asking this question. What are the things about you that the interviewer is trying to gauge through this question? In my experience with conducting interviews I have come across a range of answers from candidates like – I can’t resist food or I have a weakness for food, I tend to work too hard, I lose a sense of time while working, I am too soft and people take advantage of it easily, I am physically weak, I am a perfectionist, I don’t have any weakness, I don’t know about it. There are two common elements in these answers – (a) They appear to be scripted & in-sincere answers and they lack sincerity & honesty to a large extent. (b) The complete lack of an important element known as self-awareness. And that’s why when you resort to such answers, it doesn’t fly. It doesn’t hit the place where it is supposed to hit. And that’s why the question “What are your Weaknesses?” is one of the biggest derailment factors. What you need to understand and be aware of is when an interviewer asks “What are your weaknesses?”, the intent is to find out three things about you: So please understand the virtues that are in play right now is, your honesty, your sincerity and your self-awareness that, yes, you have certain shortcomings, but you’re working on them. I understand the candidate’s psychology here. You don’t want to respond to this question with a weakness that will prevent you from succeeding in the role. For example, if you are applying for a role of a project manager, you don’t want to admit that you are not very good with “Time management.” Fortunately, there are ways to answer this question that will help you demonstrate your value as a candidate. I am going to suggest various ways to deal with this question, ways to answer “What are your Weaknesses?” and help you frame and articulate your answer. Remember when you are answering this “What are your weaknesses?”, your sincerity and honesty will play a critical role and your answer will help form some kind of a faint emotional bond with the interviewer. Because ultimately the interviewer will be interested in knowing what are you doing about your weaknesses, or shortcomings, what kind of improvement plan you follow, and how are you improving on them. It has to be a very constructive storyline. Remember it is not about your weakness but the positive side of it, the positive storyline. The interviewer or the panel doesn’t expect you to be perfect, and there are no perfect answers. Let me clear a few myths – Bad answers to “What are your Weaknesses?”: I tend to work too hard I am a perfectionist I can’t resist food I don’t have any weakness I can’t think of any weakness I tend to lose sense of time I can’t say No I am too soft These answers won’t work at all and these answers don’t say much about you, especially what the interviewer is trying to get to. So there is going to be some disconnect there and it may derail the interview altogether. Let me give you some examples now of how to answer “What are your weaknesses?”. Inexperience with specific software or a non-essential skill. Tendency to take on too much responsibility. Nervousness about public speaking. Hesitancy about delegating tasks. Inability to say “No”. Observe very carefully that these answers appear honest, genuine and sincere and they bring some degree of this element of self-awareness. Let me elaborate on one of them. Hesitation about delegating tasks. This is a good weakness to have and it is also a good weakness to discuss during the interview. You can genuinely explain that it is hard for you to do this trade-off if you should do the task on your own or you should delegate. So why do people hesitate in delegating task? There are two reasons behind it. The most important of the reasons why you hesitate in delegating a task is because you feel it will take a lot of time to explain to someone how the task has to be done, so you can use that time to do that task for yourself. Number two is that when you start delegating your work, you will be perceived as someone who is not hands-on and you’re delegating too much of work to your juniors. So these are the genuine reasons why people hesitate to delegate. But this is definitely a shortcoming. There has to be some mitigation around it, some action plan to work this out. Similarly, Fear of public speaking is a genuine problem. Not saying no is a genuine problem. Taking too much responsibility, even when you have too many tasks, which you are unable to absorb and deliver is a genuine problem. One needs to look at these examples and frame your answers around them or figure out similar examples of genuine shortcomings. Let me share an experience with you. So during one of my interviews a few years back, I asked a candidate – So what is your greatest weakness? So this candidate took a pause and there was a bit of awkwardness then he abruptly said I think it is indecisiveness. And I couldn’t stop smiling at his answer. I remember that interview, he had a good sense of humor. So remember, be honest and demonstrate your self-awareness while you answer “What are your Weaknesses?” and give an answer that does not appear to be scripted.

Can we Bring Notes into The Job Interview?

1 Comment / Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

Let me share my own experiences to start with.Many a times, when I had to attend an interview, I carried notes with me as a rule. These were made while I was preparing for specific interviews. And as a habit I have always worked on making notes while preparing for interviews and resorted them for a quick brush-up just before attending one. I think I inculcated this habit during my school and college days while preparing for exams, where in I recall I made some good short and elaborate notes at times.Coming back to the point of carrying notes into the job interview. Not all, but in a few interviews, I asked for permission very politely from the interviewer to refer to my notes at a certain point in time during the conversation, to answer a specific question. And that was a genuine ask, it was never forced or it never came about due to the fact that I had forgotten anything while answering to a question.And let me tell you that I never noticed any element of surprise from the panel or the interviewer when I asked for polite permission. In fact, it was always the other way around. I observed a faint appreciation in the eyes of an interviewer or panel. But let me clarify, it was never about reading through the notes but just to refer them briefly to articulate my answers in a better way with the right amount of information. Also, it was not a frequent referral but once or twice at max during the conversation. In the later years as I began taking interviews and interacting with leadership teams/CEOs/Hiring Managers in the panel, they confirmed the following points on the subject:“I feel making notes is a great investment made by potential candidates while preparing for an interview. It shows the level of seriousness of the candidates. It shows that the candidate is giving closer attention to things.”“It shows the level of preparedness at the candidate’s end. It shows how important this job is for him/her. It is not just about notes, it is about the thought process, it is about the sincerity, it is about focusing on the right things.”“It is quite nice to know that the potential candidate has taken the time out to make notes and to focus on things he/she believes would be important for the conversation.”Let me also tell you that in my decades of hiring experience, very rarely I have seen an interviewer asked my permission to refer to notes, perhaps, I could just count on my fingers, the number of times a candidate would have asked me that. I strongly believe it is a cultural thing and specifically in an Indian context, carrying notes to the job interview would mean or could be perceived as “Unprepared”.My personal opinion is not in line with this thought. An interview is a professional conversation. It is not a memory test or the test of mugging skills. It is not a school set up. It is perfectly fine to carry notes and ask for a permission to refer them once or twice, when genuinely needed.Let us get a bit deeper into this.What kind of notes are okay to carry and what are not?You can not really carry everything in the form of notes into the interview conversation. It depends on the content of the notes that would decide if you can carry them with your or not.The notes that can carry with you: If you have jotted down the information about the organization while researching about them, you can carry it with you and refer them if required. This would include key facts about the organization, business health parameters, information about product and services or latest mergers and acquisitions or latest media coverage etc. If you have prepared a list of questions you planned to ask the interviewer, as part of your notes, that is perfectly fine to carry with you in the conversationBoth these points mentioned above, would give a good indication to the interviewer that you have prepared sincerely and are thoughtful about it.The notes that cannot carry with you: If you have made notes on how you would answer a specific question or a verbatim of it, or about your work history or about your projects and highs and lows and lessons from it, you cannot carry it with you. Because you should be able to articulate your work history about key projects about your profile, about your experience confidently without referring to any of your notes. And for a moment lets assume you have more than 20 years of experience and you have done so many projects that it is hard to really recall all of them. In such cases, try to keep the focus on 2-3 big ticket items, the most complex or challenging projects undertaken by you and then successfully delivered. The role of carrying notes is to bring some level of smoothness in the process and it enables the candidate to drive the conversation in a seamless manner. But there is something you should be very careful about. During a virtual interview on Zoom or Teams, when you have to refer to your notes, you will look down, the interviewer might be thinking that you are distracted or what is it that you are looking at, so it is better to inform the interviewer proactively that you will be referring notes in between. This would ensure that when you look down to read them, the interviewer is already aware of it. Lastly, don’t forget that in the end it all boils down to how much meaningful investment of time has gone into your preparation for a specific interview. And notes are the resources candidates can certainly resort to, to drive a smooth and successful professional conversation.

3 Most Important Tips for Interview Preparation

3 Comments / Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

This article is your tip sheet for Interview Preparation. You were busy in preparing for exams or perhaps travelling or occupied in some personal work and you receive a surprise email in your inbox that says ‘Interview Schedule.’ Perhaps you were waiting for it for a long time or given up on it. And now that it has arrived unexpectedly in your Inbox, you open that email with trembling hands. What happens next? You start panicking. ‘Oh Gosh! I don’t have time to prepare.’ ‘I don’t know what to do, I am going to fail, no time to prepare anything.’ ‘What should I prepare, so less time.’ Facing the laptop screen you hold your head in your hands, anxious, feeling lost, perhaps regretting, and deeply thinking about your situation. You need this job and the interview is so important for you, perhaps it is the last round and you have come to it, after clearing 3-4 earlier rounds. In my experience this situation is pretty common. I have seen so many aspirants taking it easy after qualifying a few initial rounds and becoming relaxed or not giving due important to the fact that they need to continue their preparation without any breaks till the final round is over. Let’s assume for a moment that you had a legitimate reason for taking a break- perhaps you were unwell or you were dragged into an unforeseen personal situation that demanded your time, completely cutting you off from the preparation. And that’s fair. We don’t get to choose our situations. In this article, I am going to suggest a simple crash course to prepare for your final round, if you are time pressed. Let’s say you have got a few hours or a day, what would you do? You need a ready-to-eat meal, on the back of which it says – Peel the outer wrap, put it in a boiling water for 15 min and you are done, ready to eat. And that’s exactly what I am going to suggest you here. A structure that is simple yet very effective, can work with all forms of interview – Face to face, Zoom or via phone. Here is the crash course structure – In that limited time you need to focus on these three aspects to make a high impact impression. 1. Top 5 Questions for Interview Preparation: You need to pick up Top 5 most commonly asked questions and that certainly includes – Walk me through your resume, or tell me about yourself and frame your answers and mug it up or practice it hard, multiple times. If possible, do a mock with yourself or a friend at home. For your reference here is a list of those five questions that you must prepare. Tell me about yourself?Why do you want to work for us?What are your strengths?Tell us about a project you faced challenges, how did you overcame them and what were the results delivered?What are your salary expectations? You can read my blog articles and watch my reels, shorts and videos to get answers to all these commonly asked questions, I have covered them in detail. Now you have got a hang of the first part, let’s move to the second part. 2. Things you need to research well for Interview Preparation: To customize your answers during the interview, a good quick and effective research comes very handy. I am not really suggesting here to spend six or ten hours in this step, but just a couple of hours of very smart research on the following four areas – Job-description: Familiarize yourself with the JD, that’s the first and the most important step. Read it word by word, line by line and get a good grip of it. About the Company: What they do, and for whom Write down 1-2 reasons why you want to work for the company – focus your research then in that direction. Create a fact sheet about the company – A simple one pager, with numbers like Revenue, Share Price, Profit in the latest year etc. If you have done smart research and have got your notes ready, this will ensure you go into the interview well prepared and confident. It will also ensure your answers are well customized and pruned. Now if you look at the first and second point holistically, and combine both, you will get to the point I am trying to make. The second point will help you customizing and drafting your top five questions in the point number one. Am sure by now you would have got the point I am trying to get to. Let us move to the third and the final point. And this one is more about Hygiene that plays an extremely important role in the recruitment but sadly being the most ignore point among the folks who prepare for interviews. 3. Infrastructure Readiness: Make it a point that your laptop is ready, the microphone is ready and there are no initial glitches during the start of the interview. Find out a nice place or a nice clean corner devoid of distractions in the house for you to comfortably sit and participate in the conversation. There has to be an ample light in the room or lights specifically focusing on you as you sit facing the camera of your laptop. Turn all your phone and computer notifications off because if they pop up in the middle of the interview, it will throw you off and create distractions leading to problems during the process. And lastly, ensure you dress well for the occasion. A profession attire is suggested and should be followed without any exceptions. No bright colors, a combination of black and white or blue and white or grey and white works well for interviews. What you need to keep in mind is the way you dress is going to be very closely observed and the hiring manager would be thinking if you are dressing well

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3 Simple Guidelines to Create an impactful Elevator Pitch

Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

What is an Elevator Pitch? How does it impact you in the various walks of your life especially during the interviews. This article will help you understand this and introduce you to the tips on how to master the art of creating the perfect elevator pitch. The road to any opportunity perhaps starts with your first impression and therefore it becomes so important in the life cycle. Let’s assume you are jogging in the park and suddenly you see Bill Gates jogging by your side, smiling at you. What would you do? What would you say? You know that perhaps you would only see him for 30 to 60 seconds post which he would take a turn to another lane in the park. You love Microsoft and you have been aspiring to join your dream company. What would you do? You just have a minute to impress him, to let him know about your aspirations and also talk about what problems can you solve and what solutions can you bring on the table. Now this might be a far-fetched scenario but I am sure you would have figured out by now the point that I am trying to drive here. I suggest everyone no matter what you do, prepare an impressive pitch for yourself and keep it ready all the time when you get an opportunity to deliver. It is your brand identity. Let me first explain what is an “Elevator Pitch”? In simple terms, it is a quick summary of your professional experience that reflects your skills and achievements in the most concise way. It is your sales pitch that should be delivered in a very short span of time, literally by the time the elevator reaches to the next floor. It may sound funny but that’s the concept behind this word THE ELEVATOR PITCH. You have only 60-100 seconds to bundle up all your stories in a way that it leaves an amazing first impression for you and gets you a great start in the conversation. That’s about it. Do you have it ready now? I am certain your answer is NO. Have you thought about it very actively? Another NO, for sure. Have you sincerely worked on it? Perhaps another NO. Take a pause and think through it. How can you make an awesome first impression given 150 seconds and 2 minutes? What will you put into your Elevator pitch – perhaps your most important projects/achievements? And not to forgot that mindset that it is about THEM? Not you, so the elevator pitch should have adequate mix of what can you bring on the table for them? What can you do for them? Or what can you solve for them? Let’s talk about it a little more with the context of its role during the interview process. An engaging pitch is a great start of the interview and it can convey nicely why you are the perfect fit for the organization. Believe it or not, it also acts as an icebreaker and a great starting point paving the way for a good professional conversation. A well written elevator pitch can do wonders and can help your candidature stand out from the crowd breaking the clutter. And how can you do that? Well, it boils down to your unique storyline, that encompasses your skills, experiences, lessons, strengths and so on. And all that has to be condensed into an appealing, well engaging 100 seconds pitch that can tell the interviewer that you are THE MOST DESIRABLE CANDIDATE for the role in discussion. What you also need to understand that the role of an Elevator pitch is not to convert a conversation into a job offer, it is to give you a great start and inculcate interviewer’s interest in what you can offer, or get him/her to a point where a faint decision is already made up in his/her mind. A few guidelines that can help you get started and get going is as follows: Finally, to help you get started, here is a proven structure you can follow to draft your elevator pitch. It should have a good balance of a Problem you faced, the solution you provided and the benefits it reaped. Don’t just get started, but spend time with these three factors that are integral part of any elevator pitch. I strongly recommend, go through the elevator pitches available online, and study them well. Spend time with them, try to find out patterns and things that stand out, the things that you loved about them. Collect information, make your own guidelines and work with them while you draft yours. Remember elevator pitches are not about flowery language, it is about reflecting your brand identity in a conversation leaving a strong positive impression on the interviewer. Lastly, despite its very short length, an effective elevator pitch requires investment of meaningful time, perhaps hours and days, to mull over it, to refine it and practice in front of the mirror countless times. The more you practice your elevator pitch, the more comfortable and confident you will get with it. And that is the key to gaining immediate trust, that could pave the way for a bright conversation. But not to forget that elevator pitches are so important, they should always be supported by more in-depth details if the opportunity arises. Like and subscribe to my blog-post and join me in your preparation journey for cracking an interview. Happy Job Hunting!

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Get Familiar with your own Resume

Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

Do you know your resume well enough? Let’s take a hypothetical scenario. You are facing an interviewer and everything is going on well, you are articulation your points, your answers quite well and the interviewer appears to be quite impressed and satisfied with the way you are conducting yourself during the conversation. But then from no-where this question suddenly pops up. “You were spearheading a project a few years back; can you tell us more about it? What was your role in that specific project?’ There is an awkward pause and you are thinking about it, trying to figure out how to frame your answer, but the problem is – you don’t recollect much about it. Perhaps it was long back and you don’t recollect much now, or you missed out removing that part from your resume because it became an insignificant entry in place of some of your latest block buster work and you forgot to brush up about it. In any case, this situation would be the turning point of your interview and your conversation may start spiraling down from there, reducing your chances of making it. A situation like this will bring about immediate doubts in the mind of the interviewer and he/she will start questioning the integrity of your candidature, believing you might have beefed up your resume to improve the attractiveness of your candidature, or you may have resorted to unfair means for getting shortlisted for the interview round. It will certainly prove a point to the interviewer that you are not aware of your own experiences and therefore you are not on top of your game. There is no returning back from this point. It is a complete disaster. Perhaps the only way you could come out of this situation is to openly apologize for it. But that won’t guarantee that you would be shortlisted for the next round or next steps. And that is why it is strongly recommended that be very careful when you are copying and pasting information into a specific template or overwriting using a friend’s or colleague’s resume. And even if that is your starting point for drafting your resume, please make it a point that you read every line and every word to avoid these embarrassing situations. Let me share my experience with you. A few years back, I was interviewing a fairly experienced candidate for a managerial role and he was a very smart engineer in terms of his knowledge and expertise. Everything was going on so well, till I noticed that he had done his engineering from a city that was well known to me since I had spent a few years there during my studies. So, I asked him a very simple question – Could you tell me a few good places to check out in the city, you have done your engineering from? It was light and soft question not really meant to test him on anything. Perhaps, to the best of my recollection, it was just out of curiosity I had asked that question. But what happened next was shocking. He was unable to name even a single important place or places to visit from the city. And that pushed me to ask a few more questions on similar lines, only to figure out that his engineering degree was fake. He was rejected immediately. I am sure you would have figured out by now that a small mistake of this kind in your resume can cost a job. So, please be careful and try to avoid these things. Here are a few lessons and tips that will help you being proactive in addressing some of these issues: Get Familiar with your Resume: It is your resume so you should be familiar with every word and every line mentioned in the document. That’s a given thing, and there is no alternative to it. It is about YOU, and the document is about your experiences, your stories, your credentials, your life to a large measure. You should spend a week on your resume, carefully scanning it with microscopic eyes ensuring you are familiar with every word on it and it reflects something about you. Remove everything that you are not confident of: It is perfectly fine to keep a one-page resume. There is no need to prepare a large document entering stuff that you are not confident of, or dated information that you will struggle to recall in its totality during the interview. You see, the number of pages has nothing to do with your chances of cracking an interview. A crisp one-page document is very much appreciated as it reduces the efforts at the organizational level to make quick decisions, since the information is crisp, concise and without any fluff. Review your Resume regularly: Make it a habit that you review your resume regularly every quarter once and clean it up or update it to the latest experience, pruning stuff that is not required. It will ensure you are in complete control of the content mentioned in the document. Interview or no Interview, this should be a routine once in a few months exercise to update your resume. Now coming to the pit-fall. Let’s assume that you have missed out all the three points mentioned above and still got into a situation where you don’t recall a part of your experience or let’s say you have mentioned it by mistake on the document. Rule number 1, accept the mistake and be honest about it. Don’t try to justify or lie and then build your story on that lie, it will derail the interview process taking you closer towards disqualification. Understand, that a single lie reflects big on integrity issues and most companies have zero tolerance to it. There will be high probability that you will be black-listed for any future appearances, and in a worst-case scenario, it will tarnish your equity permanently in the industry, given that people are so well connected

Foolproof Strategy to Sell Yourself in an Interview

Interview Tips, Uncategorized / By Urban Acharya

What is the best way to sell yourself during a job interview? What are the interview pitfalls that we should avoid. An interview conversation is about a transaction that involves selling a product or a service and in this case the product or a service is YOU. And I am certain, being a job aspirant, you would have heard this one-line umpteen times. You have to sell yourself? Haven’t you? But why to sell yourself? It’s a good question and let me try to bring a perspective. There are hundreds of applicants applying for the same role/job and perhaps out of those hundreds of applicants only a handful were chosen to meet the interviewer to further gauge their skills in line with what is expected from them. And now from those handful of applicants, only one or two would go further to the final round or perhaps land with a job. Makes sense? Now, let’s talk about another pertinent question. How? That’s a million-dollar question. Having spent more than twenty years in the corporate world and hired more than 1000 resources across various roles I undertook, conducting more than 4000 interviews in this span, I bring to you deeper insights, the right perspective and some unmatched tips that can certainly help you in positioning yourself the way you should be to ace an interview, or in other words, sell yourself. Let’s check this example. ‘I bring on the table many strengths that can help me be successful at work. Firstly, I have strong work ethics that enables me to meet my deadlines well ahead of my schedule. I enjoy feeling that sense of accomplishment which comes with doing a job well and on time.’ It’s a great answer or a selling strategy, but something is amiss. Can you figure out what? It has a lot of ‘I’ in it and it appears that there is too much focus given to self, ignoring a critical point – i.e., ‘THEM’ The first rule of selling is – It is about THEM – about the buyer, about the audience, about the organization and the one who has the purchasing power. There is no harm in bringing a bit of I, which is natural, but during the interview, you have to make it appear (directly or in a subtle way) that it is about them, and not you. And that’s the kind of mindset you would need before you start preparing for it. Think about what you see on TV, or all around you – advertisements. They are never about the products or services, they are about you, what can they offer you? A convenience, a good sleep, a great experience, a pleasurable drive, an amazing taste, once in a lifetime vacation, a happy moment, etc. Think about it. A car company won’t say – Hey! Buy more of our cars because we want to sell more cars. They would never do it, because it will never work, it has never worked that way for anyone. They would always focus on YOU, their potential customers, buyers, and offer you a promise – an experience, a driving pleasure or convenience and so on. So for these sellers, you see you become the most important entity in the whole ecosystem for sellers. And these sellers can go to any length knowing about you. A lot of money is being pumped by these so big organizations just to understand what customer needs and wants are. The whole market research industry is based on this one fact – What customer really wants and needs? I am sure you are with me and getting the point I am trying to make here. So, it is not about you, “ITS ABOUT THEM” Read it a few times, let it percolate down your mind, from conscious to subconscious and stay there. Because once you have this mindset, all your actions will be directed towards that one single point. So now you understand that “It is about THEM” what would you do next, when you start preparing for your interview. Here is some food for thought. Will you go for the interview without knowing about THEM? Will you prepare your answers without learning about THEM? Will you answer questions that lacks THEM? I guess I have made my point. What I am trying here is to bring to your awareness the single most important point – When you are preparing for an interview, you should integrate “THEM” into it. You can’t sell yourself effectively without first understanding your audience and what they need and expect from you. And as I said earlier, step one is to shift your mindset into thinking about everything from the company/organization’s perspective. Here is a list of questions to get your started on that mindset. What can you do for THEM? How can you help THEM in the problems they may be facing? What values can you bring on the table for THEM? How can your skills be beneficial to THEM? What are THEIR goals, objectives, vision, mission? What are THEIR focus areas? And so on. Learn about THEM as much as you can. And that will propel your preparation miles ahead in the interview process and give you a smooth landing spot during the conversation. Organization websites, news about them, recent rewards and awards, mergers and acquisitions, new launches, a lot of information is already available in public domain, make a good use of it to prepare for the interview. But ensure that you don’t get overwhelmed with so much of information. Keep a right balance and take a judgmental call on which info will be helpful and which won’t be in your preparation. Create a cheat-sheet or some kind of a fact sheet and write down top 10-15 important facts about the organization. Observe closely how the website is organized, what kind of color combinations is being used. Every piece of information will give you clues about the organization and its culture. Grab

How to deal with “Do you have more interviews lined up?”

Interview Tips / By Urban Acharya

Multiple interviews can be a telling sign of a high-potential candidate, but how you handle the question about them can either strengthen your position or put your chances at risk during the recruitment process. Let me explain a few intricate details about the recruitment process. It is not just the question-and-answer sessions or a series of professional conversations, but it has various additional facets to it. A talent acquisition leader from one of the largest MNCs mentioned that by the time the potential candidate enters the interview room, we want to know two key things about him/her– (a) Is he/she likable? and (b) Is he/she the right fit for the job? Did you get the point? It clearly means that your CV/Resume has already given a lot of information about you during the shortlisting process and basis that the interviewer/panel must have created your profile in his/her mind. Now, if that profile matches with the job description, the interviewer will move to the next round in the recruitment process i.e., an interview round. So, interviewers’ now will resort to a variety of questions to validate your profile, trying to figure out if you are the best fit for the role, or your skills, characters and experiences will add values to the organization. Today, we will take a specific question and it is a tricky question that has a potential to de-rail your interview to a large extent, unless you figure out a way to deal with it or smartly articulate your answer. In this blog-post I will help you get to that – How to answer this question or how to avoid getting into a trap. “Do you have other/more interviews lined up?’ Asking this specific question is a part of an assessment process. The interviewer wants to learn whether you are a high potential candidate with other job options with competing organizations. And that’s fair because with ever changing dynamic market conditions and surging demand for high potential candidates, stability & longevity has become one of the primary focus areas for all the organizations. Every organization wants the new hires to stay for at least two to three years with them and if they figure out during the interview process that you would not stay for long with them given that you have got multiple offers in hand, they would consider moving to hiring more stable candidates. But here is another perspective, 180 degrees from the earlier one. Let me bring another perspective. Employers may also be curious to know if their competition is hiring better talent. And basis your answer, an interviewer may decide to move swiftly through the hiring process. Also, if your answer is Yes, it may indicate to the interviewer that you are a desirable candidate with the right skills and therefore being sought out by competition too. Can you notice what I am trying to get to? There are two sides of the coin and at times there are no straight binary answers. Like in this case, the answer to the question may not be as straight forward as you may be thinking i.e., either a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. Let’s stay on this point for a moment. Let’s say, if you choose to say ‘Yes, I have other interviews lined up with the competition or I am contemplating accepting an offer’ it would give a message to the interviewer that you may not be very serious about this organization or the job in discussion. On the contrary, if you say ‘No, I don’t have any other interview lined up with other organizations,’ it may end up giving away your negotiation power, since the interview may draw a conclusion that either you are non-competitive or you may be desperate for the job in discussion. You see, it is a double-edged sword and there is a strong need to find out a common ground between these two extremes. The simple straight answer is this: “I am keeping my options open, but at this point in time, I am focused on this conversation and the esteemed organization. I would like to explore how this job could be a win-win situation for both the organization and my long-term career aspirations.” It is a great answer because it neither says Yes or a No, and at the same time, it comes across as a well-thought-through answer, not rushed, not blurted out. The tone of the words, if politely expressed, is quite affirmative. Having said that, here are a few tips you should keep in mind while framing your answer. Every word spoken during the interview, helps the interviewer assess if you are the right fit for the role and if you can be hired for it. So, the best way is to spend adequate time preparing for these softer questions, as they can help you get the job. Now, before I close this blog post, let’s say that you genuinely have got an offer in your hand, but still you have decided to go for the interview perhaps just for the experience or to negotiate a better salary package or may be some other reasons for it. In such cases, I would strongly suggest that give utmost importance and respect to any interview you are considering to give. Take a call later if you would like to accept an offer or not, but give a very sincere effort to it, as if you had no offers and this one is the only one you need to crack to get to the offer. Happy Job Hunting!

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Importance of Communication Skills in an Interview

Interview Tips / By Urban Acharya

Communication skills hold the key to unlocking your interview success, propelling you toward the job of your dreams with confidence and charisma. Covid has changed the rules of the game completely. If I were to ask you – What one thing according to you has become THE most important thing in your life during and post-pandemic or because of the pandemic? You would say – Work-Life Balance, Bonding between family members, or peace of mind or Health. And that’s fair. Pandemic has re-shuffled our priority list beyond imagination. Let’s talk about Communication. What’s your take? Keeping the Covid Pandemic as a context here. Is there any change in the way you communicate now compared to pre-pandemic years? I know you would agree that by migrating to virtual world for our day-to-day transactions, there have been tangential changes in the way we communicate with each other. With everyone working from home, there has been a greater need to be effective communicator and if you keenly observe the job descriptions these days, you could easily spot a commonality among them, reflecting to the changing role of how we communicate with each other especially when we are interacting in a virtual environment, working from home using digital tools. Therefore, employers have now started looking for candidates who could be great communicators working in the virtual world. And even for a moment, if we ignore the whole ecosystem created by Pandemic, great communication skill is certainly an added advantage on the resume irrespective of the effect of the environment. In my twenty years of corporate experience, I have come across some amazing communicators, and I often wondered what made them stand out among so many. And what came to my mind as an answer is – Practice, they must have practiced it so well, it reflected in the way they spoke, in the way their eyes made an eye contact, in the way they asked questions when in doubt. It’s a skill and is certainly beyond just talking or articulating. Scientifically proven, there is a strong correlation between our ability to communicate well and our ability to get along well with others. This is a critical point, when it comes to job interview. You not only need to effectively articulate your skills, strengths and experiences, you are also required to build a quick rapport with the interviewer, giving him/her a good idea that you have strong communication skills and you can get along well with people. Communication is not just about good articulation, it is about the gestures, the tone of voice, the modulation in the voice, the listening skills, and the way one should be responding – proactive, polite, constructive, professional, energetic, enabling, transparent and so on. So, if you are getting ready for an interview, great communication should be your top of the list of focus areas. Being able to communicate effectively with others while working from home is a huge part of making remote work successful in the new-normal era. Having the experience and knowledge of integrating virtual meeting applications into your day-to-day duties is now not just a preferred skill, it is a required skill. If you are unable to communicate effectively with your teammates or co-workers, then how will they know what you’re working on? How will you get to know the people you’re working with? Here are three tips to demonstrate that you are a great communicator, during the hiring process: A. Communication Skills – Talk Slowly: When you talk slowly, and calmly, it shows that you are in control of your emotions. It helps the interviewer understand better. There is no point in blurting out amazingly practiced answers that may appear as barfed on the table. That would have an adverse impact during the interview as it may appear artificially sophisticated made-up stuff, not to mention blurting out or fast speaking is a sign of nervousness. So, don’t try to rush, answer slowly, articulating your points well. Keep a close eye on your breathing while talking and consistently calm yourself down. B. Communication Skills – Listen Attentively: As said earlier, communication skills aren’t just about articulating yourself; it is also about how attentively one can listen and absorb and assimilate. There is nothing worse than hearing someone answer a question you know they haven’t fully listened to. Aside from coming across rude, it doesn’t give the interviewer much confidence in your ability to pay attention. So, listen intently to everything the interviewer says from the minute they walk through the door. If you are listening attentively, you will be able to answer appropriately. I have seen many who don’t pay attention to what is being said and discussed, their mind is completely focused on framing their answers during the interview process. Sooner or later, it comes out during the process and can be a certain deal breaker. The interviewer is an expert and would figure out in a jiffy if you are listening well or not. C. Communication Skills – Pick your words carefully: A basket of good words can go a long way but remember not to use overly complicated words in your language, that may not appear normal. Have a good mix of nice words. For example, the word ‘tedious’ can be replaced by ‘complicated’ and so on. Also, play by the rule, trying to mirror the interviewer – if the conversation is formal, try to be more formal and vice versa, but remember not to get too comfortable, crossing the line, as if you are chatting with an old friend. You are talking a potential employer so keep it in the boundaries of professionalism. Many a time, the interviewer will try to drag you into a comfort zone but keep yourself on this side of the line. Remote working is here to stay. And with so many companies permanently shifting to a work-from-home model or work-from-anywhere model, effective communication between the workers in a remote environment using digital tools and

Author name: Urban Acharya

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