How to Become a Badass at Job Interviews in 10 Steps

Sell your way through an interview and land the job you want

The key to excelling at job interviews and maximizing your chances of getting the job offer is to have a game plan, a strategy.

Here's a list of 10 steps that you can act on right now and take your interview skills to the next level.

#1 Mindset

⭐️First and foremost, you need to get into the right mindset.

A lot of people go into an interview scared out of their mind as if their whole world would crumble down if they don't get the job. By doing that they start building resentment towards interviews, which causes conflicting emotions, and that makes them feel weak or worse, powerless.

Here’s the thing, whether you love it or hate it, you still have to go through that process, so, why not…

⚾️... make a game out of it.

Hear me out; if being stressed out at an interview makes you sick to your stomach and blurs your thoughts, preventing you from presenting yourself in a great way because you fear that you might mess it up, chances are you will mess it up because you cannot think straight. 

So you might as well give up on that stress and treat it as something fun. It may sound crazy, but if it's going to trick your brain into thinking that you are having fun, you'll probably be a lot less stressed.

⛔️The more you put something on a pedestal, the further you push it away.

One of many explanations to why this happens is because you may feel that you are not good enough for it, which creates an even bigger gap between you and the thing you want.

⛔️ Don’t dwell on the outcome. 

Just go have a conversation and see what happens.

Here’s how this plays out in real life. Let’s look at these 2 scenarios.

👉 Scenario #1: You apply for 5 great companies. You think to yourself, I have 5 options, at least one should work. But if you make the same mistake of putting them on a pedestal, and stressing yourself out about the outcome, you'll end up messing them all up and get zero offers.

Let's look at the other scenario.

👉 Scenario #2: You apply for the same 5 companies. You’ve made your peace with whatever the outcome would be and you attend those interviews calm, relaxed, excited, ready to talk business. You are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that you can't lose something that you don't have. By only changing your attitude towards these interviews, you could easily end up with not just one, but multiple offers.

And yes, you may argue that you can lose the opportunity to get the job, but that is what is paralyzing you. But as soon as you realize that FOMO is imaginary, you'll be freaking excited to go to that interview!

⭐️Excitement is contagious

If you feel it, the other people in the room will start to feel it too. 

You've no idea how many sales have been closed based just on a “good feeling” about something. 

The point is:

⭐️Your attitude towards the interview can make or break the deal. Switching from a beggar's mindset to a winner's mindset is the key.

#2 Manage your emotions 

💡Acknowledge them, accept them, and put them aside. Regulate them instead of suppressing them.

Understand what you feel. Isolate these negative emotions and look at them individually. Then check what is generating each one. 

If you are insecure, admit it to yourself. Accept that you feel that way. If that's the way it is then make peace with it. Understand that you can still do this even if you are insecure. 

⚡️Once you accept these emotions, you take away their power over you. 

Manage your voice. Don’t let it break. If you feel that your voice is breaking that means that your emotions have gone up to your throat. It's ok to feel your emotions but don't let them go up to your head and overflow you. 

⚡️Turn your anxiety into excitement. 

If you are going to feel stressed anyways, at least repurpose that energy into excitement and let it work for you instead of against you. Convince yourself that you are in fact excited to go to the interview. 

The body recognizes both stress and excitement as the same thing, which, in a way they are, so choosing to be excited instead of stressed will help you get into the right mindset and put you in control.

#3 Be prepared to have a conversation

A conversation is a 2-way street. 

That means you need to both answer AND ask questions. Otherwise, if the interviewer is the only party that is asking the questions and you are only answering them, it is not a conversation anymore, it is an interrogation or an exam. 

⚡️ Prepare questions in advance. Practice them out loud to hear how you sound. There's nothing silly or embarrassing about it. The greatest salespeople, like The Wolf of Wall Street himself, always practice their lines until they sound perfect, and avoid sounding like they are reading from a script. 

Here are a few questions to ask: 

• What would be my day-to-day tasks in this position?
• What are the monthly/quarterly/yearly targets for this position/team?
• What is the company's management style?

etc.

Make sure to prepare industry-specific questions that will help you make good conversation and show your expertise.

⭐️Prepare success stories. 

We will talk about this in more detail later.

#4 Company research

Familiarize yourself with the company. 

⚡️Find out what their business is about.

Understand their company mission and vision. Show them that you understand the industry and how you can help contribute to the company’s goals. 

⚡️Company culture

You can find out a lot about the company culture by checking out all of their online presence, their website, LinkedIn, blog, social media, reviews, etc. 

You can discover what type of people work there so you can see if you want to be a part of that gang. If the answer is yes, then show them that you are like them. If their people look laid back, then be laid back. If they look suited up, show up suited up, or at least smart casual. 

⚡️The way to stand out is to blend in. 

Show them that you are like them and help them see that you can be one of them.

#5 Sales pitch

You need to have a sales pitch on hand at all times.

You need to know what you have to offer and how to present it well, to convince the interviewers to choose you for the job.

⚡️Selling points

Everything about you can be turned into a selling point. 

Think about all the things you can do, all your skills and your experience, and how you would present each of them. You only need 2-3 well-crafted sentences to sell a skill. 

A skill is a “feature,” however, the “benefit” of that feature is how you use it to make something happen.

For example, you are a graphic designer, and your skill is to make book covers. You could say “I design professional book covers.” 

But how do you sell it?  

You sell it by telling a little story: “I design book covers that sell more books. I recently redesigned a book cover for an existing book, and the book sales have increased by 25% once the author republished the book with the new cover and didn't change anything else.“

You see, now you’ve convinced them that your book covers are really that good.

Think about how you use your skills to make something better, and that is your selling point right there.

⚡️Position yourself

Now, to be able to negotiate, you need to first position yourself as an expert in your field. 

The way to do that is to confidently speak about yourself, your skills, achievements, successes, and goals. Show that you are confident about what you can do.

Present proof to back up your claims, by telling them what you have achieved so far and tailor it to match what they need from you to fulfill the role you are applying for. 

⚡️ Ask qualifying questions to uncover their needs.  

Asking strategically chosen questions will help you achieve several things simultaneously: 

✔️ Find out about the team and the company culture

✔️ Gain info about what it is that they want

✔️ Find out what kind of obstacles they have at the moment and what they expect you to do in this role

✔️ Show that you have experience with this type of work and you know what you’re talking about 

✔️ Show that you have standards and you choose the companies that you work for as much as they choose you (without actually having to say it)

✔️ Get them to see you as a part of their team

You want to find out what their ideal scenario is, the end goal, and then sell them on it. 

⚡️ Show that you can give them what they want.

Check out How to Win at Interviews and Get Job Offers Mini-Series, part 3: Sales Skills for more on how to sell yourself in an interview.

#6 Stories, stories, stories!

⭐️ If you want people to understand something, tell them a story. 

A story is a thing that connects the dots. It shows how the data works in real life.

If you want to make a point at an interview, show, don't tell.

A story can inspire, fascinate, charm, convince and much more. With a story, you can elicit any emotion that you want in your audience. This is a powerful tool.

You can use stories to present a proof that what you are saying is true if you show how you've used certain knowledge in real life to achieve a desired result.

If you want to show them that you are good at multitasking, don't just name the tasks that you can juggle. That's boring. 

Instead, tell them a story of a time when you had to deal with something on a tight schedule or had a tight budget, or when things were hectic and the pressure was through the roof. Paint the picture of how you managed to juggle those things and saved the world from collapsing (metaphorically).

Tell this story with excitement to recreate that scene for them, to get them invested in it and feel like they were there so that they understand how big of a deal that was.

These "tell me about a time" questions are less about what you did and more about how you tell the story about it. 

⚡️ Adding excitement to a story can make a world of a difference. 

To illustrate this, think about your favorite movie for a second. Now, imagine telling a friend about it.

Tell the story in 2 ways: 

👉 1. Tell it with excitement! Portray how great it is, and try to convey the emotions and energy that this movie creates within you so you can get your friend excited to want to watch it.

👉 2. Talk about it in the most boring way possible. Use boring words and a boring tonality. I bet you wouldn't want to watch it either, am I right?

You see, there are 2 way to tell the same exact story. Either with excitement or with boredom. What that means is, you can turn the most boring thing into a great story if you try. And you can also turn the most exciting story into a boring one. Obviously, don't do that.

⚡️ Look for the key selling points in every situation, and build the story around them. 

Every story has to have a point, so that the listener can draw a conclusion. You can lead them to conclude that you are good at negotiating, quick on your feet, a problem-solver, a go-to person, a person who can save the day, a person who gets things done on time, etc. As long as this is the point of the story, it's a good story to tell at an interview.

⛔️ Boring stories make little to no impact. 

But stories that you tell with emotion tend to transfer that emotion to the listener and get them to feel that same emotion. If you want the interviewers to feel good about you, evoke those feel-good emotions, like excitement, happiness, fascination, basically - inspire them. If you feel inspired while you speak, chances are, all of a sudden they will feel inspired. If you are excited, you will get them excited too. If you feel happy about yourself, that happiness will transfer on to them because happiness is probably THE most contagious emotion there is. 

💡 “People make decisions based on emotion, and justify them with logic” - JB

If they feel good about you, you are on the right track to getting this job offer.

Have a few relevant stories on hand for every situation. Have a shorter and a longer version of each story, and use the version that seems appropriate. 

Here are some story ideas.

👉 A story about a time when you:

✔️ Overcame an obstacle

✔️ Faced a challenging situation

✔️ Had to make a difficult decision

✔️ Needed to deal with a difficult coworker/manager

✔️ Had to juggle a few tasks at once

✔️ Were on a tight deadline

✔️ Got yourself out of a tricky situation

✔️ Saved the day

Make sure you have stories on speed dial.

#7 Take control of the conversation 

The whole “taking over the conversation” thing may seem scary and could make you think that you need to somehow dominate the conversation. Or that you need to be the funniest, loudest, or smartest person in the room to be able to steer the conversation where you want it to go. I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

⚡️ The way to lead the conversation is to let the other person think that they control the conversation.

You let them lead the way, but you are the one pointing in the direction of where you want it to go. 

Here's how you can easily achieve that:

✔️ Be customer-oriented

✔️ Make it about them

✔️ Strategically ask questions that will steer the convo to where you want it to go

✔️ Tell stories that will steer the convo to where you want it to go

✔️ Adjust your pitch as you go

This is why you first need to determine your straight line, visualize the conversation upfront and prepare success stories, so you can easily steer the conversation back onto the straight line if the person starts to roam around. Check out Sales Skills for more on this.

#8 Be presentable

👉 Read the room and adapt. 

👉 Make some eye contact with everybody. Don’t force it though, but also, don’t forget about it. 

👉 Speak with conviction. 

👉 Use different tonality and emphasize some keywords, to get the point across better.

👉 Speak with energy in your voice. 

👉 Have a smile on your face while you talk. It softens your voice and makes you pleasant to talk to. 

👉 Plan your clothes upfront so you don’t waste mental energy on this before going to the interview.

Clothes matter, but only if you look at them from the proper angle.  People pay attention to how you look because if you "look" the part, you fit in. If you dress very differently than how they do, you stick out. 

⚡️ Every little thing you do either helps you close the deal or gets you further away from it. Even something superficial like clothes. Make sure everything works in your favor. 

I've been in sales for a long time, and I've seen so many deals being lost over the tiniest little detail. 

Look at this from a buyer's perspective. If you have 2 almost identical options available, you will choose the one you like better.

In the end, it comes down to relying on emotion and gut feeling to make the final decision. 

#9 Affirmations

Instead of thinking negative thoughts like - what am I going to say, what if they ask me this or that, etc. - leave no room for that in your mind by purposefully thinking positive affirmations.

Here are a few positive affirmations you can do, and come up with some more:

• I have the best answers to all of the questions
• I am ready for this interview
• I always know exactly what to say and how to say it
• I always say the right thing
• I'm the best candidate for this job
• I’m getting this job

🔥 Affirmations have the power to convince you that you can do this, and instruct your subconscious on what it should do. 

They also block the doors for any negative thoughts to creep in.

Don't surrender to negative thoughts because they are affirmations too, and they work just like the positive ones. Choose which thoughts you let in your mind, especially in these crucial moments right before an interview.

⭐️ The power of your subconscious mind is that it does exactly what you tell it to do. The trick is to feed it with the good stuff instead of fueling your insecurities.

And don't be surprised if during the interview some awesome answers start coming out of your subconscious on autopilot, without you even needing to think.

#10 Sleep well the night before the interview

After you've done all the above and you are ready to rock this interview, in order to be able to deliver on it, it is crucial to get some good sleep the night before the interview.

Do not skip this step. 

🌙 Good sleep will give you some extra energy and enthusiasm, and make you feel good about yourself which can make the world of a difference during an interview.

In conclusion

✅ Get into the right mindset by being excited to go to this interview. Don’t dwell on the outcome.

✅ Don’t fight your emotions. Acknowledge them, accept them, and put them aside. Turn your anxiety into excitement. 

✅ Familiarize yourself with the company, their business and company culture.

✅ Everything about you can be turned into a selling point. Have a sales pitch ready to go.

✅ Prepare success stories.

✅ The way to lead the conversation is to let the other person think that they control it.

✅ Be presentable. Every little thing you do either helps you close the deal or gets you further away from it.

✅ Affirmations have the power to instruct your subconscious on what to do. Do positive instead of negative affirmations.

✅ Get a good sleep the night before the interview.

❓ What's your game plan for job interviews? I wanna hear all about it!

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📌📌📌 To go deeper and learn all of my interviewing secrets that will help you blow the the interviewers' minds, grab a copy 📚 of my book Interviews Demystified now!