Do's and Don'ts - Preparing for a Job Interview

Imagine the following situation:

It’s Monday afternoon, and your mobile rings. The caller introduces himself as a recruitment consultant from a well-known executive search firm. He would like to talk to you about an interesting vacancy and asks if you are interested in a career move. What do you do?

The first thing you should do is make sure you can talk freely without being disturbed. You should also confirm who is calling. Do you know the company? If not, as the caller to ring back later to give you time to find out more about the company and check its reputation.

You should then prepare yourself carefully for the return call. What things do you want to ask immediately? What are the five most important criteria that would make you take the time to go to an interview with an executive search firm? But don’t forget that the other side will want to find out a lot about you as well. They will also have a set of criteria to hand which they will use to decide whether they are still interested in you or not.

If you are both still interested at the end of the call, you will be asked to send in a copy of your CV. Headhunters attach enormous importance to CVs. Phone calls and interviews are important, but a CV is the essential written document in the subsequent recruiting process.

We therefore recommend that you always have an up-to-date CV saved and ready to send off – both in your own language and in English. An easy to read and convincing CV is brief and clearly laid. Even if you have had a long career and have worked for many companies, try to summarize your experience on a maximum of two to three pages. Some recruitment consultants will also expect you to send an appropriate photo, so you should always have a good, professionally taken photo of yourself to hand as well.

Based on the phone call and the information in your CV, the headhunter will then decide whether or not to invite you for an interview. Don’t take it personally if you are rejected at this stage. These initial steps are intended to give the consultant an opportunity to find out more about you. There is only a 50:50 chance that a tip or a person recommended by someone else will actually fit the profile for a current vacancy. Look on it as a first contact that might come to something at another point in time.

Headhunters have a totally different standing in English-speaking countries than they do in their German-speaking counterparts, where they are often viewed with suspicion. They are even sometimes suspected of using obscure methods and credited with having more power than is actually the case. Forget these suspicions, get on board and see what happens; it won’t do you any harm to have qualified some recruitment consultants in your network.

Should you be invited to an interview, don’t leave it too long to arrange an appointment. If you are seriously interested in the vacancy, don’t forget that executive search consultants also have to keep to timelines. They will be presenting candidates to their client on an agreed date and will obviously want these to be the candidates who not only represent the best professional and personal fit, but are also willing to make a move and interested in a new career challenge.

The interview:

Make sure you prepare yourself as best you can for the interview. Do you know which company the vacancy is for? If so, what do you know about the industry, the product, the target market, the country or the region? You should also prepare some additional questions to indicate your curiosity and confirm your interest in the vacancy.

Keep a low profile with your current employer as far as the interview is concerned. Don’t say where you are going, what address you are going to or who you have an appointment with. It’s a small world, and even the mention of a street name could lead someone to make to unwanted conclusions.

Don’t learn anything off by heart. Even if you have had little contact with headhunters in your career so far or don’t have a lot of interview experience, don’t buy a book on how to get through a job interview – and if you do, don’t take the tips it contains too seriously. Executive search consultants prefer genuine candidates who can describe their educational background, career history, successes and failures in plain and simple terms without resorting to the meaningless phrases “how to” books suggest for certain questions.

Go through your reasons for coming to the interview in your mind. Are you interested in a higher salary, more responsibility, more people management, a new product or a new area? What motivated you to attend? Are you simply interested in finding out what alternatives are available to your current position?

Be honest when asked about your motivation for attending the interview, although honesty also has its limits! If you simply say “Make me an attractive offer so that I know my current market value”, you will have immediately kicked yourself out of contention and annoyed the consultant in the process. Please don’t waste the consultant’s time with this kind of attitude.

You should be given the name of the client, i.e. your potential new employer, in the interview at the latest. If you are not told who the company is, you should rightfully become suspicious and request a good explanation for the excessive level of discretion. Don’t forget to agree a timeline for the next steps at the end of the interview.

Since you don’t know at which stage in the project you were contacted, you might hear from the headhunter again very quickly or it may be some weeks before you get an answer. Keep some time free for further interviews. If you are the top candidate, you can expect at least another two to three further rounds of interviews.