This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee.
Alright, let’s say your CV got shortlisted and you got an opportunity for a personal interview. It was not easy to come to this point.
Most people at this stage will flunk out. Why? Because they prepare in the wrong way.
What do most people do a couple of days before an interview
- Study a lot of technical stuff before the interview. Say they are applying for a job in a corporate law firm. Guess what they would do? They will start reading Companies Act, or SEBI regulations, or the latest FDI policy or something like that. Surely, it is important to have the technical knowledge to clear an interview, but it is probably too late to learn all these in the 11th hour. There are far more important things to do.
- Worry, panic, talk to friends about how much they are panicking. Waste the time in hand worrying.
- Memorizing answers for questions like “tell us a bit about yourself” “what is your biggest strength” “tell us about one of your weaknesses” and so on. If your interview outcome is going to depend on questions like these you are already in trouble. Also, you should be able to genuinely answer such questions from your understanding of who you are and certainly not have to memorize the answers!
- Trying to identify and imagine specific interview questions so you can prepare for them! This is not possible.
- Spending too much time trying to pick the perfect attire for the interview. You need to look presentable and sharp, but the attire is not going to decide your interview! Do not spend hours dilly-dallying about it, please.
What will make all the difference
- Please understand the importance of asking questions, anticipating, and identifying the problems the employer has and offering a solution that you can drive.
If you do this one thing well, you will stand out and crack your interview with almost 100% certainty. It is incredibly powerful.
Every employer who is hiring someone has a problem to solve. Usually more than one problem, in fact. What are their 3 biggest priorities with respect to this hire?
What have been the pain points of the employer with past employees in similar roles? How are you going to be different? How can you demonstrate that difference?
So deep research into your employer is step 1, step 2 is asking the right questions during the interview, to understand more about the role and its history and future. Ideally, it should be done much before the interview over a call if possible.
Let’s say they are looking to hire an in-house counsel. What have been their typical problems with previous in-house counsels they hired? Did they leave too soon for better-paid jobs? Were they not good at handling situations involving the police?
Were they bad at predicting how government policies may change? Maybe they predicted policy changes and still failed to communicate properly to the senior leadership so that the business could prepare for changes ahead?
Maybe they spent too much on external lawyers or did so much penny pinching that it impacted results and frustrated the management?
Maybe they were too reactive and not proactive enough pro-active?
Imagine that you are hiring a new sales head. What could be the problems that you had with the previous sales head? I can’t ask that directly but I need to get that understanding to come up with a plan as to how and why things will be different if you hire me.
Will there be a better incentive scheme for the sales team? Will there be better training or better performance monitoring mechanisms? What will be different now if I join?
I need to sell that in my interview.
Interviews are not meant to be like a college viva where you sit and answer some questions passively. You are the one pitching for a job, you are the one who needs to convince the other guy. You need to seize the reins.
If I were you, I would prepare a presentation and take with me to explain how I plan on solving the employer’s top 3 problems. It is hard to resist an interview like that.
- Most technical questions are likely to come from your CV. If you have said you have done certain work in the past, you need to be able to answer all possible but reasonable conceptual questions around that.
For instance, if you write that you have drafted a mezzanine finance agreement in the past, then apart from being able to explain exactly what you did, please be prepared to also explain what is mezzanine finance and how it works. What is the legal framework that impacts such agreements? Have there been any important decisions of any courts?
There may be a bunch of other conceptual and factual questions around the same too, and not being able to answer them will reflect quite poorly and discredit your claims in your CV.
Your first priority should be able to answer all questions related to your CV, and you should prepare accordingly.
- You need to connect with the interviewer, at a human level. A warm conversation, like one you will have with a good friend, is a great idea. Paying a lot of attention to every word they say, being a good listener, being open and transparent will work well too. You want to bring a great vibe of trust, friendship, and mutual admiration to the interview.
This does not mean being submissive or flattering, although a little flattery probably wouldn’t hurt either. However, note that most leaders are totally turned off by obsequious or servile behavior.
You can try meditating or other techniques (whatever works for you) to ensure you are calm, composed, open, have absolute clarity of mind when you go for an interview. Being in that good space can make a huge difference in your interview.
- Prepare some great stories and examples you are going to tell about yourself. The interviewer wants to get to know you. And what better way to tell them about yourself than telling a few stories about your life and work?
Saying “I am hardworking” is not good enough. Can you tell some stories from your life that actually demonstrates how hardworking you are? I have a story from college about that. It is about how I managed to keep good grades, do two international moots, start my own startup while also doing enough freelance work on the side to earn around 80k per month, as a 4th-year student. I had divided my day into 3 shifts. Do you want to hear more about this story? Well, that’s great then, my interview is going well. And I am conveying how hardworking I am.
Stories tell a lot more about who we are than any objective claim we can make about ourselves. What do you think will impress the interviewer more?
- Take responsibility. Cracking an interview is all about selling yourself.
Tell them they can give you the job and go to sleep, it is your problem hereafter.
This is the dream come true of every interviewer/ employer and hard to beat. If you can come in and take care of their problems, if you will produce the results that they desperately crave and you can say as much confidently on their face, the job will most probably be yours. If there are other more qualified or cheaper people interviewing along with you, they don’t stand a chance unless they say the same thing and do so more convincingly than you.
On the contrary, if you have to say things like “I will try my best” or “I will work very hard and the rest is up to God” or “I will need some initial handholding and training” or something along those lines, then you are actively reducing your chance of landing that job.
Hence, you better train yourself well before you apply for a job, otherwise, there is very little chance you will get it.
If you want the job, say you can do it, and explain how you can do it without much/ very little investment from the employer’s side. If your performance will be conditional on something the employer has to do for you, then that is bad news for the employer.
If you can’t tell the employer “once you hire me, here are the results I will deliver, you don’t have to worry about this anymore” then you will have to stick to low paid jobs that high performers do not want.
Do you struggle with cracking interviews? Not getting enough guidance?
No problem. Join LawSikho and two problems will be solved.
Number one is that we will train you for the job that you want, so you can confidently tell your interviewer how you are going to help them to achieve their goals and targets based on your skill. You will not have to say “I am very hardworking but I need you to train me while you pay me a salary…”
Number two is that we will prepare you for your interviews. We have a placement team in place to help you with the interviews and we will make sure you clear your interviews with grace and competence. We will do mock interviews with you. We will train you on how to explain your career plans and how to show that your interests are aligned with that of the interviewer.
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