Job interviews can be stressful. You could break into a cold sweat or suffer from sudden brain freeze just before a big personal interview.
Many of us worry about making a mistake or saying the wrong thing at a personal interview. But if you’re focused and confident, you can easily crack your next personal interview.
A personal interview is usually the final step in the recruitment process where you talk about your skills, experience and aspirations in detail.
Familiarize yourself with useful personal interview tips and build personal interview skills to make sure you leave a lasting impression. Here’s a deep dive into how to prepare for a personal interview.
Tips To Ace A Personal Interview
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Improve Your Communication Skills
Communication skills are at the heart of a successful personal interview. For a fruitful conversation with the interviewer, you have to deliver your message clearly.
Be direct, empathetic and enthusiastic. Harappa Education’s Speaking Effectively course has useful concepts and frameworks to prepare for a personal interview. The PAM (Purpose-Audience-Message) framework will help you to articulate your answers in a way that’s easy to follow.
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Prepare, Practice And Pitch
The 3Ps framework, or Prepare-Practice-Pitch, is an important concept to help you frame your answers for a personal interview. You can expect the interviewer to ask you questions that focus on your employment history, projects, and personal or technical skills.
It’s a good idea to prepare and practice your answers beforehand to ensure you’re familiar with what you have to say. The only way you can communicate your answers properly is with practice and preparation.
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Tell A Story About Yourself
The purpose of the personal interview is to build a connection with the interviewer. Pick a theme around your experiences and your skills, turn it into a story and talk about it during the interview.
Personal interview skills like storytelling are important for effective communication because they help you stay calm and keep your composure. You don’t want to end up as a bag of nerves.
The interviewer will find it easy to ask questions if you’ve told them a story they can clearly follow. This ability to lead the interview into a direction you’re comfortable with is one of the underrated personal interview skills.
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Support Your Argument With Examples
It’s one thing to say that you know how to code but another to give examples of past projects to corroborate that statement. There may be times when you’re asked to give examples or data to support what you’ve claimed in your resume. Whatever you say ties back to your experience and will come up during the course of the personal interview. Be honest with your answers and you’ll be able to tackle any question with certainty.
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Read Personal Interview Examples
Personal interview tips are useful when you need to think about answers to interview questions. It may even help to read personal interview examples online. Many people share their interview experiences and how they tackled difficult situations. You can pick a few personal interview tips and incorporate them into your answers. Maybe, you’ll find someone who went through the same process and that’ll help you imagine yourself in a similar situation.
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Stay Calm And Think Clearly
Personal interview examples often talk about unexpected questions that can catch you off guard. If you’re thrown a curveball question, remember you can take a minute to think about your answer. You don’t have to worry about being right or wrong. Instead, focus on the question and answer to the best of your abilities. The interviewer will judge you on the basis of your presence of mind and how well you respond under pressure.
There are many ways to impress an interviewer. But the one that stands out is to speak in simple and clear terms to get your point across. Many of these personal interview tips are a part of Harappa Education’s Speaking Effectively course. Sign up now to ace that next interview and land your dream job.
Explore the skills & topics such as Self Introduction, Types of Interview, Interview Skills & Tips for Interview from our Harappa Diaries blog section and develop your workplace skills.