By ALEXANDER BESANT
LinkedIn Senior News Editor
Job interviews are some of the most mundane conversations we'll ever have but also some of the most consequential moments of our lives. The outcome of an interview often has implications so great that if we ruminated on their impact beforehand we'd likely be racked with stress and drop the ball. But the truth is that interviews can act as major forks in the road in our lives. A successful interview and an offer can take us far from home; permanently alter our bank accounts and lifestyle; lead us to meet our significant others and lifelong friends; and will shape our daily habits for potentially decades.
Worried yet? You shouldn't be. Job interviews should be treated as those pivotal moments in life where clarity, calm, resignation and trust in oneself meet and give us strength, before ending in a shrug and glimmer of hope.
That's how I look at it anyway, similar to the moment the airplane door opened before a skydive or the moment your feet shuffle to the end of a plank during a bungee jump: trust yourself, trust the process and allow yourself to accept any outcome with dispassionate ease.
Perhaps that's too philosophical so here's some more practical advice for job interviews LinkedIn members suggested when we reached out.
Research the company, the interviewer and the role and understand the problems they're trying to solve
Prove that you're a problem solver
Interview the company as much as they interview you
Practice your answers with someone else
Alter your answers and demeanor along with the style of the interview
Here's what other members said:
Here are some bonus tips from our Global Business Journalism community. First up: Doug Harbrecht, a former Global Business Journalism visiting professor at Tsinghua University. Doug was the digital boss at Kiplinger and the news editor for Business Week Online. He is a former White House correspondent and president of the National Press Club.
Next up are some concise and powerful tips from Aurora Losada, an accomplished journalist with experience in Europe, South America and the United States. She was editor of La Voz de Houston, the Spanish language edition of the Houston Chronicle. Aurora was a guest lecturer in the Global Business Journalism program in 2020.
Alexander Besant, senior news editor at LinkedIn, has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He was an intern for Hearst Newspapers under the supervision of Washington bureau chief Rick Dunham, who is now the co-director of the Global Business Journalism program. He has also worked for Reuters, The Associated Press, Facebook, The (Toronto) Globe and Mail, and the GlobalPost.
This post was originally published on LinkedIn News. It is republished with the permission of the author.