What Every Prospective Employee Must Know About Successful Job Hunting

June 20, 2016 | Career Blog

Preparing yourself for a job interview goes beyond the obvious rules. Yes, you do need to have a great resume, dress to impress and show up on time. Of course, so will the vast majority of competitors for the position. Truly successful job hunting relies heavily on the research you conduct before ever leaving home for the appointment.

Three essentials you cannot afford to take shortcuts on may propel you to the second round of interviews.

1. Know the product or service as well as the industry. If you want to land a customer service representative position at an inbound call center, you need to know what the company sells. Dig deeper than just product or package names. Find out the selling points for the various options, and learn about the products that customers prefer. Next, inform yourself about upcoming or ongoing sales promotions.
2. Understand the company’s “vibe.” Familiarize yourself with the company’s social media persona. Next, compare it to other businesses in the same niche. Doing so helps you get a good feel for the overall way of doing business there. A very formal company is bound to ask you different questions than one that places innovation above adherence to tried and true business models.
3. Find out about the latest headlines. Has the company been in the news lately? Whether the stories are good or bad, you need to know as many details as possible. Once again, it pays to dig deeper. Find out what is currently happening in the niche. If your customer service representative position would be in the cable TV industry, know about merger talks and regulatory rulings.

Then you dazzle the interviewer with your knowledge, right? Wrong! Successful job hunting is more than an exercise in one-upmanship when meeting with a recruiter or hiring manager. Casually fold in nuggets of knowledge if needed; in most cases, you use your research to answer questions as a valued member of the organization would. Contact us to get more job hunting tips before your next career change.