AVOIDING SILLY INTERVIEW MISTAKES - Preparation.

When most candidates receive an invite to attend an interview, their main focus immediately shifts to one thing and one thing alone – answering the interview questions.  Sometimes the preparation to do well at the interview session overshadows everything else including the need to be on top of their personal hygiene and appearance.

What they fail to understand is that a terrible body odour or foul breath will almost certainly have a negative effect on the candidate and could even deny the candidate an employment opportunity.

Don’t fall into this trap.

Take extra care to ensure that your personal hygiene/ appearance is part of your overall preparation.

When picking what to wear, stay away from LOUD colours. Keep your style simple and conservative. Remember it’s a job interview not a fashion show.  For men, a clean shave is advised. A white shirt and dark coloured suit would suffice. If you have to wear a beard please keep it low and well trimmed.

Please guard against the excessive use of perfumes. This might act as an irritant.

All these might sound kind of elementary but time and time and again we see candidates make these silly mistakes. I remember being on a panel of interviewers when a young lady walked in dressed like she was heading for a Friday night out.

Another area I would like to draw your attention to is time keeping. I cannot overemphasize the need to arrive at the interview on time.  The interview date is not the day to try a new route.  From the moment you get the invite to the interview take a good look at the date and map out how to get to the venue. If possible do a trial run. Be sure you know where the venue is. Do not ASSUME and don’t bank on asking your cousin. If you know the location then you can properly plan on how much time to allocate to travelling to the venue. I have heard candidates blame the traffic or give some other excuse for turning up late. I am sorry to say no matter how plausible your story sounds, you are not likely to be taken seriously.

If for any reason you know you will not be able to get to the venue on time, call the human resources department to inform them of that you are running late. Don’t wait until you get to the interview. You can be sure it would have been very late by then.

There are a lot of other silly little mistakes that job seekers make regarding interviews but we will limit them to these few for now.