7 Quick Tips To Improve Job Interview Skills

Right in and give you some quick tips on how to communicate more effectively for a job interview. You may be a comfortable public speaker. You may be fine speaking up in a meeting, but for many people, there's something uncomfortable about speaking in a job interview. The stakes are high. You're thinking, well, my whole career could be at stake. And here's what happens. You get nervous. It's completely normal. I get it. I understand why. But here's what happens when you get nervous. We tend to tighten our body. Our face gets blank. We have our volume drop in our voice. Our voice becomes monotone and we start acting almost like we are a zombie sometimes. Huge, huge problem. So I want to give you some tips now on how to be a little more effective when you are doing a job interview. So tip number one, don't repeat stuff that is on your resume. Your resume helped you get the job interview. You don't need to say, I am a 2018 graduate of Georgetown University. It's right there on the resume. So don't waste valuable time telling the person interviewing you what they already know. Big waste of time. Second, big tip, be interested. Now, that's obviously related to the first tip, because if you're not giving people boring information about your resume, you're more likely to be interested. That's tip number two. Tip number three, the most compelling way, the easiest way to be interesting. Tell stories. Don't just go through facts. Don't go through data points. Don't say, I managed 27 people and was in charge of all executive decision making and crisis management. Boring. If there was a fire at your plant and you helped put it out, talk about that specific plan crisis that you saw, that would be much, much more effective. Rule number four, and it's related to this, all of these do relate to each other. You have to be memorable. So much of the focus people have is thinking about, oh, did I get that question right? Did I get that question wrong? Now, it's certainly possible to say something in a job interview that's wildly offensive or that confuses someone. But the far bigger danger for most people when they are doing a job interview is that they're completely forgettable. The person interviewing you interviewed 10 other people that day over a course of two days. And you don't stand out one way or the other. So that is something you really got to give some thought to. How to make your candidacy really stand out and be memorable. Fifth tip, prepare what you want to say in advance. It should have nothing to do with what questions you're Asked the person asking, you may be in a good mood, may be having a great day, may have had a lot of sleep. The person might be in a bad mood, not out of sleep last night. Why do you want to penalize yourself because of the state of the interview? So you need to prepare your messages, your themes, your accomplishments, your stories. I don't mean memorize, but I do mean prepare exactly what you want to say. The sixth tip. Prepare intelligent questions. And I don't mean so what do you do with this company? What do you like about this company? Those are not intelligent questions. You need to prepare questions that demonstrate that you've done your homework, that you are interested in this company, that you know what this organization does, whether it's public sector or private sector. You know the issues affecting it. You know what other people are saying. You know the challenges. You want to ask, questions that show you have a passion. Passion for this organization. Everyone likes to work with someone who thinks their organization and their industry is the most important ever. And if you just like, so what do you do around here? It's going to send the message that you are not particularly interested. You're just going through the motions. So if you're going through the motions, why shouldn't other people just go through the motions of the interview? You don't want that at all. The seventh big tip. This is the most important tip. Seventh big tip is you need to rehearse on video. And it can be as simple as you at home interviewing yourself. Ask yourself a question. So, tj why should we hire you? And then speak, Record it and then look at it. I know, I know you don't want to look at yourself. I know it seems cheesy or silly, but guess what? This is the single most important thing you can do to build your confidence level going into that interview. So much of what makes us nervous is this fear of, oh, what if I look stupid? What if I don't make sense? What if I'm speaking too softly? What if I'm speaking too quickly? Every one of those concerns can be completely eliminated just by practicing on video. So those are the seven quick tips I have for you today on how you can come across more effectively in a job interview. If you have a question, please post them. Whether you're watching now on Facebook, on YouTube, on StreamLive, among a couple of other platforms. That leads me to the next lesson for the day. Great communicators, I believe, are always experimenting with new mediums of communication. I'm experimenting today. I am simulcasting for the first time. So I'm not just doing Facebook Live. I'm not just doing YouTube live. I am simulcasting on several different platforms. And who knows if it works? With every experiment, there's always a chance you fail. Gary Vaynerchuk famously talks about all the different platforms he thought were going to be exciting and hot and big, and he went out of business. But he is still wildly successful and has tens and tens and tens of millions of followers all around the globe on social media platforms because he tries all of them. Anthony Robbins, familiar name to most of you, one of the titans of the personal development industry, experimented way back in the 1980s with infomercials before anyone else in his space did that. And because of that, he became a household name and is famous to this day, even though he doesn't run infomercials any longer. So that's why I'm trying to experiment, practice what I preach. By the way, if you have questions, post the questions on whatever platform you're on right now. And I am still learning this system. So at the moment I actually cannot see the chat, although it is supposed to be visible to me. So I am learning as we go too. So if I don't answer your question here, I will answer it after this live stream. This video will be posted once the video is done and it will be available on demand. So if you post questions, I promise you I will answer your question. Now. I'm not perfect. Some of you have been nice enough to point out my hairline isn't as perfect as it used to be. I have flaws, but I am responsive to anyone who post specific questions about public speaking, communication skills, personal development skills anywhere on the web, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, other online platforms, or on my own platforms. By the way, I do have something exciting right now. I have a new online course, selfiespeak.com and I'll be doing a live webinar for that, really going in depth on my Selfie Speak program. Some of you know me from other courses, other places that are mostly on demand. This course has a lot of live elements too. I will post a link to that in the rebroadcast of this, so please pay close attention to that. It's again, selfiespeak.com and thanks for joining me today. I'm just here in my living room now. I do have a broadcast studio, but I just want to do something a little bit different, something a little bigger and also just give you a sense to join me in my own living room today. I think I am going to be doing more live streaming, broadcast and simulcast on a regular basis. You have any opinions about that, please leave a comment. Whether you are watching this live or on demand. And forgive me, at the moment I'm violating one of the big rules of live streaming. I'm not thanking each person who's coming on and those of you doing the thumbs up, that sort of thing, because I can't see it at the moment because this is the first time I'm actually using a system called Castor IO. It's a system that allows you to simulcast live streams on at least 30 platforms if you want to, but you could do many more if you do just a little bit of tagging and putting in the right key. So that's an experiment that I'm doing. So if you have questions about that, I don't necessarily have all the technical answers, but I can share with you exactly what I'm going through. The pros, the cons. One thing I see right now I'm doing wrong is I should not have left my television on because the Apple TV imagery is swirling around. And I can only imagine that some of you are going to be writing to me saying, tj, that backdrop is distracting. So I agree with you that I'm going to try to have a different backdrop next time. A couple of things in the news today that really grabbed my attention. No, not that news down in D.C. other news of a personal development issue. This was front page news in the New York Times today. Case study of owen Dennis Riley. 17 year old young man, lives with his parents, high school student and he is a YouTube star. He has an interesting niche now. He has never by his own admission, ever had a girlfriend in his life. Nothing wrong with that at age 17. But he's now a boyfriend to at least half a million people online. Now, there's nothing lascivious going on. He's not taking any clothes off or doing any naughty talk. But he does a show where he simply talks to women as if he were their boyfriend in a nurturing, comforting way as they're about to go to sleep. If it sounds like the most ridiculous, absurd thing you've ever heard of, you're right, it sounded that way to me too. But you know what doesn't sound absurd? He has 2 million views a month. At times. He has half a million subscribers. He's making a lot of money. Now here's the sentence in the entire story that I think most people overlook. They just say, ah, these kids today, they do one crazy thing they're lucky. That's bizarre. Here's the part that I think people overlook. This is the one sentence that stuck out at me in the profile. Again, you can see this in todaysnewyorktimes.com and the sentence is this. After various fruitless endeavors, singing, doing pranks with his siblings, he turned to asmr. That's the category this is considered because he's kind of whispering to people like they're just about to go to sleep. So you could say in a sense he just lucked into this on the one hand. On the other hand, he did this the hard way. He experimented, he failed many ways. I'm always struck by how many wildly successful people, if you just scratch a little bit, if you dig a little, you'll find that their way to success was trying lots and lots of things and failing massively along the way. The beauty today is a 17 year old can do a lot of failures in six months and not have to spend 20 years like some of us did who grew up in a pre YouTube era. Some of you have been nice enough to say, well tj, I love your online training courses. I have more than 140 courses. I have more than a dozen best selling online personal development courses on the number one most popular platform in the world, plus on my own platform and others. And that sounds impressive until you realize I have more than 120 some courses that were horrible sellers. The only reason I have bestsellers is because I experimented so many times and I failed. Those failures helped lead me to ultimate success. And I think that's this part of this story that gets buried about Owen Dennis riley and his 2 million views a month and his half a million subscribers and all the advertising revenue that's flowing to him that is probably making him the richest 17 year old in his town. It's the willingness to experiment, to practice, to try new things, to fail miserably. I'm sure he has some videos where he was doing pranks or trying to be funny, that if he saw them today he'd be embarrassed. But you know what? He put it out there. What are you putting out there today? That's my challenge to you. What are you putting out that might be hugely embarrassing, might be a flop, but could lead to something else? Share that with me. Leave a comment right there. Whether you're watching this on Facebook, whether you're watching this on YouTube or any other platform, let me know what are you willing to do. Like this guy, Owen Dennis Riley. Now I have to admit I have absolutely no interest in being an Internet YouTube boyfriend. Whispering, I wouldn't do that no matter how much you pay me. It just doesn't interest me. Plus, someone my age doing it seems really, really creepy. So I'm not suggesting that I should do that or you should do that, but I am suggesting this idea of speaking at, communicating in different forums, different formats, different structures, is often the way to success. So please post your comments questions again, if I can't figure out by the end of this live simulcast today how to see them and I'm supposed to be able to, I will answer every one of your questions later on when this is posted. So I wanted to share with you something that's been going on in my own personal development. I've been doing a type of personal development training for more than 30 years, but only in the last year have I done what most people think is kind of the broader perspective of personal development, all encompassing, not just communications focused. One tip that I've done in really just the last month has had a profound impact on my life. It's going to sound silly to some of you, but here's the tip. I give myself a firm, firm limit of only 30 minutes of reading the news in the morning. Now, some of you may say, well, I never watched more than 15 minutes. Your thing might not be news. It might be watching too many video games, it might be playing too many checkers or something. But all of us can get into habits that just waste time now. Right now, there's a tremendous amount of very, very exciting political news going on here in the United States. And there's all kinds of news around the world. I've always been a news junkie. The problem is whether I consume news for 30 minutes a day, 2 hours a day, or 20 hours a day isn't going to have much impact on my life or anyone else's because I'm not a news commentator anymore. I'm not a talk show host anymore, even though I used to do that. So for me, it's a dream. So what I do is I've literally written down in the personal development section of my notes, in the memo section of my phone. And it's something I check every day. I just have a simple notation. No more than 30 minutes of news consumption in the morning. Then switch to reading books. That's my goal, to start reading books every day after the 30 minutes. And what I found is if I tell myself it's only going to be 30 minutes, then it's going to be really easy to do that. And I also tell myself in my daily selfie Speak audio, I have a recording that I've done once. I redo it every few months, but I listen to it every day with my headphones and I just tell myself how I want to structure my life. One of my tips is simply TJ you're not going to listen or you're not going to read more than 30 minutes of news each morning when you get up. Especially if I get up early in the morning, I could easily spend an hour and a half, two hours if I let myself do that. But by giving myself a limit, by putting a timer on my watch to ring, and by noting it every day in my phone, it cements that habit and it makes it very, very powerful. As a consequence, I have a lot more time to read books, be more productive, get other things done. And frankly, there's no loss in my life going from 90 minutes or two hours a day of news consumption to 30 minutes. So there's all upside and no downside. It's really a matter of how do you make a wish into a habit? We all have wishes. This is a technique. The combination of recording it on audio, listening to it every day, writing it down, putting those together, has made it a habit. What habits are you trying to change? If you feel like sharing, please share it with me right here. I may have a suggestion or tip. Sometimes it's helpful just to write it down and let other people see it. Here's another really? This may sound absurd to some of you that a grown man would write this down, but one of the habits I've done in the last year that I do find is healthy and positive is having a large glass of water, basically this big first thing in the morning. Now, I typically consume water all day long, and I'm not someone who has a soda addiction, but I had gotten the habit of only drinking coffee in the morning and not having coffee or water until three hours later. Now, because I've written it down, because I've recorded an audio telling myself to drink water every day, a large glass, I have these different reinforcing structures. I'm hearing it in the audio. I. I'm seeing it on my to do list, and that is enough to turn it into a habit. And you may already drink enough water, but there may be something that you do want to change. I am looking at doing more of these simulcasts on a regular basis and being even more engaging with you. Again, I apologize. This is my first one using this simulcast system, so I haven't figured out how to see your chats. But I do know that it is possible for me using this system to use the chat and I'll check in just a moment and see if I can do that. So I wanted to go over just one or two other things with you today. People often ask me TJ, what do I read, what authors do I like. So I wanted to have a little segment here where I kind of just pull things right off my shelf and I want to do something that's kind of new but also a classic. The book that I like that has had a profound impact on my life that is New is by Cal Newport and the book is on digital minimalism. He has, he's a Georgetown professor and he's really expanded this idea of how people are basically frying their brains with all the social media and buzz notification zooms. And if you want to be productive, you have to just focus on one thing and do what he calls deep work. Now I try to do that for three hours a day where I have no email, no calls, nothing. And I'm just writing, writing content for my courses or creating videos. But I would highly, highly. And I'm not doing any affiliate thing. I don't make any money on this. He's not my brother in law. But I would highly recommend digital minimalism. So this is something, you know, it's been out in the last year or so. Highly recommend. I'd also like to periodically share with you my thoughts on some of the best all time classics in the personal development self help movement. And one of them is this book called the Artist Way. This is a book by Julia Cameron and she is an artist. It's not just for artists. It's really anyone who wants to be more creative, more productive in life. Her big concept is start every day journaling. She recommends 15 minutes or so, filling up several pages. I almost feel silly using this term journaling. You're writing in a journal, you're writing a diary. But I've been doing this for about a year now and I have to tell you it is helpful. You're not writing for anyone else. It's not the first draft of a book. It's just you're talking to yourself. I just do it on my phone. She does recommend longhand. This book was written in the 70s. But people like Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Workweek. He gives tremendous credit to Julia Cameron. She's been wildly influential to so many different artists, creators, entrepreneurs over the years. If you are going to go back and, and look at Some of the classics of the personal development world. This is on Most People's Top 100 list. It's certainly online. Again, it's the artist way. Both these books are available on Amazon and pretty much anyplace else. So I want to thank you for spending a little time with me today. Again, this is an experiment. I may decide. You know what, it's too much trouble. It's too diffusing of efforts to try to be on more than one channel. Maybe I'll just do Facebook Live or maybe I'll just do YouTube live. I don't know. There's a part of me that says focus all your energies on just one place. Many people believe that. But there's another part of me that says you look at the most successful talk radio host and others, they are syndicated on 5001000 stations. The more places you are, the more people you can reach, as long as you can interact. So this is a bit of an experiment and it may be failing. So we'll see. So I may lose you right here. I'm about to play with the interface on the site and to see if I can find the chat and it may cut us off. I'm getting a note says will Cam will stop streaming if you navigate. So I'm not going to do that. So I think that pretty much conclusively proves I'm not going to be able to see your comments, your questions, your thoughts, your criticisms, whatever you have to say right now. But as soon as I end this, I will post the video and I'm going to post a couple of other things for you too. I do have a brand new course for you on decluttering. To talk about someone else who's been wildly, wildly influential is there's this whole movement now on minimalism, decluttering your house. And this is my take on that. So I'm going to give you a free pass for the first hundred of you who've been with me into my latest online course. It's about decluttering. Not just your house, your bedroom, your car, but really your mind and your whole life. So I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll talk to you soon.