Wednesday, October 15, 2008

AB114 Mock Interview - Confidence

Today i was supposed to have an ungraded mock interview in class. In the group of 9, 3 people were the interviewers, 3 were the interviewees and the remaining 3 were reviewers. We had to draw lots to determine who was going to play which role, after we had stepped into class.

And obviously with my suay-ness i kenna-ed interviewee -.-

Still, i've brought back one very important pointer. It's not something i gained just from this occasion alone but i just thought i'd share it now.

Confidence is very important.

See, if you speak with confidence and enthusiasm, you can pull off almost anything [i'm not saying that you should lie through your teeth in a confident manner though]. Even if your content only makes half the sense, your voice can help you project the feeling of sureness and make people believe you.

Plus, even if people don't remember what you say, they'll remember how you said it. The confidence leaves an impact.

Let me recount an interview i went for during my vacation, for my vacation job. In a way i was lucky because it was an impromptu/rushed interview [i only knew about it 4 hours before i had to go down for the interview] so i knew my interviewer wasn't very prepared as well. Plus it was only a temporary job so they're not going to ask complicated questions about my aspirations and such.

There were tonnes of reasons for them not to take me and they also gave me lots of reasons that put me off. But i guess i still stuck with it.

"Have you used ____ application before? Are you familiar with it?"
"I have not used it before, but i am sure that with some guidance i will be able to work well with it."
"This job requires a lot of overtime. Plus the fact that you stay so far away. Can you commit?"
"Yes, i can."

I knew practically nothing, but managed to convert all those negatives into proving my interest and determination to learn.

I got the job -.-

The short 2-month stint there taught me another valuable lesson, about perseverance. But that's another story for another time :)

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