3 Things to Remember When In an Interview or Meeting

I went out of my schedule to write this post today, as yesterday I was at an important meeting with quite a large firm who want a website making for them, as their current one isn’t really up to scratch with competitors. This was my first ‘real’ meeting, as it was the first time I have been in a suit and tie to a companies offices to carry out a meeting. Previously I have had informal meetings and conversations online with the people I have conducted business with. Therefore, this was a great opportunity for me to learn how things are carried out in the business world and how I should act when I am around these money generating business men.

Stay Calm and Confident

It’s the most obvious one; you need to stay calm and confident in all situations, so there is no real difference in a meeting. I say this because staying clam will show the people in the meeting that you have a strong head, you’re bound to be nervous, but not showing that tells the people watching you that you are able to hide your true feeling. In business this is very important, as you may be dealing with people you don’t agree with about anything, but you need to keep them happy to get business from them, so hiding your nerves (true feelings), can help a lot. As well as this, staying confident will help the businessmen to believe in what you are doing. During the meeting I attended, I had to explain my web design to the companies bosses and some of the executives, I wasn’t too confident in doing this at first, as I felt that everything they needed to know was already shown on screen. However, after going over the first parts of the page I settled into a stride which built my confidence and starting explaining everything in detail.

Now where am I going with this little story? Well I was at the meeting with 5 other students and one of them was actually there for an interview with the company as well. During that interview the boss mentioned to the potential employee, and my friend, that the guy at the end of the table was very impressive and knew his stuff. Not meaning to boast or anything… But that was me. Obviously me going into a lot of detail and being confident about what I was talking about worked wonders.

Staying calm and confident will help you as well, as it will keep you in the right mind set and prepare for anything they throw at you, so make sure you are ready and relax.

Interrupt Other and Put Your Point Across

Firstly, I don’t mean butt into a conversation when someone is in the middle of what they are saying, but at an appropriate time, interrupt them and put your opinion into the mix. This will again help the people watching you to see that you are confident within yourself and this in turn will help them see that you are independent and stick up for what you believe in. In today’s current world, there are too many people who give in to other peoples opinions, if you keep your own, you are different and therefore stand out. People who standout get jobs! When in the meeting, even when parts of my own team were talking, I joined in. We had a plan of who would talk when, but for some bits I just had to join in so that I could put a bit extra into the conversation and help out the business who want the website set up more. Not only did this make me seem like the big force behind our group, but it also made me seem intelligent and very knowledgeable in the area of websites. As mentioned above, they obviously noticed this.

Try and Sneak Something Else In

When you are in the interview/meeting, try and slip something else into the conversation. For example, when I was in mine yesterday, we had to present some ways of helping the company top Google, to do this we took some screenshots of the web master tools and analytics. For the web master tools I took the screenshots of the stats from my niche, cat, and website. When looking at this webpage it set the business owners laughing and intrigued to why I had a website like this. Because of this interest I was able to tell them why I set up the website and why on such a weird topic. They seemed impressed. Not only did they see that I had skilled in getting website up to the top of Google, but they saw that I had a mind for making money, which for a business is everything.

What I’m trying to put across from this point is, even if it is nothing to do with the actual interview or meeting, always try and slip another one of your skills in and show it off. The more skills you have, the more chance they are to give you’re the job.

For this article I started off with the simple, obvious point, but have moved onto some quite unusable ways of conducting yourself within an interview. Why have I made these points? As I mentioned before, people who stand-out get jobs, so be one of those people!