Research by Perry and Goldberg in 1998 suggested that interview preparation is important because their study showed that when recruiters were asked about college students they interviewed, interviewing skills surpassed the students’ background or experience in recruiter assessments of the likelihood that their companies would consider hiring a given student. We can then speculate that students (and other job candidates) who have better interview skills than others may have dedicated more effort to interview preparation than others.

Most career experts agree that few interviewees prepare adequately for interviews. In 1995, Barone and Switzer went so far as to note that, while college students spend in excess of 4,000 hours studying and attending class to prepare for their career, the average interviewee spends less than an hour preparing for a job interview. These experts also agree on the reason for the lack of preparation: job-seekers have no idea what questions will be asked in interviews, so they assume there is no way to prepare. Finally, career authors agree that this typical job-seeker rationale for lack of preparation is faulty because interview questions, or at least general areas of interview questions, actually can be predicted to some degree, and lists of frequently asked interview questions are available in any number of books, articles, and on numerous Web sites. See, for example, the Interview Question Database and lists of interview questions.

Agreeing that it is impossible to predict exactly what questions a given interviewer will ask of a job-seeker, interviewing guru Carole Martin nevertheless notes that “the secret to success in any interview is preparation.” Author Tom Washington points out that since so few job-seekers prepare for interviews, those who do will “gain a real edge over others through preparation.”

Career experts are virtually unanimous in their view that responses to interview questions should not be memorized but should be prepared, in some fashion, ahead of time.

Since you know that lists of typical interview questions are widely available, you can review them to gain an idea of what types of information the interviewer likely seeks. Taking this advice a step further, you can use these question lists to organize your thoughts about high points you want to share with employers and develop a list of the characteristics that might be needed for success in the position for which you are interviewing. You can then craft stories about these characteristics using the guidelines in Chapter 2. You can also engage in verbal mock or rehearsal interviews; however, Janet Emig points out that “writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking.” Thus, writing-as-interview-prep includes these suggestions:

• Writing an autobiography, which can reveal areas that you may not wish to discuss with an interviewer
• Practicing describing yourself by citing professional characteristics with examples from school and work experience
• Writing detailed proof statements/success stories that are tantamount to 30-second commercials about yourself
• Identifying about 30 accomplishments and writing 100-400 word stories on the top 12 of these, followed by isolating skills demonstrated by each accomplishment.

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.