If you wouldn’t hire you, why would anyone else?

When researching improvements to your interviewing skills, you may sometimes receive common answers to frequently-asked interview questions. Let me say this straight out: interviewers can almost always see through canned answers. When you’re applying to a job, your focus shouldn’t be on trying to game the system with old strategies, it should be to market your most vital of products: yourself.

Ask yourself this: if you were hiring for a position, and someone came to your office that clearly had no confidence in their ability to do the specified job, would you hire them? No, obviously not. Confidence and earnestness are big factors in the hiring process. If you think you deserve to have the job, you gotta learn how to project that feeling outwards. You’re not just applying for the sake of applying, you want this job, you can do this job, and you can do your best at it.

Before any interview, try to psyche yourself up a bit. Remember, you’re not asking if you could maybe have a job, you’re telling them “hey, I’m a proud, hard worker with the right skills to really make this job my own, and you could use a person like me!” Tell yourself, over and over if necessary, that you can get this job because you are worth hiring.

In an interview, its just you and an interviewer. Nobody else is there to advocate for you, so it’s up to you to put your best foot forward and really make yourself shine as a potential asset. Don’t just list a few bullet points, really make yourself professionally attractive. Make ’em say “whoa, we gotta get this person on staff pronto!”