(Courtesy of Project Ezrah) Your resume is ready. Are you?

We see it all the time—people spend hours reviewing and editing their resume. They will even pay a service to write their resume. Yet, when it comes time to prepare for the interview, there is much less of an investment.

Once a job seeker has a resume to send out, the time to prepare for the interview is right then, not when they are called to be scheduled for the interview. Ninety percent of the questions that will be asked on an interview we know today. Therefore, it is best to prepare for these questions early on and to perfect your presentation. Know your strengths and weaknesses—don’t be surprised if asked about the gap on your resume or the absence of a required job skill.

In preparing for the interview, put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager or recruiter and ask yourself the questions that they would ask. Provide an answer that will make them feel comfortable in your abilities and knowledge that you bring to the job. An effective way to prepare is to digitally record your answers to the expected questions, then listen to your answer and record it again. It’s amazing how in a relatively short time, your answers will improve dramatically. You will recognize how you can improve your answers just by listening to yourself, adjusting how you say what you want to convey and how you can leave out irrelevant information.

On Wednesday evening, July 24, Project Ezrah will be hosting a seminar on interview preparation with Jordan Rockowitz. Jordan is a highly experienced executive recruiter who has placed many financial professionals at top-tier institutions. He prides himself on a focused approach that provides his clients and candidates with very real and meaningful interviews at an early point in the search.

Jordan presented for Project Ezrah once before and all who attended left with pages of notes and immediate high-impact tools on how to better their interview technique.

As a previous executive recruiter and now the director of employment at Project Ezrah, I recall how several Tier 1 candidates, who you would think didn’t need to prepare, actually spent a good deal of time preparing for an interview. There are two occasions that I am reminded of. I was preparing a candidate for a VP of finance role at Random House and another for the CAO position at Geller & Co.. Both candidates were phenomenal professionals and amazing communicators. They taught me that even the best invest much time and energy in preparing for an interview. This is something I am always stressing to candidates. We never know where or when the interview will happen but we are hoping there will be one soon and the best step to take today is to be ready for when that interview happens.

In this one-hour presentation you will learn how to:

– Feel more confident on interviews

– Secure more callbacks

– Increase your offers

– Accept more rewarding positions with higher pay

Join us on July 24 to get strong, concrete methods on how best to impress on your next interview. The second workshop of the summer series will be on Tuesday evening, August 20th with Rachel Fuld Cohen. For more information, please email [email protected].