The First Thing to Say at an Interview
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Congratulations! You have been invited by a prospective employer to an interview. The vast majority of the people applying for the same job opening were not invited, as the typical interviewer selects only a few of the top prospects, based upon a resume, application, or both.

Of course, the first action upon meeting the interviewer, or multiple interviewers, will be an introduction, including exchanging names and handshakes. Old and still solid advice is to have a firm grip during your handshake and look the interviewer in the eyes. Pay attention to the names of the interviewers, and either write the names down or ask for business cards. Getting business cards is preferable, as they can be used later when you are writing your thank-you notes in order to sure of the correct spelling of the names or email addresses of the interviewers. Also, if you get their business cards, you can arrange them in front of you so they match where the people are sitting. That way, you can just glance at the appropriate card and address the interviewer by the correct name.

As soon as possible after the introductions, without interrupting the interviewers and without being obnoxious, ask which feature of your resume or application included you in the small group of applicants who were invited in for the interview. There was something about your resume or application that made you stand out from the other several hundred people who applied for the job. It is a tremendous benefit for you to determine exactly what that item is.

For example, say that you are applying for an accounting position and that your resume includes a couple of times when you were involved in selecting and installing a new computer accounting package. In fact, one of those times you were the project manager for the new software implementation. At the beginning of the interview, when you ask the interviewers which feature of your resume resulted in your invitation, one interviewer may say that your history of participating in two software implementations is very interesting, because they are in the earliest steps of the process to look for a new package at their company. The other interviewer may say that your project management experience interested him.

Let’s take this scenario further. During the interview, one of them may ask what your worst previous work experience was. Your answer might be that during one of the software implementations, there were a few technical difficulties, and you had to deal with the software vendor to help them straighten out a bug in their software. You still completed the implementation project within the deadline, but the software vendor was not as helpful as he could have been. Later, the other interviewer asks you what one of your best experiences was, and you talk for a short time about being a project manager with an exceptionally good group of fellow employees, and how they were instrumental in helping you get the project in before the deadline and below the budgeted amount.

In this scenario, you have just answered two of the interview questions professionally, and you have also linked your answers to the points that they mentioned at the beginning of the interview.

Another way to use what the interviewers said landed you the interview is to ask questions that show your interest in the features that they mentioned. For example, you could express a desire to be the project manager on their new software selection and implementation, or ask if there is any way that you could be involved in that process. You could ask questions about how project teams are selected or assigned, or about how they have determined that their old accounting package needs to be replaced and how the parameters for a new package would be selected.

When you ask at the beginning of the interview why you were one of the few selected from all the applicants for the job, you can tailor some of your responses to their interview questions to reinforce your abilities in the area or areas that were of interest to the interviewers. You can also ask questions that would include their areas of interest. A good interview will evolve into a discussion, rather than being a simple question-and-answer session. You will find out more about your potential co-workers and manager, and the interviewers will learn more about your capabilities.