At an interview you must be passionate about what you do

Offer solutions to their problems and above all research company and offer some info showing you have been on their website, looked at LinkedIn members anything to show you have taken time to do your research

The interviewer will decide very early if you can fit in with his/her working enviroment so must be smiling pleasant and alert to questions

always finish with a couple of questions and ensure you tell them you are very interested in the role and hope to hear from them soon, thanks them for thier time and offer a firm handshake when you leave

I am sure you know all this but if you are getting interviews something is correct

good luck
Alan

Derek B

In some ways, being a candidate in a competitive job interview is similar to going to a dance hall in a small town in the 1950s when the lights fail: regulations on what is 'normal' is almost anyone's guess.
Actually, in relation to interviewing, there has been a lot of reliable research to assist selectors but quite how that relates to the dance hall metaphor I'm still trying to figure out.

The point is that it's almost impossible for a candidate to know how competent interviewers are in making decisions that serve the best needs of their company; even the best make mistakes, which includes failing to select the most suitable candidate, but are rarely likely to know till it's too late.

Here are a couple of readable titles about being a candidate, written by people familiar with research on selection interviewing:

'Answering Tough Interview Questions for Dummies', R Yeung. John Wiley, 2009

'You're Hired! Interview Answers: Brilliant Answers to Tough Interview Questions'. C Roderic. Trotman. 2010

Both are inexpensive and available on Amazon.

Hi
Over a two year period I applied for over 30 health and safety job roles, got 8 interviews which resulting in eventually being offered a position with a national company.
I initially put this done to luck and being in the right place at the right time, even though a bit of that could possibly be true, after being at the company for a couple of months I asked one of the managers who was on my interview panel, the question “why did you pick me out of the other candidates”
This was his answer “before we advertised the position we had a few meetings and decided what we required, such things as qualifications, previous experience, had the candidate worked within a similar sector, had he experienced similar issues before and how did he handle them, what could he bring to the table, how much research had he done into this company, and why did he want to work for this organisation”
Pretty basic stuff really, but it emphasised to me that if you are looking for a new job role you need to do your homework, research research research the company and find out what they want from you.
Before I went to the first interview I was informed who would be interviewing me even this was a case for research (I even looked them all up on Linkedin, to give me a little bit more insight)
I checked out the company’s website and visited some of the company’s retail outlets. I found out they had a Facebook page for the company and I checked this out to give me a feel for the culture of its employees.
So my advice is ,if you get that interview really prepare well for it, find out what the interview panel are looking for and develop your strategy around it.
Good luck
Steve W