The Career & Get a Job Tip Series: Post #3 "Interview Prep"

Preparing for a Job Interview

Today's tip should be basic knowledge -- yet it remains surprising how many people don't research either the company or the interviewer well enough before the interview.  In the world of social networks and search, this simple act has never been easier or more revealing!

As the must-read and timeless book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" points out, most people cherish the opportunity to talk about themselves, and they love the sound of their own name. If you communicate in a manner which leverages this human trait, you will connect better with your target audience.

When applying that tip to an interview, that means, if interviewing with Mary Jones at BALL, Inc., -- you'll have a better ability to connect with Mary and the people of BALL, if you talk about them! (In my view, interviews really are not about you ... they are about what you can do for them/their company!) How do you do that?  You invest time to learn about them, and their interests.

 

Today's tip comes from Mitch Schneir, a top notch recruiter within EMC's RSA Security Division.

Always do research when preparing for an interview. Start off by searching the web for the company home page, LinkedIn, industry sites, and bing.com to name a few.  While searching a company’s home page read about the products, customers, job openings, white papers, profiles of the Board Members, as well as the Management team and don’t forget press releases. Press Releases are very important because it will provide you names of key employees, competitors, and industry experts that you can then research and find more information about.

All this information gives you a good insight into what the company does, what their products do, what they are known for, what they have done in the past, and what they plan to do in the future.  This will help you during your interview when you are asked “What do you know about us?  This will also help you with questions you will need to ask at the end of the interview about the company and/or the interviewer.  It helps you find out who the players are and where they come from.  Take advantage of this information and research all the names. 

LinkedIn will give you insight into the person’s background, personally and professionally. Research who they are connected to, what groups they belong to, what blogs they subscribe to and who recommended them.  The better educated you are about the interviewer and the company; the better your position will be in the interview process.

If you, or a friend, are an engineer looking for a new opportunity, Mitch has some terrific openings right now within our hot security division in San Mateo, RTP North Carolina, and Bedford, Mass. (details below).

For anyone looking for a job, this site is a MUST -- it is a live, easy-search listing of every one of EMC's job openings by category and location.

Note: I am not a recruiter. My interest in sharing these tips is that I think they are topical, can be helpful to others, and if they happen to put EMC on the radar of some amazing talent -- this is goodness too! Everyone should be in the business of connecting with great talent and I can't help but notice we have a ton of openings.

-------------------- Talk Back ---------------------

What are your best Interview Prep tips?

Have you used LinkedIn or other research tools to get to know your interviewer's work and perspectives, as well as those of the company?

A friend of mine, a VP at a high tech company, loves to tell the story of how she ended up hiring her Operations Director.  As a candidate, the individual researched the VP and discovered she was a member of certain professional groups, as well as passionate soccer player.  As a result, they were able to make some immediate connections. The hiring VP was impressed with the extra effort made and the up-to-date skills this candidate displayed. It helped seal the deal.

- Polly Pearson
http://www.pollypearson.com
http://twitter.com/pollypearson
http://twitter.com/emccareers
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Mitch's current openings:

44466BR – Bedford, MA - Senior Software Engineer, This is a position is great for someone that wants to combined their creative side and technical side.  Here is your opportunity to work on an engineering team developing the GUI front-end for RSA’s  state of the art product “Authentication Manager”

44474BR – RTP, NC – Senior Partner Engineer – Are you a technical person that likes to talk with customers, does your background include software development, implantation, training, and/or technical support. If you said yes then check out this opportunity it could be the next step in your career

44159BR – San Mateo, CA – Manager, Software Engineering –
44150BR – San Mateo, CA – Senior Software Engineer -
Here the chance to work on one of the hottest product in the security industry today, DLP (Data Loss Prevention) the most important component to DLP is identifying what documents would be considered sensitive versus non-sensitive. Come join our team of experts in building different automated categorization technologies to achieve the highest rates of accuracy.