How To Prepare Yourself For a Job Interview
Posted in Interview Preparation
For every job interview, there are several things that you should remember. After you are done reading through this, hopefully you will have a better overview of what exactly the interview is composed of and how you should prepare yourself for that.
Every job announcement or job posting that you will find on the Internet will contain a combination of the job applicant's qualifications, desired skill set, description of the job and other details. You should be able to assess yourself in order to choose the best position that you can apply to.
These particular details may be rephrased by being under headings such as "Duties", "Responsibilities" or "What we're looking for". These are the things that you should be able to read through with much caution because if you miss even one detail, you might just be wasting your time.
It's important that you realize that these are the minimum requirements that you will need if you decide to apply. These are essentially the KSA trinity. KSA stands for Knowledge, Skills and Abilities. One example for such a description is such:
"The ideal candidate that we're looking for possesses managerial skills aside from being an effective communicator. The person possesses excellent leadership and interpersonal competence. The candidate should be able to work well with a team as well as work on his or her own without supervision. It is important that the person is able to promote teamwork with the different members of the team, have a solid foundation with customer orientation and is very receptive to people in working for a solution to problem within the team..."
Within the above description, you will find that you have a lot of words and key phrases that you need to look out for when you're applying for a job. These key words are what you call the KSA which stands for knowledge, skills and abilities.
These are the things that you will need in order for you to be able to be at least considered for the job position. It is so important that it has been defined in The Federal Personnel Manual as "the factors that identify the better candidates from a group of persons basically qualified for a position."
There is nothing father from the truth because KSAs are the qualities that an interviewer will first look at. Knowledge pertains to the information that is directly applied to the performance of a specific job. Skills are essentially learned acts in which the applicant is good at. An example of this in the above job posting is "managerial skills".
Other skills might include operating a personal computer or using a firearm. As long as it is a specialized ability that is learned, then it is considered a skill. Finally, abilities are the performance of behavior that you are able to witness. In the description above, being an effective communicator implies that you have the ability of communications.
These are the different sets of the qualifications that you should be aware of if you will be applying for a job position one of these days. Knowing these things will give you an edge as well as confidence in what you will say. Be prepared and reap the benefits.
