Top 6 qualities of a good job interview candidate

 The big question in any interviewee’s mind is “What are managers looking for during a job interview?”

This is a very hard question to answer for every other interviewer because each of them have different expectations in a candidate.

Listed below are six qualities that generally make a good interview candidate:

1. Self Confidence – Candidates must be sure of what they are doing, and to show this one must answer questions articulately while stating facts as they are. This will involve saying no to something you do not know.  A candidate with low self confidence will run into situations where he won’t take risks or make “the tough calls” just because he is afraid of being wrong.

2. Common Sense – Many at times, candidates need to make decisions based on incomplete pieces of information and the only way to succeed in this task is by having a good level of intelligence and common sense.  Every candidate does not need to be a genius (it won’t hurt either), but the candidate needs to at least display the ability to think and reach conclusions even when he doesn’t have all the data in his hands by extrapolating and “tying loose ends” in order to draw for himself a clearer and bigger picture.

3. Communication Skills – This is a must for most jobs. Good communication is the ability to explain and communicate an idea to someone who is not in your immediate working context.  This is even more imperative of a candidate who needs to explain non-trivial things like tests, and even potential risks related to the technical tasks they can perform to people that will need to make important decisions based on these explanations.

4. Knowledge (basic or advanced) of his subject - If you want to be a good candidate make sure to understand what an interview is about (at least in theory!!!).  Today there is no excuse for not having some idea about the principles surrounding interviews since everything (literally everything!) can be found on the Internet by doing a quick Google search. 

5. Some Knowledge of the Company they are Interviewing for – As an HR executive, it may sound strange but you always want to know the person in front of you is curious enough to learn (even a little) about the company they are interviewing for.  In the mind of an interviewer anyone who comes to a company without knowing their basic business is not interested enough in order to get the job at hand.

6. Truthfulness – This last one is maybe the most important one, an HR executive needs to trust the person in front of him/her.  If during the interview he reaches a conclusion that you are making things up and lying just to please him then he won’t be able to trust you in the future.

HR will always be willing to compromise on some of the other attributes as long as they feel the person in front of them will be able to fill the gaps by investing his time and efforts, but if someone is not truthful then they won’t be able to trust him or his work.

Lastly, and to make sure you have the whole picture, there are always extra-points for technical knowledge in the field in question, and this may even be a requisite if they are looking for an expert in a specific field but most of the times this is one of the attributes with less weight in any interviews.