Job interview tips: what are the most common mistakes candidates make?

Recruiters are involved in dozens of job interviews a week. So it’s really easy for them to identify the main mistakes that candidates make and share job interview tips that will help to avoid them. As a profession, recruitment requires great attention to detail, so even small mistakes in job interviews are spotted and recorded by recruitment company. Here are the 4 most common mistakes made by candidates in job interviews in Lithuania:

1. Unspecific motivation

Candidates often state that they want to change jobs, but the mistake is that they are talking about what is not suitable for the current position rather than what is of interest for the proposed job. This way, the recruiter understands that the candidate is probably motivated to leave their current job rather than specifically move into the role on offer. Such communication greatly diffuses the employer’s motivation to hire the candidate, as it is not entirely clear that the candidate is not just looking to go anywhere but to the employer on offer.

2. No questions asked

Once the position has been presented, however thoroughly, the recruiter usually expects professional questions from the candidate. Without these, he/she may usually question the candidate’s competence in the required field. After all, if the candidate is a marketing manager, then he or she should certainly have questions about budgets, working with marketing agencies, the use of digital marketing, the target group of consumers, e-commerce channel marketing, etc. Recruiters tend to know a good field manager or specialist by their precise and well-formulated questions. If this is not the case, the candidate’s abilities are seriously questioned.

3. Too low or high self-confidence

Candidates who are already clear before the interview are treated with caution. Recruitment becomes very difficult when a candidate has 100% confidence, as it becomes difficult to see how much knowledge the candidate really has in the right area. Confidence can and does develop during a job interview, but overconfidence is a source of mistrust for recruiters. Similarly, the same is true for mistrust, especially when the recruiter is aware that the candidate is a good fit. This is very detrimental to the candidate, because the recruiter then starts to think that he or she has misjudged something, because the candidate keeps reminding him or her that he or she has not done anything before and that the challenge would probably be too difficult for them.

4. Egocentricity

However much the candidate wants to emphasise his/her achievements, time should also be given to talk about them to the employer. The employer should not feel that the candidate has done everything many times over and far better than the employer. Recruiters value candidates who can appreciate certain problems in the employer’s processes and know how they can be solved, but this should not sound like a way of extolling one’s own achievements over someone else’s problems.

In the course of a job interview, it is important to keep track of your actions and critically evaluate them in order to achieve a better result at the next interview. So, job interviews, like work, need practice. It is naive to expect that going to a few job interviews a year will give you that practice. So, even if you are not actively looking for a new position, it is worth trying out job interview tips that were mentioned from time to time just for the practice. This way, if there is a sudden need, you can immediately feel confident to apply for the best position.