Selling Yourself in the Job Interview 141
crew at night. Whatever you do need never show up on your
resumé.
There is no such thing as a demeaning job; there are only
people who consider themselves too good to do certain kinds of
work. Overqualified, yes. Demeaning, no.
Once you have the right attitude about a job interview, there
are certain strategies you can use both on your resumé and during
the interview itself that will go a long way toward guaranteeing
your success.
Primary interview objectives
Identify your strongest skills or areas of experience
Most of us are not totally one-dimensional. Unless we’re just
starting out in a career search or have had highly specialized tech-
nical careers, we probably have several strong suits. It’s not un-
usual for someone to be skilled and have a background in more
than one area:
- Planning.
- Organization.
- Production management.
- Personnel management.
- Budget and financial planning.
- System design.
- Sales.
- Marketing.
- Training and development.
- Editing.
- Public relations.
- Communications.
Analyze your work history to pinpoint precisely the central,
basic categories of your skills and experience rather than the spe-
cific duties of a job you’ve held.
For example, you were an analyst/administrator of the XYZ
Corporation rather than program officer in charge of impact state-
ments for the office of Environmental Compliance.