A very important thing that interviewers look for during interviews is an intangible feature called culture fit.
Every organization has a culture, and a large part of your success or failure in that organization depends on whether your personal values match the culture of the organization or not.
Now, we don’t recommend changing your personal values to cater to the culture of the organization you are interviewing for. It will not work out in the long term, and you will feel miserable working there.
However, a cheerful, memorable disposition is a trait that all organizations look for (who wants to work with a worry wart?)
You can establish that during the interview by these steps:
- Don’t make the interview a monotonous question-and-answer session. Use tidbits from your research about the interviewer to coax him into talking more about his role at the company and his interests. Make him open up to you and relax. After all, interviewers can be nervous too!
- Use the bookend effect (this is where people tend to remember vividly what came first and what happened most recently) to your advantage. Open the conversation with an interesting observation about the office/ company, and close the interview with an interesting question about the interviewer, like his hobbies or his most recent success at work.
- Remember to smile – this may seem like a silly rule, but it’s very important. Most of us tend to look extremely serious and anxious during interviews, because we are constantly trying to remember our answers, think through them, or anticipate questions. While engaged in such thoughts, we often forget to relax and appear friendly. And it shows on our faces. The best way to counter this is to actively force ourselves to smile every once in a while during the interview.
Remember, culture fit is also a function of how much you make the interviewer want to work with you.
All the best!
