The process of acquiring a new job can be stressful and demoralising. From sending out resumes to attending interviews, being outstanding candidate is essential for you to lock in a job offer and land the role of your dream.  Collectively, we have 55 years of working experience, several career changes and attended plenty of interviews so we have a few job Interview tips up our sleeves. Here we present you 12 Job Interview Hacks That Will Surely Impress Prospective Employers Into Hiring You. These are real-life tips we have learned from all the job interviews  (successes and failures!) we have attended over the course of our career.   #1. Get All Your Ducks in a Row During a job search, you would often attend at least 2 interviews. How often do you bomb the first one and excel the subsequent time. Most of the times you get nervous because you don’t know what to expect.  Here’s the thing,  no matter what the job interview is for (new career, promotion, new industry, new company) they will always ask you the same questions. The only thing that changes are the way they worded the questions. The questions will always revolve around your skills,  ability,  personality and how you handle workplace situations. The most helpful tip is to come up with a set of winning answers. These answers aim to impress the interviewer(s) and make you an outstanding candidate – consistently; every time.  Practice your answer and ad-libbing to suit different scenarios. Repeat it to yourself daily or anyone who would listen until it is embedded in your head. You may have to create and remember a set of 10 to 20 answers, but once you get these down pat; you will pretty much excel in all your interviews! Just remember, the fundamentals are always the same. The narratives will always be about you, your capability and how you can use them to benefit the company. Another helpful tip is, to make sure you bring all your documents with you neatly organised. Using sticky tab to name all your documents prevents that awkward moment where you go through every single one of your certificates finding that one you are looking for (which is usually the second last document..).       #2. Everybody Loves a Good Story People –  even in an interview, loves a good story. I am not asking you to lie, but I am asking you to learn to tell an interesting and compelling story.  Something that shows courage, leadership, problem solving and achievements. Use it to add more dynamic to your answer. You want them to remember you and go “yeah, I like the one who spoke about saving the cat from behind hit by a car, I think we should get him back for a second interview”       #3. The Interview Goes Both Ways Realise that for every job interview you attend,  it is not just about them interviewing you as a suitable future employee. It is also about you interviewing them as a suitable future employer. Candidates need to realize this; you will be spending a 1/3 (or more) of your day,  with a bunch of people at work. It is important that the organisation you choose, will be the best place for you and it will make you happy.       #4. Ask Relevant Questions Candidates worry a lot about the difficult questions they will be asked. This is to the point where they forget that the interview is the best chance for them to find out about the company. As mentioned in #3, you need to be confident enough to ask them relevant and engaging questions. The aim is to show interest and to also assert some control over the interview.  A one-sided interview where you wait for questions to be asked often invite plenty of awkward silence. Which is no fun.  The questions do not have to be amazing. The aim is to engage. Questions like ‘What is the work culture like?’, ‘What is the company’s policy on workplace harassment?’ , ‘What is the employee turnover like in this company ?‘. One of my favourite question to ask the interviewer is ‘How long have you been in this company, and why do you like the most about working here?’. Most interviewers don’t expect to be asked “about them” and I have had some interesting answers. Their answers sort of give me an indication of what working there is going to be like.       #5. Be Yourself This may seem obvious (of course to be yourself, who else right?). That is not exactly what I mean. One of the main thing employers look for in a candidate is the feel of ‘How they would fit into the workplace environment’. While the interviewer would never say what is it like to work there (or over exaggerate the awesomeness), this is something you can gauge during the interview.  This way, you can outshine a certain part of your personality ‘deemed fit’  and suppress the others. Be the best and suitable version of your self, for that job. One of the job interview I attended asked several questions regarding dealing with ‘workplace bitchiness’. The interviewer focused quite a bit on different ‘nasty’ scenarios and how I would deal with it. In most interviews, I always emphasize on my thinking outside the box skills, my strong desire to achieve and to lead. But in this interview, I found myself emphasizing on my ‘no tolerance for bullshit attitude’, which is who I am. After the third scenarios, I came to realise that the management is dealing with lots of harassment, bullying, cattiness and toxic behavior in the organisation. Which to be honest would not bode well with me as I don’t put up with assholes. The interviewer did not seem pleased with my any bull approach answers. I quickly realised that while the job was good on paper, it was not a good fit for me. Surprisingly I was offered the...

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