Winning Job Interviews: Reduce Interview Anxiety / Outprepare the Other Candidates / Land the Job You Love

by Paul Powers

In this easy-to-follow, step-by-step book, author, psychologist, and career expert Dr. Paul Powers shows job hunters how to find and land a job they love. Winning Job Interviews demystifies job interviewing, explains why the process actually favors the job hunter, and shows how you can dramatically improve your interviewing success. Winning Job Interviews is packed with insider tips Dr. Paul has learned from over 20 years of working with job hunters, career changers, employment managers, outplacement specialists, and executive recruiters. You will learn how * Overcome the "deadly dozen" roadblocks to effective job hunting. * Out-prepare your competition. * Predict 90% of the questions you'll be asked. * Always have a fail-safe answer for even the toughest question. * Use time-tested, super sales techniques to subtly pave the road to the job offer you want. Packed with solid, practical information and laced with both humor and "kick in the pants" motivation, Winning Job Interviews is the book you wished you had before your last interview.

Genres: Business, Self Help

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Dr. Paul Powers is a management psychologist, executive coach, and career expert, and a former US Marine. He formerly served as chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Psychologists, and received his degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. Powers also helped to found the Management Corps for the Emerging East, a nonprofit initiative to send American business volunteers to work in enterprises of the republics of the former Soviet Union to assist in their transition to a free market economy with hands-on management skills and techniques. He speaks widely on career matters, and was a co-host of CareerTalk, a call-in show on a major Boston radio station.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished it. Always a good feeling to get through something you never thought you would. I always appreciate books written by psychologists, as they look at things from different angles (at least there's a great attempt to), leaving nothing to chance. When Dr Powers says he wants to help you win it, it's definitely not a false promise!

I really like the wittiness as well as the insights presented. I haven't looked at the toolkits, but I'm sure i'll get it done. What I took home? Look at an interview as a [b]business meeting[/b] and not a grilling session. Yes, perspective, perspective. Business interviews are much calmer, and you discuss the details of the agreement.

Another good takeaway, from the last chapter: Train yourself to see the positives, so that the fog of uncertainty, anxiety and rejection will evaporate before your eyes into the warmth of realistic optimism.

What else? Really liked his energy charts, of aggressiveness, assertiveness, and passiveness. Not everyone can gauge their energy projection, however.

It's good to actually let these facts marinate, and forget about them during your interview, so it becomes part of your (untouched) subconscious, because if one is wary of the lil details and constantly in a flurry of nitpickiness, it will come across as non-composed.

Overall liking how he helps the reader prepare for their interview. Reading, practicing, leaving nothing to chance, familiarization, preparedness... It's actually quite a tall order to meet the expectations of the book, BUT methinks this book can get you through a higher level interview where you truly want to leave NOTHING to chance! Bravo!

Okay. I was supposed to give this 5 stars. It is a 5 star book because it helped me more than expected. However this was written in an American context, and thus all those local tips did not apply fully to me. However, I'd give it 4.9 stars :)

[Karen Rowe]

A friend gave me this book to read because I've been in a job for eight years that I've been happy with for six of the years and not so much that last two. I was browsing the newspaper...I know kinda old fashioned...for a spark of inspiration to move on when I spoke with her about my discontentment and she recommended this book.

Dr. Paul Powers gave me the confidence that I needed to get out there dispite what I viewed as many flaws in my past career experience. The biggest one was losing 13 years because I chose to stay home and raise my children. My husband read it and became inspired to begin looking too. Since he's been self employeed for 20 years or so, it was difficult for him to see what he had to offer the work place. Furthermore, my friend did a lot of job hopping and was fired from one job. She's has no problem scoring job interviews/offers. Her bother has a felony charge, served five years in prison, read the book and now is employeed. Any other road blocks in your mind?

This is not a magic wand...you have to work at it, but you know the saying, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" If you apply the principles and prepare, it is difficult to fail at this. Powers has detailed action items to overcome all objections an employer may have in hiring you. My only problem with this book is that its so "meaty" with information, but its a easy read too. I wished I had learned about it a year before my serious job search began. What I knew or didn't know about the interview process was a lot and I couldn't process all the encouraging information fast enough before I had a pre-screen interview. I made some mistakes but Dr. Power's has the tools you need to learn to overcome them. He helps you get past the two worst feelings was all have FEAR and FEAR of FAILURE.

This book is a MUST read for all college students as well.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was interesting because it approaches interviews from the prespective of a salesman. There were many things that I kind of skipped over, but I liked the advice it gave on "looking for objections" and "closing the interview". Interviews for teaching are unlike any others, so when I looked over the list of interview questions at the end, I knew I would never ever hear any of those questions in teaching interviews. However, it did make me more aware of thinking of all possible questions beforehand and having a personal answer to each. It is worth reading if you want to improve interview skills.

[ReadHowYouWant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fast-paced, with no fluff, this book shows you how to have a great answer for the most difficult interview questions, social networking mistakes that will hurt your job hunt and career, and more. Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, praised that Winning Job Interviews “prepares success-minded people for that crucial encounter with great advice, helpful tips and…a winning attitude.”

[Linn Browning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thoroughly unimpressed. This book covered some interesting things but didn't really answer many of the question I had about what to expect in interviews. Most of the advice was common sense material.

[Stephen Chung · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent motivational book.

[Mike Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good place to start. I liked the section on references. The author makes some good recommendations. Otherwise, much of the rest of the book is pretty commonsensical.