The Interview Book: Your Definitive Guide to the Perfect Interview Technique

by James Innes, Jeoff Innes

The Interview Book is the definitive manual of interview preparation and technique, written by James Innes, the Founder and Managing Director of The CV Centre the UK's leading CV consultancy based on his many years' hands-on experience within careers consultancy. The advice given is tried, tested and proven on a daily basis within The CV Centre. The Interview Book takes the reader through planning, preparing and organising a winning strategy on to an explanation of the various different interview scenarios and how to handle them. There's an extensive analysis of the different questions you might get asked and this is followed by a key feature of the book nothing quite like it exists in competing titles a section covering the 15 most common interview mistakes and, most importantly, precisely how to avoid them. The book concludes with advice on how to proceed after the interview how to close the deal. Companion www.ineedacv.co.uk/readertools

Genres: Nonfiction, Communication

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2009

Reviews

[Robert Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read in as many days on the subject of interviews, the first being 'Successful Interviews In a Week'.

This one was twice the length, so I thought it would be more in-depth, but this didn't turn out to be the case. About 25% of the pages are either blank, have just a couple of lines of text at the end of chapters, contain chapter titles alone, or part titles alone (32 chapters and 5 parts - you do the maths). If I had bought the book with my own money, I would have felt a bit short changed - yay for libraries.

The author has a great voice - the voice of authority. He has the kind of tone that gains your confidence that he knows what he is talking about; both because he has been interviewed many times himself and because he has conducted interviews. He owns 'the UK's leading CV consultancy' so I guess he should know what he's talking about.

The style is therefore authoritative, clear and simple. This is a book that it's easy to get to grips with and derive benefit from.

Much of the content consists of example after example of interview questions, meanings behind these questions, instructions for answering and suggested answers - in fact just about every question I could think of (and more) were covered in this volume. And if this wasn't enough - there are more questions listed, but the explanations and suggestions for answering them are on the author's website. I can't help thinking though that if less white space were used in this book, then all the questions could have been fitted into one volume.

The biggest learning point from this book, and the previous one, and I suppose the next 3 as well, is that as well as reading these books, you have to sit down, look through your own experience and work out answers to all these questions yourself.

All these books have their place - but there's just no substitute for working through your own stuff.

[Lee Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a useful and comprehensive book with plenty of good ideas to help you prepare, carry out and follow up interviews effectively. There's a lot of information on how to make a good impression and effectively handle tricky questions.

A book has to be truly exceptional for me to rate it as a 5, but this misses out from being a 4 as a lot of the material in it is stating the blindingly obvious. That said, it's a straightforward and helpful read that can help you go into an interview well-prepared and confident.

[Trung Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly like part 3, the interview questions. The examples give me a good sense of what the answer may look like.

[Makubutu Nonkululeko Lekota · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book discusses the different type of interviews. It was my first introduction to panel interviews was in this book. I also learnt about how panel interviews are carried out. I attended a few panel interviews since my 20's, some were successful and others were unsuccessful. If you are new to the workforce I strongly recommend this book.