Skip to content

Essential Job Interview Tips for New College Graduates (Part 1 of 2)

If you’ve recently graduated from college, you should be very proud of this accomplishment.

That being said, now you have to take the next big step for your career: landing an actual job.

This shouldn’t worry you, though. If you plan ahead, job interviews can actually be enjoyable. Of course, they can also lead to a promising job.

By implementing just a handful of job interview tips, you should feel far more confident about this essential step.

Some Job Interview Tips Every College Graduate Needs to Follow

The prospect of an upcoming job interview can be nerve-racking, but it doesn’t have to be. If you focus on the following job interview tips, you should feel much more confident about it and perform better, as well.

Prepare for the Typical Interview Questions

One of the most important job interview tips we can give you is to prepare for the questions by actually practicing your answers well before the employer actually asks you the questions.

Many of them will have to do with the job itself and your area of expertise, so be sure to brush up on your work-related knowledge.

However, there are also some tried-and-true interview questions you can expect to hear.

These include:

  • Tell me about a time you failed and what you did about it
  • Tell me about yourself
  • What are some of your greatest accomplishments?
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  • Why do you want this job?
  • Why do you want to work for this company?

The vast majority of interviewers know that these questions are extremely common across almost every industry. They still ask them, because the answers are considered that important.

Given how common they are, they’ll also expect that a well-prepared candidate won’t need a lot of time to respond, which makes it all the more important that you practice your answers before the interview.

Make Sure You Know Where It’s Happening

It probably goes without saying that you do not want to be late for your job interview. That’s why most people double-check to make sure they have the address right and might even look it up on Google Maps the night before.

Unless you’re incredibly familiar with the area, though, consider actually doing a test-run to follow those directions before the day of the interview.

You might find that there’s a tricky turn that’s easy to miss or the building’s addresses become tough to follow. You could also discover that there’s roadwork Google Maps doesn’t know about.

Taking a quick trial run will tell you exactly when you need to leave for your job interview and should also help calm your nerves the day of, as you’ll know where you need to be and what time you have to leave to show up well beforehand.

Need More Job Interview Tips?

At IntelliTec, we pride ourselves on not just training our students in the skills they’ll need to find an enjoyable career but also in helping them plan for these all-important interviews. While we hope the above job interview tips for new college graduates, our career services department is always available to students who are preparing for this next step.

If you’d like to learn more about how IntelliTec can help you train for a promising career in a field you love, please contact us today.