At interviews, you will probably be asked questions that fall into the following three categories.

Experience Questions.
Detail Questions.
Hypothetical Questions.

How should you prepare for these questions?

1.  Come with examples.  Don’t just say you have a skill, show and describe it with an anecdote.

2.  Come with questions.  Bring a few questions about the company or job.  Usually interviews end with an opportunity to ask questions, so be prepare to ask something.

3.  Practice.  Run through questions on your own or with a friend.  It will help you stay on point during the interview.

Cover letters are your chance to narrate your work history.  Think of the resume as raw data and the cover letter as the presentation.  It gives you the chance to highlight or de-emphasize information, as well as add your voice to your application.

Cover letters should be concise, but they should also reveal your point of view.  Answer these questions to make a powerful impression.

Paragraph 1:        What is your interest in this job?
                               How will you help the company or excel in the position? 
                               What makes you shine?

Paragraph 2:        What is your most relevant work experience?
                               How does your work history prepare your for this job?
                               What have you learned from your previous jobs?

Paragraph 3:        How can they reach you?
                               When should they call you?

In general, American companies want brief and precise explanations of your qualifications.  As a result, they tend to ask for a fairly formulaic outline.  They want to know your educational background, work experience, and references.  How do you make your resume stand out even though it is following a formula?  Live by these tips.

1.  Keep it to one page.  It may be tempting to add the details of your work history and go over the page limit, but it is not a good idea.  You are likely competing with many applicants and the reviewers want to get to the point.  Instead opt to highlight the most relevant information and leave the rest for the interview.

2.  Use active verbs.  Basically, this means stay away from the common verbs do, have, and be.  Choose verbs that are more powerful and descriptive.  Find out more about active verbs here.

3.  Match your verb forms.  In other words, don’t forget parallelism.  This means that when you list your job duties, use the same verb tense.  Don’t switch between the present, past, and gerund forms.  It also means that you need to start each bullet point with a verb.

4.  Tailor your resume to the job.  It is a good idea to have a comprehensive resume that you can adapt to individual jobs.  Take out points that are irrelevant and let the important details shine through.


Teachers can find more job hunting lesson plans here.

Here is one more chance to explain graphs.  Remember to take your time and point out any relevant details.  You can post your explanations in comment box below.

As you can see, there are a few charts and graphs here that need to be explained.  How should you start?  If you remember from the previous blog post, you should going  through the following steps will help you come up with a clear and precise explanation.

     1.  Introduce the topic and name of the chart or graph.

     2.  Point out the significance of each axis and any markers inside the chart.  In
          other words, explain the symbols on the page.

    3.  Mention trends and draw conclusions.

    4.  Restate the main information provided by the graph or chart.


That’s all there is to it!  Why don’t you try it with the graphs above?