Office 2010 Professional blog researchbeforeinterv

Congratulations! So you’ve made it past the initial resume review and you’re being called in for those important next steps. There are a few days between now and then, and anxiety is building in anticipation. You want to do well in your interview, and in this economy you know that it’s tougher than ever to stand out amongst the crowd. So what do you do? Time to channel that energy into something productive!Read the job description: I know, as I said in my last post, I’m not a big fan of job descriptions (JDs). It’s just the nature of the beast – how much information can you really fit in a few short paragraphs anyway? It’s an overview at best: a window into your potential new job. But this doesn’t mean it should be overlooked! No! You should carefully read through the JD to understand the role, requirements, and the team & product, and then relate this back to your experience. Know the role: SDE, SDET, PM? What do they each do, and what is unique about each? The job description will give you a basic understanding for your potential new responsibilities. SDETs for example,Office 2010 Professional, are responsible for owning the quality of their feature and developing test tools and test automation that really digs into the code and finds issues. There are a variety of resources (the Careers site, JobsBlog, Bing) that can help you to understand the role you’re interviewing for and prep accordingly. Research the team & product: In my experience, the team and product are often overlooked by potential candidates. Again, from my last post, it’s important that if you’re interviewing for a product-focused team that you download the product, try it out, and as one commenter mentioned, really put some thought into how you would test it. Visualize yourself actually working on this product. Is it something you see yourself doing? I would even suggest taking this further and also researching what competitors the product has, trying out those products and coming in prepared with ideas & comments. Prepare to relate: Once you understand the role and the team & product, you should be prepared to relate your experience with anecdotes that highlight your qualifications. This shouldn’t focus on buzzwords from your resume or the job description, but real stories about your previous work: the areas you owned, the technologies you worked with, and the challenges you overcame. You may only get the opportunity to tell one or two of these types of stories – so choose well! The last thing I’ll mention is to take advantage of your recruiter and not be afraid to ask questions. In a lot of ways, your recruiter is your advocate for the position you’re interviewing for and is usually a great resource for clarifying details of the job description, role, and the team & product...and if they don’t know the answer, they usually can help point you in the right direction! Good luck! -Kenji