Dos

• Ask appropriate job-related questions. When the opportunity comes to ask any final question, review your notes, bring up any relevant strengths that have not yet been addressed.
• Show decisiveness. If you are offered the job, react with enthusiasm. Then sleep on it. If it’s possible to do so without making a formal acceptance, lock the job up now and put yourself in control.
• Review the job’s requirements with the interviewer. Match them point by point with your skills and attributes.
• Find out whether this is the only interview. If not, then ask about the interview process.
• Always depart in the same polite and assured manner you entered.

Don’ts

• Don’t discuss salary, holidays or benefits. The timing is wrong. Bringing such topics up before you have an offer is asking what the firm/organisation can do for you – instead you should be saying what you can do for the company.
• Don’t press for an early decision. Avoid using the ‘other-opportunities-have-to-consider’ gambit as leverage if no other offers exist – that annoys the interviewer makes you look foolish and may even force you to negotiate from a position of weakness.
• Don’t show discouragement. Sometimes a job offer can occur on the spot. Usually it does not. So don’t show discouragement which can show a lack of self-esteem and determination. The right image to leave is one of enthusiasm and openness – just the traits you have been projecting throughout the interview.
• Don’t ask for an evaluation of your interview performance. That forces the issue and puts the interviewer in an awkward position.

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