Job Interview Preperation for Your Child

Next week, your teen might attend his or her first job interview in the life. He or she might look nervous and the atmosphere of home turns intense. Hey, don't be panic, read the following tips which might give you some good ideas for well-preparing your teen for the first job interview.

1- Rehearse an interview with your teen.

In the rehearsal, you may play the role of an interviewer. You may conduct the rehearsals in several different scenarios: positive, negative or embarrassing atmosphere. According to your own past interview experience, you might give your teen some useful advices on how to deal with the unexpected difficult situations. In fact, both of your failure and success experience can be very precious preparation source for your child, because you can give your teen a hint about what to do or what not to do in the interview.

For the rehearsal, you can also prepare some interview questions for practicing together with your child. The scope of the questions should cover the points that may interest the future interviewer such as the candidate personality, job proficiency and team spirit, etc. You might tutor your teen in finding the answers to the questions. It doesn't mean you will design an answer for your child. But you can offer some good tips, depending on your own experience. For example, when your child has no idea about certain question, you can inspire him or her with your own story.

Due to the lack of experience, question rehearsal is always a very necessary part of the interview preparation. The non-experienced young candidate might easily get lost in an interview just because of one or two difficult questions.

2- Teach your teen how to deal with the questions he or she doesn't know how to answer.

In fact, no matter how much time you spend on preparing the questions with your teen. He or she might still encounter some questions he or she can't answer in the real interview. For example, the interviewer may question your teen about some technology that he or she never heard before. In this situation, your teen should always stay calm and confident. He or she might tell the interviewer honestly that he or she doesn't know exactly the answer, but he or she is willing and capable to learn the new knowledge very quickly.

3- Help your teen to choose an interview dress.

In fact, about how to dress your teen for an interview, it depends on what kind of job your teen applies for. For an office job, he might dress the well-cut suit like the others; for a labor job, he might choose something more casual. No matter how he dresses, he should build a confident and reliable image for his potential employer.

4- Encourage your teen to have great confidence in himself.

As we know, every interviewer love to see a confident candidate and sometimes they will use a candidate's interview attitude to estimate his or her future working attitude and stress-handling capacity.

Thus, as parents, you have the responsibility to help your teen to build or enforce his or her confidence. You should tell your teen that: he or she is always the best in your mind. You strongly believe that he or she will do well in the interview.