In my opinion preparation is the key to most things in life and it certainly is for people who want to gain employment.

When I was in my early twenties, I decided to leave the company where I had worked since leaving school. I wanted to become a financial advisor and had already passed all of the relevant examinations. Now all I needed to do, was to a find a company who was willing to take me on.

I decided to join a specialist financial services agency to help me with my search. I had a meeting with a recruitment officer, a person who was going to take on the tricky case that was me. His name was Mark and he was very professional and knew his stuff. He quickly managed to secure me an interview and asked if I would meet him so that I could have a dummy run with him. He was aware that I had not attended an interview for a number of years and probably felt that I needed the practice.

To say that he was not impressed with my interview technique was an understatement and he quickly started to give me advice of where I needed to improve.

Now before I continue and explain the advice that Mark gave me I would like to point out that I am not involved in the Recruitment industry; I personally sell pet insurance; I am involved in the flyers printing sector as well as offering people advice about fostering.

These were the main areas of advice that he gave me; advice I have to say has worked a treat ever since:

Produce a personal profile of myself. This should include my c.v, any examination certificates, any other qualifications that I have such as first aid, information about my interests and anything else that makes me look good etc. Once you have compiled all of the necessary documentation they should then be placed in a professional looking folder. You then take this folder to the interviews and can use it as a form of presentation when ever you see fit. They will see how much effort I have put in and will hopefully be impressed.

Try to predict what questions will be asked and prepare good quality answers to these questions. This is something which sounds so obvious but which I had never done before. When you have attended each interview you then try to remember all of the questions which were asked and then add them to your list. When returning home, you then think about the best way to answer these questions in the future, if they are ever asked again.

Try to find out as much information about the company including their histroy, the amount of people that they employ, where their head office is and the name of the Chairman. You may be asked at the interview if you know anything about the company you are hoping to join. It will sound a lot better if you can reel off a number of important facts rather than just saying something which is obvious. To find out this type of information you can use the internet, ask friends or go to the library.