Jan is a medical researcher who came on one of our Employability programmes. She applied for a job in a hospital department where she’d been an unsuccessful applicant six months previously. We were surprised at her lack of success, she was most engaging personally and oozed integrity. She’d applied for another role in this department and needed time off the programme to attend an interview.

She came back from her second attempt, jubilant. She was the only person interviewed for the job and she’d been hired on the spot. She said they’d felt that she was an excellent candidate at her previous interview – but just not quite right for the role they were then seeking to  fill. They were delighted when she reapplied.

None of this had been conveyed to her beforehand, and it was only her balanced attitude and sense that she’d given of her best first time round, that encouraged her to reapply. ( Not sure how they circumvented HR requirements here, but no doubt they were inventive).

Where you do need to take temporary work for money or sanity, please don’t lose track of the role of the ideal job title you identified earlier in this book.  Keep connected to this job related content online. See yourself as a jet in a holding pattern, circling above the airport in your temporary role. Your eyes and radar are still keeping a lookout for the perfect landing spot.

Even if you turn up at an interview where you sense that the job is not for you, give a good account of yourself. You never know the impact you may have on the interviewer’s memory or powers of referral.

Time for a sum-up then. When you put yourself into the point of view  of interviewer, they’re  likely to be delighted by:

• Signs you’ve done your homework on the enterprise and its operating environment
• A  sense you have a feel for their enterprise and where it’s going, with an understanding for its problems and challenges
• Description of yourself that reveals you to be just the sort of problem-solver they are looking for – or if not – that you are capable and compelling enough to be stored on file as ‘highly employable’.

Give them all this and pat yourself on the back for being both thoroughly prepared and organized. It will be appreciated.