Most accounting professionals spend at least three years at University and years progressing their career. A typical job interview goes for sixty minutes and this time will influence your future career direction. In this context, a job interview is one of the most important sixty minutes of your career.

An interview is an artificial situation whereby you have to clearly explain your technical skill set, personality and behavioural characteristics, while concurrently finding out details about the organisation and job. ThompsonCook will coach you on how best to prepare for your interview.

It is best to focus your interview preparation on two key areas being the organisation and secondly the position. In terms of the organisation, you should know key information such as the size, revenues, headcount, locations, key products and services and ownership structure of the organisation.

With the position, you should go into the interview knowing the key responsibilities of the position and how your technical skill set and experiences best correlate with these responsibilities. You will need to prepare clear and concise examples that clearly demonstrate you are capable of fulfilling the position.

In an interview you are likely to have sixty minutes to give and receive information – make it count. At ThompsonCook we suggest you think of the interview as a business case, that is you are effectively presenting a business case recommending that you are the very best personal available for the position.

Accordingly, you should be prepared to succinctly pitch the highlights of your skill set and background as meeting the requirements for the position.