According to a recent Forbes article, the average worker will work for six different companies in their lifetime and have around eight to nine title changes. This made me wonder, how many job interviews will the average Joe have in their career? If every role a candidate interviewed for had two stages, and we assumed there were eight role changes in a lifetime, this would be at least a minimum of 16 interviews, providing they secured a role without interviewing anywhere else.

As a recruiter, it is part of my role to prepare candidates for interviews and see them through to the end of the process. Often it has been a number of years since their last interview and it can be an incredibly nerve-racking process. There are many ways to prepare for an interview and many strategic methods such as STAR, which can be used to portray a skill set. However, before providing a candidate with a strategy, it’s important to understand the basics.

Below are five common points that interviewers often comment on during the interview feedback process that may be the difference between getting through to the next stage and not, no matter how many STAR examples you have.

1. Research the company
It is fundamental to research the company thoroughly before your interview. Explore the company’s website for their corporate values and principles; ultimately if you do not relate to these then you’re probably not the right fit for the company. Visit their media or news pages and read about why they’ve recently been in the press - it could be a good topic of conversation. Also, if you can learn about who works in the team or who the managers are, you can put a face to a name before your interview – there a may be a short profile about them and you may have more in common than you think.

2. Ask questions
At the end of your interview, when you’re asked if you have any questions, do not say no. Prepare three to five questions to ask, just in case any were answered during the course of the interview. This shows your genuine interest in the person, position or company, especially when you consider how precious an hour in a manager or director’s day is. Most importantly, you need to be asking the ri