One downside is indeed that you interviewing skills are rusty.
You need to turn this into a positive.
Most companies are used to seeing a fairly rapid staff turnover these days.
They will probably be used to seeing people who interview well, perhaps because they interview often.... being too good may indicate some one always on the move.
What they like, or should like, is someone who is going to return their investment of time and training with long service.
That you have 12 years at your previous company is of course a mixed blessing so you may need to make sure they see it as a big positive.
Long service:
option: the candidate lacks drive and ambition and may be out of touch. A 9 to 5 person who puts in the days work but lacks the interest or drive to improve themselves.
option: the candidate is a dedicated worker who can be consumed by his work and loyal to his employers.
Hidden message to HR: this is someone who is going to arrive here form a job that is probably well underpaid by now and who will see our paltry salary offer as a good deal and who will take everything we throw at him - poor salary reviews, lots of free extra hours worked etc - for years and years before he gets fed up and leaves, if ever.
You need to anticipate how different aspects of your career can be seen as either positive and negative.
You cannot let these questions go unasked or unanswered because if they don't ask you they will ask themselves and fill in their own negative answers. So it is up to you in the job interview to make sure you cover these questions and ensure you present the most favourable interpretation. By addressing them you also show you have nothing to hide.
A job interview is not a one way street.
They are interviewing you to see if you will suit them and you are interviewing them to see if you would like to work for them.
They will want to see some one who does his share of managing the interview, who has his own agenda there and who goes after the answers he needs while providing them the answers they need.
Interviews have a structure.
There are also signs and signals to look out for.
If you get a lot of aggressive questions, it may simply be interviewing style and designed to see how you respond to pressure.
Preparation is all.
You have to anticipate they will look for all the negatives they can and see whether they are valid or not.
If you get a really aggressive and negative question or statement, designed to put you on the back foot, one trick is to use a restatement of the statement as a question or the question as a statement apparently as a ploy to think about a response but what you do is restate the question in a much less aggressive form and then answer your version of the question/statement your way. Do not be afraid to take time to think about an answer, even if you have an answer already prepared.
Find the most negative aspect of your job history and get it out of the way early on.
Build the positive attributes into the later end of the interview.
There will be negatives and positives. You need the negatives buried in the early part of the interview and the positives in the back end. This is another reason to identify what you think will be negatives and make sure they are dealt with early on. Anticipating their embarrassing questions and putting forward the answers yourself steals some of their thunder and takes away some of the sting. Doing so in a relaxed manner also suggests you don;t consider them to be negative at all, at worst neutral.
"you have worked for this company X for 12 years in pretty much the same position and now you want to leave. Why is that?"
Note, they may phrase this as if you want to or have to leave your current employer for some reason and not that you want to join their company for some reason. There is a difference.
In this case you may want to lead off with this one even if they don't, possibly in the chat gap at the beginning (the chat gap is the opening period where some general chit chat is designed to relax people. This is what sales men are trained to do. They usually know which football team their client supports and make some comment on them. Then they move onto other business.)
expect the chat gap and really do use it to relax.
But you might want to use the end of this chat gap i.e. the period before the interview proper, to say something like " It's been a while since I saw a job that interested me enough to apply for it so I should apologise that my interview skills are going to be a bit rusty." (this actually allows you control the end of the chat gap because you are now instigating the start of the interview proper).
They will then either ask what it is you like about their company or why you haven't applied for jobs more often.
This is asking if you have ambition and drive and if you are up to date. Many people manage to stay up to date by changing jobs more frequently. People who stay in one job for too long tend to get stuck in a rut of "we've always done it this way".
You also need to perhaps say that you like your current job very much otherwise you wouldn't have stayed so long and maybe you should have moved around a it more simply to get better money or more rapid promotion... but you were lucky to find a job you really liked enough to not worry so much about those things.
You may also want to suggest that one reason your company were happy to keep you in tat role was that you were always up to date and making sure they moved ahead with the times.
So anticipate a few questions like: why didn't you want to move on to more responsibility etc.
Didn't you feel the need to look for better paying jobs?
You need to think of some good answers to these and other questions you may expect.
Not lies, just favourable interpretations.
You may even want to concede some negative aspects if there is an advantage to them in it. "I guess one reason I am rusty at interviews is because when I found the job I started doing at my company, I liked it so well chasing after better job titles didn't seem so important."
Implied: even if the job title and salary don't seem to have improved, the job has continued to evolved with added responsibilities and importance.
Gain, why are you now wanting to leave your company is going to require a good answer and it should be answered whether asked or not.
Don't volunteer answers for questions you'd rather weren't asked or don't have a good spin on. Be prepared but don't volunteer.
Back to signs. If they continue to press questions about technical qualifications etc. work experience, why you haven't been on the job hunt more often or been promoted more often these are aspects that concern them some what and they need more answers.
Some times interviewers make statements that aren't true. These are usually framed as objections. Sometimes they are a statement of a decision but as often as not they are information seeking.
When they say: "You don't seem familiar with this technology." They are saying you haven't shown familiarity. tell us if you are familiar or tell us you are fully capable of learning new tricks.
If they move on to talk about the contract conditions, this is a positive sign even if they say something completely negative like "Well, I our contract conditions are quite a bit different to what you are used to."
Any time the client (the employer in this case) raises the question of price it means they want to buy.
If you get a longish gap toward the end of the interview it may be they want you to start the questions about terms and conditions.
And at the end you do need to ask how you did which you might do by asking them what the next stage is rather than asking them outright. (What salesmen call asking for the order. Don't ask, don't get). And you have to have a conclusion to the interview which is either the next step or a rejection or a positive.
Another really good sign is when they ask how much notice your company expects.
Oh gosh, I hope the other guys can provide some balance to what I've said, and some other insights.
JMW
