Companies

Walk in knowing more than the job advert told you

Read the company's own site, its recent press and its social feeds before the day. Know what it sells, which market it sells into, and whether it has opened, closed or merged anything in the last year. An interviewer notices immediately when someone has done this, because most candidates have not.

Look up the people who will be in the room. A name and a job title are usually enough to find a public profile, a conference talk or a quoted comment in the business press. You are not trying to flatter anybody - you are trying to ask better questions and to understand what that person is measured on, because that is what they will be listening for in your answers.

Decide what the job is worth before anyone asks you

The worst moment to work out your salary expectation is the moment you are asked for it. Settle on a figure in advance: the number you would accept happily, and the number below which you would walk away. Then you are quoting a position rather than guessing under pressure.

This is what this site is for. Search the role and the country on CaribSalaries and see what other people in the region have actually reported, with the number of reports behind each figure so you can judge how much weight it carries. Quote in the currency the job pays in, and if the offer is in US dollars for a Caribbean-based role, know that too - it changes the comparison entirely.

If you have been through this yourself, add what you earned. It takes a few minutes, it is anonymous, and it is the reason the next person has a figure to work from.

Run a mock interview before the real one

Rehearsing in your head is not rehearsing. The gap between knowing an answer and saying it cleanly out loud is where most interviews are lost, and you only find that gap by speaking. Ask a friend or a former colleague to put the questions to you properly, or record yourself answering and play it back.

Prepare the handful of questions that come up almost every time - why this role, why this company, tell us about a difficult situation, what went wrong on a project and what you did about it. Have a real example for each, with the result at the end of it. Two or three well-told stories will carry an entire interview.

Arrive early, and dress for the room

Be there ahead of time. Traffic in Kingston, Port of Spain or Bridgetown is not an excuse anybody wants to hear at nine in the morning, so plan for the bad version of the journey and sit somewhere nearby if you are early. Arriving flustered costs you the first five minutes, which are the ones that set the tone.

Dress a step above what the office wears day to day, unless you have been told otherwise. If the interview is online, the same rule holds: test the link, the camera and the microphone the day before, sit somewhere quiet with light in front of you rather than behind you, and be in the call before the interviewer is.

Start applying sooner than you think you need to

Hiring moves slowly. A few months between sending an application and hearing anything back is normal, and it is not unusual for a reply to arrive close to a year later, long after you had written the whole thing off. Budget for that. If you need a new job by a particular date, start well before the point at which the timing feels urgent.

The practical consequence is that you should apply while you are still reasonably content, not only once you have decided to leave. It also means silence is rarely a verdict: applications sit in queues, roles get frozen and reopened, and the person who was meant to read your CV goes on leave. Keep applying, keep a note of where and when, and treat every reply as a bonus rather than as the thing you are waiting on.