Job Interview Skills (Part II): Skills You Neeed during the Interview

If you have missed the Part I interview skills, you can go Job Interview Skills (Part I). After you have done preparation before attending the interview, it is time to brush up your interview skills that you would need during the interview. 

1. Dress for success

In order to look confident and neat, you should dress yourself formally with a tie (males) or a blazer (females). That's the reason why you should always try to arrive the interview location at least 15 minutes earlier. You can tidy up yourself in washroom beforehand and ensure your appearance is clean and pressed. One thing to remember is to have minimum jewelries and accessories as possible. Do not overdress yourself and always ensure the clothing fits you well.

2. Make your first good impression

Be polite and greet/smile to everyone you met to start your good impression before entering the interview room. This includes the receptionist too. Employers are keen to know how you treat their staff members and your success would be correlated to your courtesy to everyone. During the interview, always remember that the first few seconds of greeting the interviewers, smiling and making eye contact to them as well as offering them an handshake could all give them a great impression on you.

3. Show your confidence and stay focus

When the interview starts, the key thing you should always remember is the quality and the way you communicate/reply to their questions. Avoid those negative words such as "I don't like", "I hate". If you were to say, word them in a better way like "I prefer not to". Besides, whenever they asked a question, try to stay focus to understand the question and respond to them in a confident way. In the case where you get stuck by a question, do not just be silent for that. Instead, you can for instance request the interviewers to repeat the question or you yourself rephrase the question to double confirm with them the question. By that time, you might be able to think of how to respond to the question already. If possible, you can give some examples/accomplishments. However, avoid to talk too much until you derail from what the interviewers actually want. 

4. Minimise your body language or bad habit

It is understandable that body language is inevitable when you are getting nervous during the interview session. However, poor body language can be a main contributor for employers not hiring you at the end. Poor body languages include not making eye contact with the interviewers when talking, bad sitting posture, shaking legs, playing with pens and mumbling. While you might not be able to eliminate them at once, try to minimise them during the interview is essential.

5. Ask Questions

It is a big mistake if you think asking questions during the interview shows you are so not well prepared. In fact, asking questions are actually a good indication to the employers that you are keen to the applied position. Furthermore, some of the information would not be available in the company website and you can't do research on that. Hence, you can ask during the interview with insightful questions. This includes "How is the working environment in the offcie?"and "When would I know the interview result?". 

With the two parts of job interview skills, you should have well preparation for the job interview. Last but not least, be confident to yourself and wish you get a great job that fits you the most!

Job Interview Skills (Part I): Preparation before Attending Interview

Almost everyone has experienced /needs to experience job interview in order to get a job. What you have got is essential as it can determine your future career journey. In order to get a job that you really hope for, you should know the necessary job interview skills. Interview skills includes 2 parts, i.e. (Part I) preparation before attending interview and (Part II) skills you need during the interview.

Part II would be in the next post.

1. Ask yourself some questions from your resume

The only public information that the interviewers have about you is the information from your resume. Hence, they will most likely ask you some questions from your resume. For instance, they might ask you what was the fun experience you had while joining in a certain society? Such a questions should be a simple one as you should be able to answer it as if you are narrating your real stories/experience. However, do remember not to overly tell the stories as it might give an impression to the interviewers that you do not have a good time management skills as well as lack of good summarizing skills. Besides, get ready with some of the academic questions such as "Is there any reason why your result has been dropping ever since your second year?", "Is there any reason that you did not score well in this subject/unit?", "What is your secret of success in scoring well in your exams?" 

2. Prepare a short introduction about yourself

In most of the cases, the first question that the interviewers ask would be a short introduction about yourself. This would usually directly set your interviewers' impression on you. Hence, it would be great if you can first get ready with the introduction to avoid stuttering due to nervousness. Giving good impression to interviewers also mean that you should only remember the points rather than memorizing them rigidly during the interview.

3. Buy yourself a formal attire

Interview is an important one and you definitely do not want to miss it just because you do not wear properly/appropriately. You should always have one to two set of formal attire ready for your interview. Remember to iron the clothes before attending the interview so that interviewers know you are a neat person. If you are a guy, do not forget to have a tie too. A black/grey tie would be the safest one as it can often suit most of the formal shirts. 

4. Check the interview time, venue and transport

Interviewees might forget to check the interview time, venue and transport and end up they are late to the interview. This is certainly a big no to interviewees as time management is really an important criteria that interviewers would always look into it. Hence, before attending the interview, it would be the best that you write down the exact time and venue of the interview session. Try to be there at least 15 minutes prior to the interview so that you can still calm yourself down before entering the interview room. Besides, if you are not familiar with the interview venue, you should have some research from web to check the way to go there to avoid uncertainties on the day itself.

5. Sleep early

As you know, lack of sleep would affect the way you perform during the interview. You might not be able to answer the questions to your best. On the day before the interview, just calm yourself down and sleep early to relax your mind. Although this might look unnecessary or you might think it is insignificant, you should sleep early so that you can perform better the next day. 


With all these preparation, you are considered prepared and reduced those uncertainties to the minimum. Good luck!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

How to save money from daily activities?

With the instability of our economy recently, everyone is trying hard to trim a few bulks from their daily activities. After all, saving some is better than none. Hence, here we come the top 5 simple but essential ways for you to refer on how to save money from daily activities.

1. Have an expense app for record purpose

Set aside the amount of money that you would need to meet your commitments at the beginning of each month. Your commitment can include utility or phone bills, rental, transport fees, car loan, own saving amount or even, the amount of money that you would bank in to your parents' account. Deducting out all these from your monthly net salary would give you the amount of money that you can spend on food, entertainment, shopping, etc for the month. Next, divide it by the number of days of the month to get an indication of how much you can spend per day. You can then use one of your phone app to help you track your daily expenses. Recording down the expenses using phone could track your expenditures with least effort. Tracking your daily expenses also means you can then have an analysis on what kind of expenses you spend most. Most importantly, you know how much you should spend particularly when it is closer to the end of the month in order to not spend more than what you have left. 

[Tip 1] I personally found that "Pocket Expense Personal Finance" phone app is so far the best app that I would recommend to track your daily expenses in an easy way. In case you might forget to record down your expenses , this app can actually remind you by sending notification daily. 

2. Before buying something, ask yourself 

Consumers are always intrigued by the sales advertisement. Without any doubt, sales advertisements are often a tempting one that sometimes you just can't control yourself. However, asking yourself a question before doing the purchase might help you make a true decision. Ask yourself this question "Yes, this is cheap. But, do I really need this? Or I am still good without having it?" before buying. This can avoid the extra spending that you make when you think the product is worth buying in terms of price but in fact you don't really need it.

3. Wait for discount before buying

This is more applicable to buying those luxuries or less urgent stuffs. Lets take an example of you thinking to purchase some formal clothes for your work. This task is a to-do-task yet less urgent that you can still wear your existing clothes for next few weeks. Hence, why not you just wait until there is discount for the clothes? Discount on clothing is usually great and you do save quite a bit especially when you are thinking to buy a few. Same idea goes to your other purchases say your weekly groceries. Try to be loyal to a certain groceries shop by signing up as their member in order to get better discount and faster services.

4. Own two bank accounts

Owning two bank accounts would help you save quite a bit and it could build up to be a noticeable amount of money after a while. How? Treat one of your bank accounts as the saving money account, i.e. transfer the monthly saving amount to this bank account for saving purpose. In other words, do not spend this money in the account unless for emergency. Meanwhile, the other account would be just for your normal expenditure use. This step can clear your way between spending and saving, and thus successfully saved your money from daily activities.

5. Use public transport to work

This might be hard for someone who stays quite far from public transport. However, if you are one of them, you might consider to park your car beside the nearest train station to avoid congestion. In this way, although you have to spend some on your public transport fees, you have saved a lot from your petrol. Using public transport to work can then save your money compared to driving to office every day.

[Tip 2] If your public transport fee for LRT/Monorail has exceeded RM100 per month, then you might want to purchase the one-month unlimited call to set your monthly public transport fees to be at a fixed amount every month.

Hope the information helps and wish you have fun reading and learn them today.

How to add a website shortcut to iPhone/iPad Home Screen (Steps by Steps with Pictures)

Feeling fatigued to always spend a minute or two to open a certain website, e.g. news website, blog etc. using iPhone/iPad everyday? Have you ever imagined if there is a way to open the daily website in seconds?

Here comes an excellent feature for the iPhone/iPad users that you might not know, i.e. you can add the website shortcut to your iPhone/iPad home screen. Once set, the website will be shown as if you have just downloaded a new "app". You can just open the website by clicking the "app" as if you are opening an normal app.

So, how do you add the website shortcut?

1. Launch "Safari".

2. Enter the URL of the website that you want to create a shortcut into the address field.

3. Tap the left blue north-pointing arrow coming out of a box located at the bottom of the page.

4. A small window will open and now you can tap the "Add to Home Screen".

5. Upon confirmation, tap "Add" to complete the process. Safari will automatically be closed and you will be taken to where the icon is located on your iPhone/iPad's home screen. 

[Tip 1] This website shortcut is only available if you open the website in Safari.

[Tip 2] If the website name is too long, you can edit the name before you click "Add".


Hope it does save some of your time! Enjoy!