The important question is are you going to get what you want from the interview? This is very much more complex than whether you simply survive it to go onto the next round of the recruitment process.



Yes, of course, you should indeed be looking to impress the interviewer(s) and this will involve all of the usual things that everyone has always told you about impressing. Dress well ('shiny shoes, shiny hair' as the salesman's phrase has it), preferably in keeping with the house style of the company you are interviewing at, sober, bright eyed and bushy tailed: but you're experienced enough to know all of these things.

One important thing you will want to do with your client director at Talisman, an important part of the recruitment process, is to discuss with them that house style of the company you are interviewing with. Companies (and all organizations) are to some extent tribes and they have their own little quirks: a particular way of doing things. It usually isn't as extreme as IBM and its famous blue suits and white shirts but it will be there and it's worth making sure that you fit that profile on the day you go.

However, you don't want to forget that an intervew is a two way process. You are interviewing them to see if you would like to join them just as much as they are checking you out. There's absolutely no point in 'surviving' an interview only to realize that you don't actually want to be where you've just been hired. Ask them questions about the company, find out as much as you can about how the place really works. Of course, your recruitment consultant at Talisman will have some of this information, and will pass on as much as he or she can, but as with experiencing so many other things, actually being there tells you so much more than what can be related to you second hand.

One of the more absurd methods that has been used to measure a company is to check the toilet paper. Expensive soft stuff means that the company takes care of the staff: to a merchant banker of course it just means they care to much and spend too much.

The important point about the interview stage is not just that you want to get through it, something that will depend on a multiplicity of factors, but also that you want to use it as an opportunity to evaluate whether you actually want to carry on the recruitment process. Information flows both ways you know.