You’ve spent hours perfecting your resume, fine tuning your cover letter, and updating your LinkedIn profile. Now it’s time for the interview – the most important part of the job search process – and the best opportunity to sell yourself.

So, how do you do it? For some, self-promotion is easy, but for many, not so much, and in fact can be uncomfortable.

Do you need to “sell” yourself? In short, yes.

Your resume and online presence only tell part of the story. An employer wants to see you align with their brand, know the company, understand their values, and find out more about you and your personality – that’s why you’re there!`

Here are our top tips to put your best foot forward and sell yourself in a job interview:

1. Perfect your pitch – Have a 30-60 second introductory pitch prepared outlining how you can meet the company’s needs and the responsibilities of the job. Research the company to gain an understanding of their values, culture, and initiatives. Demonstrate proactively how and why you fit with these.
2. Show your strengths – A job interview is not the time to be modest! You need to showcase what differentiates you from other applicants and what you can offer the company. Give examples of contributions to successful projects, or how you have saved previous employers time/money/come up with innovative ideas – it’s all about YOU.
3. Talk about results – This is your chance to give real life examples of situations you participated in. Talk about what the results were and how your actions/behaviour helped the outcome, why it was beneficial and what was achieved.
4. Ask interesting questions – Ask original questions to showcase you understand the company. These could be based on projects the company is working on, causes they support or news stories relevant to the industry. This shows you can think outside the box, are comfortable asking questions and have a genuine interest in the organisation.
5. Prepare for other questions – As well as preparing examples to demonstrate your abilities at work, think about what your out-of-work hobbies/interests are and what skills you have learnt from these – teamwork, problem solving, organisation etc. These are all valuable soft skills that are useful to an employer/workplace and can also be helpful when you do not have a work-related example.