A good attitude is essential to succeed in a job interview. However, contrary to what is often believed, a calm, submissive attitude is not always the most appropriate. You must learn to find out what the interviewer is looking for and respond to their expectations.

The attitude of the interviewer during the interview may be: aggressive, friendly, pleasant, “disjointed” or quiet. In each case, you should learn how to respond, how to act. Here we leave some tips:

* Aggressive: Sometimes the interviewer will try to make the candidate uncomfortable, using psychology techniques, intimidation or contradictions to find the candidate‘s weaknesses and see his or her reaction to situations under pressure. The best answer in this case is self-control, security and confidence. Don’t let them intimidate you.

*Friendly: At other times, the recruiter will look very open, inviting the candidate to speak as freely as possible about all the issues or topics they want. Thus, handing over the control to the interviewee, the interviewer makes the candidate talk about his or her interests, providing lots of information so the interviewer can finally decide what’s relevant and what’s not.

The best advice in these cases is to be careful what you say, and trying to stick to the speech you’ve prepared before going to the interview. Talk about things related to your work and provide personal information only if it’s important for the job.

*Pleasant: sometimes the interviewer‘s attitude goes beyond simple cordiality, deliberately showing empathy so the conversation covers many topics, inviting candidates to talk as much as they want. The interviewer takes the lead  but the applicant is offered protagonism and complicity. This invitation to speak freely with no control leaves a lot more doors open for the candidate to give more information of interest, letting the recruiter see not only their psychological patterns but the areas that could present conflicts and weak points in the applicant‘s work experience.
The advice is, as in the previous case, to stick to your prepared speech.

* Disjointed: other times the person in charge of selecting candidates will ask about many different subjects, covering a wide range of topics. This is to mislead the interviewee, so he jumps between unconnected topics and misses the logical relationship between two points on the same issue, and falls into mistakes or contradictions.
The best thing to do in these cases is trying to redirect the conversation to the professional matter, carefully showing you’re not pretending to avoid talking about something or being rude.

* Quiet: Finally, there are times that the tone of the interview is reduced to direct questions and barely utter silence, leaving open the gap to be filled by the candidate. This will show the ability of the applicant to answer questions with enough information. Our advice, try to be as specific as possible, show composure and confidence, and use the information you’ve prepared beforehand.