No-one should ever speak about themselves in longer than one minute increments. If you do, you’re in danger of rambling on and losing the job interviewer’s attention. The opportunity for a job interview is your invitation to sell yourself in one minute to a potential employer. If you feel you have more to say than a minute’s worth on any subject, you can always ask if you should carry on. If the interviewer invites you to, by all means, do!

However, if you have been succinct and eloquent enough in your one minute response, chances are anything you have to add at that point would be redundant: the job interviewer will have already been impressed. Likewise, very often an interviewer will pause and use silence as a way of testing you under pressure. They’ll often pause for several minutes to see if you begin to fidget, squirm, sweat, twiddle your thumbs, tap your fingers on the table or start chattering, babbling or carrying on. Should you find yourself in that predicament, by all means, don’t! Just sit there and radiate confidence. Be patient. Know that there’s nothing going on in that job interview for nothing – including the silence.

Now speaking for a minute, believe it or not, isn’t as easy as it seems. You have to know exactly how long a minute “feels” so you don’t go over – and risk rambling. Here’s a simple exercise you can do to practice:

You’ll need something with a stopwatch function like your cell phone or Blackberry. Set it to start running. Stand up and hit “start” just as you close your eyes. Try to anticipate exactly when a minute is up without relying on counting in your head. Just feel when a minute has passed. And when you do, sit down and check how much time has passed on your stop watch.

Part of this exercise is to ingrain the feeling of a minute so that you innately sense when a minute’s up while you’re talking about yourself to a job interviewer; at which point you will stop speaking – and start listening and thinking about how to respond to the next question.

I’m sure you all know the TV show, “Whose Line is it Anyway”, hosted by Drew Carey, starring Colin Mochery, Ryan Stiles and Wayne Brady, where they do hilarious improv sketches… If you don’t, and for a good laugh, check out the one with Richard Simmons on YouTUBE – I guarantee you’ll just howl along with Drew Carey… But why do I mention “Whose Line IS IT”? There’s a fantastic improv exercise they do called no Hesitation, Deviation or Repetition – and it’s done in exactly 60 seconds.

To view other videos in the “Marketing You” Video Series about marketing yourself to employers and recruiters please view Introduction to Marketing You, Success and Creative Visualization, 60 Second Pitch,  Job Interview Tips, Resume Writing and Resume Cover Letters videos. The next video in this series is Just a Minute- Being Receptive To the Interviewers Questions.

You may also want to download one of our Marketing You FREE E-books or visit our vast Resources Section including Tax Tip Videos and the Interview Coach articles.