Week 4 with Daniel and we covered the skills we would need when we take our next step to interviews. I haven’t had many proper interviews in the past just casual ones so I still find the overall thought of interviews to be an anxious experience and going into this class this week I hoped to have had this opinion changed.
We started this weeks class about interviews skills by going through 5 core values that would be attractive values for a potential employers. These include:
- Never done – Determined to keep learning
- Challenge convention – Pushing your boundaries
- Impact together – Team player
- Bring you – Bring yourself to the interview
- Be an advocate – User centred approach
From here then we looked what our core values would be when going for a job interview which I noted down below. We were reminded that core values are points that make you employable and desirable to an employer.
What are your values?
- Detail orientated
- Hard working
- determines
- Motivated
- Positive
- Ethuesastic
- Team Leader
Other core values include
- Prior experience – Work experience or way to showcase way I can relate to the role
- Understand the role – Know what I am applying for to prove that I understand what I am aiming to go
- Enthusiasm – Showcase why I want to work somewhere and why its going to be beneficial for me to join their team
- Willing to learn – Being able to overcome issues or mistakes and explain how I deal with certain issues
- Aspiration and motivation – Being able to show what my goals are and how I plan to get their through their help
Tips for interview:
- Any experience is an expierence
- You can only get better by doing more interviews
- Always answer questions your asked
- Prepare speaker notes but not a script
- show that your passionate and enthustic about the industry and job role to show that you car
- Bring all pieces of work that can demonstrate your skills in a physical form
- One with positive outcome
Workshop task – Questions sheet
Daniel had proper question for our workshop class to get into pairs and begin interviewing one another like we would in a real interview with real interview questions.
I paired up with Katie for this task and together we took it in turns to interview each other and then noted down each others responses. I found this task awkward at the beginning to trying and think of the best responses but as we went on I got gradually better given further more in detail answers to the set questions.
The task overall allowed me to understand the importance of knowing potential interview questions and how employers might rate your answer to see how you best suit their reason of employability which is something I wasn’t aware of prior to the task. This task then has made me aware of this specific poising which means that I will have to put in good practice in order to get the best response across for a particular question for example looking into better response that are related to the industry as this was an area of struggle that I noticed when being asked the questions.
Potential interview questions:
I decided I would do some further research into some potential interview questions I could face and watch some YouTube channels on how to respond to questions. I wanted to focus this many on the design industry.
- Tell me about yourself? – This question for a designer is crucial because in my answer I should be able to broadcast that my brand is what I am
- Why do you want to work for us? – Employers want to know why I am interested in working with them I can use this opportunity to showcase to them what I know about them
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years? – An employer wants to hire somewhere that sees their advertised role as a career move as this can represented in the work that follows through
- Why did you choose to be a designer? – This is where employers will take their chance to understand who they would be working with not only as a designer/employee but as a person. This might be the area where they ask me about my education, personal experience, and motivation behind working for the industry.
I might also be asked some performance based questions such as:
- What makes a good designer?
- Strengths and weaknesses?
- Talk about a time I overcame an issue
- What qualities and skills should a great graphic designer have?
- How do you incorporate feedback into designs?
After this task then I decided it would be best to do some of my own research in this area by watching some YouTube videos and finding podcasts that I could use to motivate and inspire when it came to this subject.
In this Linda speaks about how overcome being nervous for interviews and how to properly prepare yourself for the big step into your career. She went over things like making yourself feel comfortable that the employer wants you there with them as much as you want to be there, prepare answers and responses, focus on the interviews not myself and make sure to dress appropriately.
Get a job in Tech – Gary McNeely has a podcast that solely focus’ getting a job in tech and one of his podcast he digs deeper into interviews for introverts in tech and IT. I thought this personally connected to me as I would describe myself as an introvert and have struggle a lot in the past with my confidence in instances like interviews. Gary was able to describe how he can tell who is and isn’t an introvert in an interview scenario and it was eye opening to see that a potential employer to spot this if they were being that insightful on me in an interview. He went though tips and stages on how to overcome being introvert in an interview setting but overall I thought it was an insightful podcast to listen to in work.
Johnn Pardoe has a Podcast on Spotify that just focus’ on the prep for interviews. I found myself intrigued in his method and tips of over coming nerves and how being overly prepared is always the best scenario.
Overall this week was interesting and got me thinking further into interviews that I thought it would at the beginning of class. I’ve made a goal that for my next interview I will aim to listen to one podcast and I will aim to practice response question to improve my speaking ability in this area.