My current attitude to interviews is mainly nervousness and fear of not being fully prepared. This is something I am working on fixing.
I believe that attitude can play a big part of how good a first impression you give an employer so I would like to go from looking like the guy (Jim for the Office fans) above to being excited and happy to have an interview and maybe even approach it as a learning opportunity weather I am successful with the application or not.
As part of my placement research and preparation for future interviews I decided to attend this talk to help me improve my skills to hopefully help me land my dream placement position when the time comes.
Speaker: Eilis Spence, Employability advisor
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Link to the recorded talk can be found here.
In this session I was given top tips to help me prepare for interviews, learn about the type of questions to expect at interviews and how best to answer them. I noted down some of the things that I felt might come in useful later on. This talk helped me understand the different types of interviews, how to use the STAR technique and offered me some ideas on how to better prepare for an interview. I have outlined some of this information bellow:
How to prepare for interviews:
- Research – the company, their values, recent projects
- Preparation – Getting familiar with the software if it is an online interview, having your portfolio handy, etc …
- Mock interviews – I found that this was a great way of improving how I would approach questions and articulate myself.
Type of interviews:
- Panel interview
- Competency-based interview (skills in leadership, teamwork, etc…)
- Strengths-based interview
- Group interview
- Assessment center
- Video interview
- Phone interview
- Automated/simulated interview (You record your answers to questions/situations posed)
How to prepare for an interview:
- Research the company – website, brochure, Twitter, use your friends and family that may work here, news article, company size, locations, Company history, plans, culture, ethos, are they expanding?
- Job documents – print and repeat your completed application form, the job advertised, the job description and employee specification. These will give you a hint of what questions could be asked.
- What do you want the employer to know? you have to tell them eg education (what have you learned within your degree?), skills (teamworking, communication), personal qualities (what has motivated you and your selling points, what is unique about you?) Be confident
Interview questions
- Think about what questions may come up and have answers prepared
- The employee/personnel specification and job description will often give a lot of clues about what may be asked
- Draft answers to possible questions
Sample questions
- Tell me about yourself?
- Why did you apply for this position or company? — research about company can come into that.
- How do your qualifications and experience meet the requirements of this post? — Very common one!
- What are your strengths and weaknesses? — IN the past I have found that I have been bad at answering this question but I overcame it by …
- Provide an example of a time when you demonstrated attention to detail
- Give us an example of when you have had to prioritize and really manage your time well
- Describe a situation when you had to work in a team to get a job or task done
- What important trends do you see in our industry/business over the next 5 years? — Commercial awareness
- Why do you think we should choose you for this placement position? – being able to positively talk about yourself
The STAR method:
- Prepare: Listen carefully
- Situation
- Task: What was the task I had to do? set the scene and highlight specific challenges and constraints – deadlines, costs
- Action: specific actions taken to complete task – desirable ones that is. Take them through the motivation for each answer
- Result: Include figures if possible eg a high mark. Think of it as a reflection, you can even talk of how you would change it as it shows that you have learnt from the experience
How can it be applied?
So in this example the candidate talks of how they achieved the task, their method and how they arrived at that strong result.
Things to consider
- What technical skills/qualifications have been asked for?
- What transferable skills/competencies were mentioned?
- How might these be assessed
Questions to ask the interviewer:
Always have a couple planned!
- The organization – what are the likely future developments
- The work and training
Things I should do to be best prepared for:
Before the interview
- Find out as much as you can about the type of interview you will be having
- Find out who will be interviewing you
- Learn about the company
- Prepare answers to possible questions
- What areas do they value the most?
On the day
- Show confidence – consider your body language
- Keep good eye contact and smile!
- Listen to the questions and think before you answer (provide)
- Be positive
- Remember to be articulate
Online interviews
- Make sure you know if it is live or pre-recorded
- Choose a suitable location
- Make sure there are no distractions
- Become familiar with the software
- Prepare using an interview simulator like: Interview 360 tool in Aventegro
I think that overall attending this talk was a great way to start my research journey as it gave me a starting point and some insight. Some of the things I would like to do is research and maybe come up with some more possible interview questions more specific to my degree. I would also like to do some mock interviews maybe with my classmates, tutors or even some of the careers advisors at the careers university service. I am less nervous about the many interviews I will hopefully be invited to and the prospect of having to explain my strengths and weaknesses. I would like to keep researching and learning as I think it will help me success.