Mock Interviews

Class Interview Preparation

On Friday week 8, the class would have tutorials preparing for a mock interview. Mine was on the 19th of November with Henry, Stella and a fellow student, Danielle, on the panel. There were 4 suggested job titles we could try for (3D animator, concept artist, 3D modeller and 2D animator) but if we wanted to do any other kind of job all we had to do was say before the interview. I went for a concept artist, as I felt I had more experience with art than modelling or animation, I also felt like I could talk about digital art easier, as I’ve done it for over 6 years.

Own Preparation

Before the interview, I rewatched and wrote down pointers from the presentations. Things like researching the company and their values beforehand, not lying but certainly talking yourself up, knowing your salary expectations and how qualified you are etc. They brought up the STAR method, which I found very useful; describe the Situation, what was the Task, the Action undertaken, and the Result. When writing my own practice answers I tried to keep this formula in mind. There were some harder sounding questions, ones I didn’t think I would be able to answer well so I focussed on them primarily, especially the ‘first 30/60/90 days on the job’, I wasn’t sure what things to say. I also wasn’t sure of the dream role/5 years time question, so I tried writing some scripts for those.

I also found some useful videos online from a real interview coach, and some of her recommended sentences I wrote down directly from her! From our class slideshows, they mentioned that when answering a question about weaknesses, to say that you “are working on …”, which was further supported by the coach, to say “the biggest weakness I have had to overcome is …” or “the weakness I am working on the most is … but through practise I believe I am more prepared” I wrote down this line and used it in my interview! I believe this was a very good suggestion. I was thankful for this coach, as another video of hers was about how to answer the common question “why do you want to work for us?”, and again I directly took her advised lines, as they fit very well with our subject matter; “I believe I am the most ideal candidate because I have over (years) of experience with …” and I merged the pointers from class about using past experience (the STAR method) to enhance this. Finally, there was a suggestion about qualifications that I liked, if you don’t have the right skills to admit this but say that you are willing to learn if there are opportunities provided.

The Interview

Upon entering the room I sat down in front of Henry, Stella (who was online on a laptop) and Danielle and I was much less worried than I was before as it was much more casual than I was imagining, and I have a tendency to stress over anything! I was asked about 7 or 8 questions in total by all of the interviewers, and I answered them as best I could following the STAR method or my written answers. I was asked things like ‘what’s your strengths and weaknesses?’, ‘why do you want to work for us?’ and even ‘what’s your favourite animal and why?’ I froze on some of the questions, even the ones I had practised as I blanked completely and stalled! I feel I did relatively alright, not great but I’m thankful for the experience; I had done 1 mock interview before, and a real interview for my current part-time job (but even that was more about my experience and expertise with tropical fish) and I believe I at least did better here than I did in my previous mock interview.

After Thoughts and Feedback

I wrote down all the feedback they gave me, things like making my questions more specific to the job and having more examples of times of weakness and strength. There was one question, about my favourite animal, that Henry said stood out for the bit of humour it had (my answer was a frogfish!) it’s memorable but I should try to link why a frogfish is my favourite animal back to design, as I was ‘applying’ for a concept artist job I should have talked about the strange, alien-like design of the fish, especially as their appearance is my favourite aspect. I also personally think I should try not to have my answers feel as scripted as they were, the way I said some of my answers really did sound like I was just rhyming off a sentence I memorised (since I did just that), I think having scripts is a good idea, but I need to practise casual speech.