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Job Interview Success – Be Prepared
Jobseekers
now face more varied job interview set-ups than ever before – from
phone interviews to killer questions. Here at Jobsite we find out how
to prepare for job interview success.
Securing a job interview should be cause for celebration, but the hard
work isn’t over yet. In today’s competitive recruitment climate,
jobseekers may face a variety of different job interview situations and
they’ll need to be specifically prepared for each one. So what sorts of
set-ups might you face at job interview, and how can you achieve job
interview success in every scenario?
No matter what sort of interview you’re up against, it’s vital to
research your employer as part of your job interview preparation. “As
soon as you’re invited to a job interview, begin learning as much about
the organisation as you can,” says TUC General Secretary, Brendan
Barber. “Use all the sources you can find – the internet, newspapers,
libraries, well-informed friends and corporate literature – to find out
what your potential employers are all about.” Luisa Jefford, Director
of Contracts and Information at recruitment company, TFPL, agrees that
job interview success is down to preparation: “Before going for a job
interview, I’d advise any candidate to research who will be
interviewing them, what level the interviewer is at in the organisation
and also gain an understanding of the basic vision of that
organisation.”
A crucial aim of your research is to find out exactly what problem your
employment will solve for your employer, according to job interview
expert and author of Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions, Martin
John Yate. “No one is added to the payroll for the love of mankind. In
every instance, we are hired to anticipate and solve problems within
our particular areas of expertise. Think of the problems you tackle in
every aspect of your current job and you’ll be thinking along exactly
the same lines as your employer’s line of questioning. You might
identify the typical problems you tackle on a daily basis. Come up with
plenty of specific examples and recall how you solved them.” This will
provide a useful foundation for achieving job interview success.
But what about specific preparation for more unusual job interview
formats? “Employers use all sorts of different interview formats these
days, including group interviews, panel interviews, telephone
interviews and so on,” says Jefford. Candidates are almost certain to
come across the ‘traditional’ job interview during the course of their
career, which is likely to be one, or maybe two people asking fairly
broad questions. But jobseekers might also be invited to group job
interviews involving ten or more other candidates, or a one-to-one
interview over the phone.
When preparing for a phone or team job interview, it’s worth knowing
that generally these job interview formats have the same goal, which is
to cut down large groups of applicants through reasonably formulaic
fact-finding methods. “We sometimes interview people by telephone,”
says Jefford, “which can be an effective pre-screening tactic, but we’d
never use this as our only interviewing method as it’s important to
meet someone face-to-face if you’re going to determine whether they fit
with the culture of your organisation.”
Telephone and group job interviews are generally used as screening
processes, which are then followed by more thorough one-on-one
interviews if you pass. Therefore, to achieve job interview success
during group or phone interviews, you should prepare by revising the
job advert or candidate criteria extra thoroughly and ensuring you can
easily communicate how you meet what the employer has asked for.
Research the company, but there’s no need to over-prepare at this stage
as by their nature screening-type job interviews are very basic.
Increasingly, job applicants may find themselves invited to ‘killer
question’ job interviews, where interviewers ask odd or challenging
questions designed to deliberately disorientate applicants such as:
“What question were you hoping we wouldn’t ask?” or even: “Is a Jaffa
Cake a cake or a biscuit?” The motivation here is for employers to
determine if candidates are confident enough to cope under pressure.
Gordon Bennett is the Southeast Regional Manager for Anglian Home
Improvements. He regularly uses questions such as: “What are your
weaknesses?” during job interviews to assess a candidate’s confidence.
As he explains: “I'm looking for outward, confident individuals with
good people skills. People who are shy are not necessarily going to get
anywhere in certain areas. Our recruitment procedures are designed to
pick out go getters.”
These sorts of job interviews can really shake the confidence of some
candidates, such as Tom Adams who works as an accountant in London.
“When I was first looking for work in London, I went for lots of sales
jobs as I had little experience. They asked me: ‘If you were an animal,
what sort would you be?’ I just gave them a jokey answer about being a
monkey, and when they pressed me for further explanation I said I
thought it was a stupid question. I found out later from the
recruitment agency that I didn’t get the job on the strength of not
answering that question. It was a lesson well learned – answer as best
you can, even if you think the question is ridiculous.”
For interviewees unfortunate enough to encounter this technique,
relaxation is essential – and this means both before and during the job
interview. Undergoing a relaxation exercise, such as meditation or
yoga, before a job interview is good practice no matter what sort of
situation you’re going into. But according to Paul Jacobs, UK
Operations Director at Office Angels, for ‘killer question’ job
interviews it’s even more essential to get into a calm state of mind
and feel non-confrontational. “Employers are not trying to catch people
out in these ‘killer’ job interview settings. There are no right or
wrong responses; just inappropriate ones.”
Whatever questions you prepare to answer at your job interview, part of
your preparation should involve coming up with a few of your own
questions to fire back at the end. “Come up with some intelligent
questions about the organisation, questions about strategy, the way
they operate or how they deal with particular problems, before the
interview,” says Barber. “The harder your interviewers will need to
think about their answers, the better they’ll remember you.”
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