Surviving the Interview

Even accomplished professionals can find interviews unnerving. For many it’s like going into an exam where you are the subject matter. You know you’re going to be quizzed on your skills, experience and personal attributes, but you can never be entirely sure what is going to come up on the day.

The key to success is preparation. Here are a few tips to help you get ready for the event:

Study Up

Employers expect you to arrive at the interview knowing background information about their organisation. As an absolute bare minimum, read your prospective employer’s ‘About Us’, ‘Products/Services’ and ‘Careers’ website sections.

Prepare Questions

Formulate intelligent and appropriate questions to ask in your interview. Annual reports are great for swotting up on company histories, recent performance and challenges. Also research competitors and the wider business sector.

Prepare Examples

Skilled interviewers pose intelligent questions to assess your technical or professional knowledge, and your personal attributes. Read the job description and prepare examples for particular competencies deemed essential for the role.

Start Rehearsing

You may feel awkward rehearsing out loud, but its the best way to prepare for an interview, and to perfect your presentation.

Handling Competency Based Questions

Competency, or behavioural, based interview questions are designed to assess an individual’s personal attributes based on their handling of past situations. Unlike traditional interview questions, the focus is on examples of how you dealt with a particular incident and demonstrated a desired attribute.

Base answers interview questions on specific experiences and detail how you handled the situation. Avoid phrases like: “We normally deal with those situations by…”. Instead say: “We had a situation like that three months ago. I was working on a cross-functional team project when…”

Structured answers are key to successfully answering competency based questions:

1. Situation

Give a little background on the situation you’re about to discuss. This provides perspective and grounds the example in reality for the interviewer.

2. Approach

Describe how you approached the task – who did you consult, what research did you do, etc before deciding on a course of action

3. Action

What you did to execute your plan.

4. Result

Outline the achievement of a positive outcome to the situation.

Finally, keep your answers light on technical jargon and excessive detail. If an interviewer wants more detail they will usually ask for it.

Questions

Finally, don’t forget to ask questions when invited to do so at the end of the interview. Basic information may have been given during the interview, but this is your chance to demonstrate that you’re a better than average candidate.

Ask intelligent questions that demonstrate depth of understanding of the position, company, or impacts of the wider market. By showing an active interest in the role and company it will help you go that step further than others to impress prospective employers.