In this section you can flick through interview tips which we can share thanks to years of experience of guiding candidates on what to prepare for upcoming interviews.
Interviews are an opportunity for a potential employer to assess your fit for the role either via phone, via videocall or face-to-face.
As well as assessing your skills and experience they’ll potentially also be evaluating how you could fit into their team if successful.
During an interview, be yourself and try to act naturally. Use the meeting as a means of finding out more about the company culture and potentially whether they fit what you want from an employer. It’s a ‘two-way process’, so this is really important.
Preparation
The effort you make before an interview is as important as the way you act in the interview itself. Preparation takes a variety of forms:
- Firstly, contextualise the interview – why do you want this role?
- Find out as much about the company, the market they operate in, and their competitors – read company reports, google news, and the company’s own website. Any recent PR pieces are great to memorise and make reference to during the exchange.
- Interrogate the job spec, so you can ask valid and worthwhile questions about the position. We suggest using the job spec as a tick box exercise, to run through how you can demonstrate each of the skills areas needed.
- Ensure you are familiar with your own CV (it may surprise you how many people are not)
- Run through likely questions in order to consider them and formulate your response (see checklist whilst you ‘interrogated the spec’) – think of examples of when you’ve done these things and think about what value you brought to the business by doing them.
- Your recruiter should have confirmed where you need to be, who you’re meeting and at what time.
- The day before, it is worth planning your route, if attending onsite, and always allow time to travel. Traffic is everybody’s worst nightmare on ‘interview day’!
The Interview
OK, so you’ve made it there on time and you know what’s expected.
Think about the following:
- First impressions count – enter the room with confidence, make good eye contact with everyone you meet, and shake their hands (social distancing allowing, of course!)
- Sit in an composed manner, and try not to fold your arms, it can make you seem closed or disinterested
- Try not to fiddle, either with items on the desk, or things around you… as well as making you seem nervous, this also detracts from what you are saying
- Primarily address your responses to the person who asked the question, yet do also engage any other interviewers with eye contact whilst responding if possible. This shows you’re comfortable with fielding queries and sharing an answer in an open forum
- Feel free to ‘verbally nod’ with things you’re agreeing on, this tends to make the interview feel much more conversational
- This sounds a bit weird, but… often interviewers will have the main interviewer in front of you, with another to the side of you whose main job is to observe you. Do not feel intimidated by this, and remember to allocate some of your eye contact to them – and, again, do not feel intimidated or upset if they do not reciprocate with a smile!
- Just try to be yourself as much as possible. The role and company culture has to be right, and as such… if you’re not getting the right ‘vibes’ from them, it may not be the right move for all parties!
If you have any questions regarding how to represent yourself in the best light during an interview, we’re more than happy to assist you with your prep, just let us know here, if you’re keen to discuss it.