Interview Panic?
THE COMPETECY INTERVIEW PROCESS
As the job market is picking up again, many people are facing interviews for the first time in many years, and whilst some interviews are still informal, most companies still go through the formal interview process by using competencies to analyse behaviours as well as to find working examples of technical experience and knowledge, so how do you prepare?
Traditional Interviewing
Most managers and supervisors use a typical CV based interview in the first stage process with a candidate, this usually runs through the career history as outlined on a CV.
The most important thing here is simply to know your own CV, dates, gaps, and reasons for leaving should be simple answers without having to think, remember:
Keep it Simple
Keep it focused
Keep it relevant
Prepare for an interview by reading your own CV in depth, identifying questions, check dates, spelling and crossover of roles
Competency Interviewing
Working with competencies an employer seeks to understand a candidates experience and achievements by discussing a specific task or example, where an answer can be drawn from any part of your career history
This tests whether an individual is drawing from real experiences that they have delivered or simply talking through a process they were involved in, so start to think if REAL experiences and projects you have worked on that may show competencies such as resilience, leadership or delegation to name a few.
What else can I do?
Remember this is a two way process, use the time wisely to find out as much as you can about the company and the interviewer, after all, you want to ensure that this is the right business for you, a miss match in company, expectations and culture only leads to longer term problems if you were to take the job.
Be truthful about salary and working hours and do not make assumptions.
Preparation is key for any interview scenario, best to be over than under prepared, practice explaining real situations that display your technical and behavioural competencies, and if in doubt enlist the support of someone else to practice with and discuss, after all, the interview is key to the job offer.
Vanessa Sullivan has 12 years recruitment experience and now works as a recruitment trainer and executive career coach.
'Good' recruiters should know this and be keen to update you on new events affecting the company. As long as you have a good level of understanding about the business, its okay to ask questions to find out more detail around the company, most people enjoy talking about the business, so do give them the opportunity to 'sell' it to you, after all, it is a 2 way process.
Brian makes a good point. No matter how well you prepare you can never be 100% up to date. Hopefully a good recruiter will recognise this and take note the applicant has tried to bring themselves up to speed. Not always the case sadly.
I prepared for an interview by learning as much about the company as I could. This included their major customers and projects. Turned up and started to talk about where they stood with their customers and npd. Transpired that their number one customer had taken the major proportion of their business away from them and placed it overseas only a couple of weeks earlier. Sometimes being clever doesn't work
Vanessa a really good article. I once attended an interview and made sure I had prepared well in advance, (even created a small to the point presentation). The feedback I received from the recruitment agent was that I was over prepared. Gobsmacked in an understatement!!