Fly high at interview

Once you have applied for a job the next stage could be the offer of an interview. Congratulate yourself  if you get this far as not everyone will. But now you need to really prepare well for the face to face encounter.

Take time to think about what you are likely to be asked. Once in the interview room you need to be ready ! Researching  the company and it’s products and/or services is vital but you also need to focus on what you can offer. Companies often give very big clues in the job description as to the skills they seek so prepare answers on these and think about how you would  frame your responses. You won’t have access to the exact questions but some research beforehand will help you focus.

Think about questions for example on team work. Employers are interested in how you operate with others and together with them can get a task done and delivered well on time. So consider  a time when you worked in a team, think about the situation and context, where were you and what were you tasked to do?

How many of  you were there in the team and how did you divide up the individual tasks?

How long did you have to do this task?

How did you communicate with each other, for example face to face, email, text or social media ?

How did you handle differences of opinion and reach a consensus on how it was going to be achieved? How often did you meet? Where there any problems along the way that need to be sorted out? How did you deal with these?

Finally did you achieve the task?

Don’t worry about being asked what can seem like difficult questions about this kind of experience.  Answering and handling difficult questions well is a sign that you can handle pressure and sort out problems.

Another set of questions might be on your understanding of commercial awareness and business acumen. It can be tricky if you haven’t had a great deal of work experience but think back to any organisations you have worked in, even in a junior role. For example if you worked in retail or hospitality how did the company seek to increase sales? Were they successful in their approach? Did they have any promotion events? Were you involved in these? What was your role?

If you worked in a call centre what targets were you expected to achieve ?  How did you approach this?

If you have worked for a company on an industrial placement for example what did you notice about how the work was organised and if in charge what might you have done to improve productivity ? All of these can show a keen observation of the working environment.

There is a lot of excellent information on the University of Brighton careers service website about preparing  for interviews.

http://about.brighton.ac.uk/careers/cvs-and-interviews/interviews/

Image Malcolm Carlaw via Compfight