Job interview coaching

Advice re competency interviews:

The competency part of an interview really has nothing to do with your ability to do that specific job. Competency based interviewing is a separate skill that needs to be learned.

The questions are usually things like "tell me about a time when you had to work as part of a team to complete a project". It's not obvious or easy to answer if you've not come across it before.

What they actually want is for you to tell them a story. The question is just a prompt for the sort of story they're after.

To perpare: read the job profile carefully, along with anything else they send you. Use that to work out the sort of stories they might want to hear.

e g. if the advert mentions teamwork think about something you did that involved other people that you can tell them about.

Think about what YOU did. The interviewer doesn't want to know what other people did, only your input. Then put the story into a structure.

I use the STAR format: Situation, Task, Action, Result. So, for teamwork something like:

[Situation:] part of my college grading was an end of year project that needed to be done in a group.

[Task:] my job was to help my classmates put together a 10 minute presentation we could deliver to the whole class.

[Action:] I moved our desks together, so we could talk, and made notes of the different ideas. This meant everyone  could see the ideas and helped the team pick the best ones. I made sure we all understood our roles by writing up who was doing what. I then agreed with the others to have regular check-in meetings over the next 2 weeks to discuss progress.

[Result:] the project was a success and we all passed the year.

Drop the titles for each part (ie. don't say "situation", "task" etc) and practice telling the stories ahead of time. Tell them out loud to someone else (if possible) to get feedback. Or at least do it in front of a mirror to give the feel of having an audience. Do this repeatedly until you're confident with each of your stories.

Useful tip: you can take your notes into the interview along with the job advert, your CV etc. Don't just read what's in front of you though. Having the notes of your stories will help prompt you if you get stuck.

An interview is a chance to show off. Tell them what you did and why it was a success. Don't lie (eg if your job was taking notes don't claim to have organised the meeting). But you should be very positive about what you did do.

Good luck!

Advice re competency interviews:

The competency part of an interview really has nothing to do with your ability to do that specific job. Competency based interviewing is a separate skill that needs to be learned.

The questions are usually things like "tell me about a time when you had to work as part of a team to complete a project". It's not obvious or easy to answer if you've not come across it before.

What they actually want is for you to tell them a story. The question is just a prompt for the sort of story they're after.

To perpare: read the job profile carefully, along with anything else they send you. Use that to work out the sort of stories they might want to hear.

e g. if the advert mentions teamwork think about something you did that involved other people that you can tell them about.

Think about what YOU did. The interviewer doesn't want to know what other people did, only your input. Then put the story into a structure.

I use the STAR format: Situation, Task, Action, Result. So, for teamwork something like:

[Situation:] part of my college grading was an end of year project that needed to be done in a group.

[Task:] my job was to help my classmates put together a 10 minute presentation we could deliver to the whole class.

[Action:] I moved our desks together, so we could talk, and made notes of the different ideas. This meant everyone  could see the ideas and helped the team pick the best ones. I made sure we all understood our roles by writing up who was doing what. I then agreed with the others to have regular check-in meetings over the next 2 weeks to discuss progress.

[Result:] the project was a success and we all passed the year.

Drop the titles for each part (ie. don't say "situation", "task" etc) and practice telling the stories ahead of time. Tell them out loud to someone else (if possible) to get feedback. Or at least do it in front of a mirror to give the feel of having an audience. Do this repeatedly until you're confident with each of your stories.

Useful tip: you can take your notes into the interview along with the job advert, your CV etc. Don't just read what's in front of you though. Having the notes of your stories will help prompt you if you get stuck.

An interview is a chance to show off. Tell them what you did and why it was a success. Don't lie (eg if your job was taking notes don't claim to have organised the meeting). But you should be very positive about what you did do.

Good luck!

Tears_before_bedtime said:

practice telling the stories ahead of time.

This is most effective if you can do it with someone who will role play the interviewer with you - simply to get the practice of making eye contact, pacing yourself, not losing your place in the equence of the answer etc.

It also builds the neural pathways of recalling the situations and using the relevant jargon so it sounds natural (to them).

This was a big part of my role play practice for candidates where I would use different personas for them to deal with so they could handle most things an interviewer could throw at them. Dealing with a rude or aggressive interviewer is sometimes part of the test (especially if the role involves dealing with rude and aggressive customers) - it is their way to see how you cope under duress.

This stage often takes multiple sessions (with cooling off time in between) to practice and perfect the skills.

Tears_before_bedtime said:

The competency part of an interview really has nothing to do with your ability to do that specific job.

Agreed - ideally the technical interview (normally online) is handled before the face to face interview to avoid letting unsuitable candidates through.

The competency test is largely a test of real world skills and your ability to explain things using particular templates.

The practice should reinforce these memories and , more importantly, tear them apart under scrutiny and still be plausable.

Often the interviewers want to see how you cope when it isn't something routine or easy - they want to see how you cope with the occasional unusual situation which may put you out of your comfort zone.

Understanding what is being actually asked for and practicing it would be the most effective way to get the job, but then you need to live the job too and this is were most of us struggle in the real world.

Maybe I should write an article on job survival strategies for autists.