How to let the interview panel see the significance of your career stories
In this column, we continue our series breaking down the START answering method that will stand to you in one of the most common type of interviews, namely the competency-based interview. In the first column in the series, we explained how START stands for the five key steps of an answer – Situation, Task, Action, […]
How to break down competency-based interviews into manageable steps
Q: Of late I’ve been hearing a lot about competency-based interviews. Indeed, you have referred to them on a few occasions. I hadn’t done gone for a new job for years until this summer and the whole interview world has changed. All tips would be appreciated. (FG, email). A: Yes, there has been a huge […]
Why hand movements can be your interview friend
Q: Every time I go to an interview, I am conscious of the fact that I move my hands far too much when speaking. Face to face it doesn’t appear too bad, but in online interviews it looks crazy. I can see myself in the screen gesticulating and waving like a mad thing, going like […]
How to deal with a rapid-fire job interview
This week, we go over and back by email with a reader who submitted a query – you may find the exchange useful if you have a job interview in the offing. Hopefully you won’t run into a similar scenario. ER (by email): The interview I did last week felt more like a rapid-fire quiz […]
How to get the best results in a job interview
Q: It was a very unusual job interview, I felt. Every time I told a story in response to a question, they pushed me to elaborate more on the result of the story. I didn’t really know what to say. A story is a story. I told them what I did and gave a general […]
How to get the right tone in an interview
Q: I’m going for a big job interview next week. And when I say big, I mean big. The biggest I’ll have gone for so far, and perhaps the biggest I will ever tackle. I want to let them know everything. As the saying goes, I aim to leave it all our there on the […]
How to show you meet challenges head-on
Q: In the job interview, they asked me what challenges I find most difficult in my current role. To be honest, while my job is tricky and at times challenging, there’s nothing in it that I really struggle to do. I get through things well. They kept pushing for more detail and it felt like […]
Technical questions at interview
Q: I went for promotion in my own company. The interview panel surprised me by asking a lot of technical questions about my current role. I work in a highly regulated sector with countless items to check, documents to complete and reports to file. I found it difficult to articulate what I do, even though […]
How to portray your leadership and management skills
Q: The interview panel asked me if I knew the difference between leadership and management. It completely threw me. I’ve been a manager in my company for a few years and I’d always seen leadership and management as being much the same thing. I didn’t get the job and I’d like to be better prepared […]
Job interview – put yourself at the heart of your answers
Q: In the job interview, I felt I gave a good account of how things operate in my department. I talked about how we schedule our work, how we ensure that nothing slips through the cracks and how we evaluate completed projects. I didn’t get the job and the feedback was that I failed to […]