For my second career event, I attended a seminar dealing with professional interviewing and the different ways to be successful. This was extremely informative. The first piece of advice that I got was that you don't want to prepare so much that you can't communicate what you want to effectively. In other words, don't over think too much. Be genuine and answer questions with professional, but honest responses. Our instructor said that you should come off as prepared, not rehearsed. I couldn't agree more.
Something else that I found interesting was that it's important to market yourself, but at the same time evaluate your potential employer. Your feelings are also important, not just meeting interviewer expectations. It can't hurt to know a little about the company as well, reviewing key concepts and assessing yourself to confirm that it's a good fit. I really never thought of it like this but there is a lot of truth to this information.
After talking about the preliminary things, we moved onto the actual interviewing process. It's no secret that first impressions are extremely important. When scheduling, it's best to plan to be either one of the first or last interviewees for sheer memory sake. Arriving for an interview can be stressful, but it's a good opportunity to get in the zone and be prepared. One of the most important aspects, if not the most important, is a nice professional appearance. Our lecturer described it as "business casual". From there we went into a more descriptive lecture analyzing the types of interviews conducted. There was a screening interview, commonly known as a telephone interview. From there we talked about a panel interview, which is one of the most stressful interviews in my personal experience. Often times there are multiple interviewers and applicants in the same room, all being interviewed at once. Then there is a structured setting, which is much more conversational in nature. The end result is multiple different processes that can play out differently. It's important to stay calm, confident, and precise no matter what happens.
The final segment of this career event emphasized the actual interview and what to expect. There is almost always an introduction, middle, and closing section during your interview. In the beginning there is usually a question that embodies: "tell me about yourself", what this means is tell me about yourself as it applies to this position. That's an important piece of information. The middle section is more straight forward, often they ask you to "give an example of...". This can be one of the most off-putting parts of an interview, so it's crucial to expect it and think of possible scenarios in advance that you could use as an answer. By the end it can't hurt to have some questions prepared. I found it interesting that you're not suppose to ask anything that "assumes" you got the job. Instead, ask things about the company and the interviewers.
Overall it was a very good event, and I learned a lot. I'll definitely be using some of these strategies for future interviews, being prepared without being rehearsed stuck out in particular. The closing message was that honest answers and confidence are the most important things, that's what employers look for. It was a great seminar.
Having worked in HR myself, I can say from experience that attractive candidates must market themselves to the employer just as much as the employer should market themselves for the prospective employee. It never hurts to make the extra effort to learn more about the employer; this provides you the opportunity to impress them with your knowledge about who they are, what they do, and what you see your role being in their company.
ReplyDeleteVery important points!
ReplyDeleteI have been in HR for sometime. We were evaluating most of the points that you mentioned here. Especially, the last part that you ask questions by which you want to embarrass the panel or should that they missed something is very harmful.