Winning Interviews

Before going to any interview, you obviously need to be sure that you are in the right career or that you know why you should be in this new career. If you are embarking on a career change you need to know what transferable skills you have and what provides credibility and marketability for the job in the new field. You need to have done your research about the job and the company, and you need to have read between the lines on the job spec. If you do not know why you are right for the job, how will the interviewer?

There are three kinds of interviews:

1. Sieve
2. Assessment (including competency-based)
3. Decision

You have to be sure about the purpose of the interview, so that you can present yourself in the most positive, constructive way.

1. Sieve interview

A preliminary meeting to establish whether your application should be taken further.

For the employer, it is an opportunity to establish whether you "look" the right sort of person.

For you, it is an opportunity to size up the employer and opportunity and decide if it is right for you.
The first impressions are all important. It is not details, which matter so much as whether you come over as someone who will fit in and be enthusiastic and committed.

2. Assessment Interviews

This will be a longer interview, sometimes one-to-one, but sometimes organised as a panel, with a member of the Personnel Department, someone who knows about your particular type of work and your potential immediate superior.

The interview is designed to dig below the surface and establish whether you really have the right values, interests, ambitions, achievements, experience and qualifications for the job. It will also be designed to reassure everyone involved that you will fit in.

Many of you will have been to an Assessment Centre, for selection or development. This will generally consist of four stages:

* Psychometric Assessment (perhaps on-line) to assess individual abilities and personality traits. There are many books on how to improve performance in these, e.g. 'How to Pass Selection Tests', 'How to Pass Graduate Psychometric Tests', and 'How to Master Psychometric Tests', all Kogan Page titles.

* Psychometric tests are standardized, because everyone is presented with the same questions and instructions, under carefully controlled and timed conditions.

* A trained individual follows precise instructions for scoring and interpreting the results, leaving no room for subjectivity or bias.

* Results are compared with a representative sample of previous test takers, to ascertain how well one has performed compared with the average for this normative group.

Mastery or Attainment tests measure current levels of competence, e.g. professional examinations, or work sampling, such as in-tray exercises. Aptitude or Intelligence tests measure maximum performance- how well one can do, identifying natural ability and potential (when motivated).

Personality tests have no right or wrong answer, or good or bad answers, but simply identify personal style and characteristics. Results measure usual behaviour, identifying how one is likely to react to people, events and circumstances.

While practice can speed up performance and raise scores slightly on Aptitude Measures, and while one can attempt to fake answers on Personality Questionnaires, it is clearly self-defeating to cheat one's way into a position to which one is ill-suited! My clients particularly value the opportunity to be totally honest, without the pressure of having to impress or please a current or potential employer.

* Group Activities, to assess group and problem solving situations. This can involve role-play and work sampling. Often a group of approximately eight candidates will be required to come to a consensus solution, and will be assessed on Communication, Judgment, Reasoning, Persuasiveness, and Problem-Solving. You must ensure that you contribute overtly:

a) Learn and use the names of other candidates
b) Summarize the positions of others, highlighting common ground and then giving a view of your own
c) Help the group understand the issues- put forward a reasoned argument and conclusion
d) Remind the group of the objective and time constraints.
e) Act as the scribe.

* Social Activities, to assess behaviour over lunch or during a company tour etc...

* One-to-one panel interviews by senior line managers.
Increasingly, interviews are based on competencies. Instead of being assessed against the other clients using whatever standards the interviewer feels are right, you are assessed against the competencies that have been found to be directly related to success in a particular job role.

What are competencies?

They are the skills, attributes, knowledge and characteristics needed for success in a particular job role.

Competency-based interviews are not just concerned with the results you achieved. They are also concerned with how you did it - the skills and knowledge that you used. So, in a traditional interview you might be asked "What were your three best achievements in that job?" A competency-based approach may well probe how you went about those tasks and what competencies you deployed.

Competency-based interviews (also called structured interviews) are interviews where each question is designed to test one or more specific skills. The answer is then matched against pre-decided criteria and marked accordingly. For example, the interviewers may want to test the candidate's ability to deal with stress by asking first how the candidate generally handles stress and then asking the candidate to provide an example of a situation where he worked under pressure.

How do competency-based interviews differ from normal interviews?

Normal interviews (also called unstructured interviews) are essentially a conversation where the interviewers ask a few questions that are relevant to what they are looking for but without any specific aim in mind other than getting an overall impression of you as an individual. Questions are fairly random and can sometimes be quite open. For example, a question such as "What can you offer our company?" is meant to gather general information about you but does not test any specific skill or competency. In an unstructured interview, the candidate is judged on the general impression that he/she leaves; the process is therefore likely to be more subjective.

Competency-based interviews (also called structured or behavioural interviews) are more systematic, with each question targetting a specific skill or competency. Candidates are asked questions relating to their behaviour in specific circumstances, which they then need to back up with concrete examples. The interviewers will then dig further into the examples by asking for specific explanations about the candidate's behaviour or skills.

Which skills and competencies do competency-based interviews test?

The list of skills and competencies that can be tested varies depending on the post that you are applying for. For example, for a Personal Assistant post, skills and competencies would include communication skills; ability to organise and prioritise; and ability to work under pressure. For a senior manager, skills and competencies may include an ability to influence and negotiate; an ability to cope with stress and pressure; an ability to lead; and the capacity to take calculated risks.

How should you respond to the competency approach?

The best answers are concise, structured, and allow the interviewer to easily see the competencies or skills that you applied. For example, you could briefly describe:

* the situation you faced and the specific tasks for which you took responsibility
* any difficulties which you had to overcome
* the actions you took and how you went about it
(for example, how did you get buy-in from those affected?)
* how your results contributed to the organisation's success.

Illustrative Competency-based Questions

* Have you ever had a de-motivated and underachieving team? How did you motivate them?
* Describe a time when you exceeded customer expectations. How do you measure customer satisfaction?
* Describe your involvement in finance and budgets.
* How did you approach communication in (your last job)?
* Have you had to change the opinion of one of your seniors? How did you go about that?
* Describe the most challenging project that you have been involved in. How did you overcome the obstacles?
* Give an example of a difficult interpersonal relationship you have experienced within the workplace. How did you deal with that?

How competency-based interview questions are marked?

Before the interview, the interviewers will have determined which type of answers would score positive points and which types of answers would count against the candidates. Marks are then allocated depending on the extent to which the candidate's answer matches those negative and positive indicators.

If the interviewers feel that there are areas that you have failed to address, they may help you along by probing appropriately. For example, in answering the question above "Describe an example of a time when you had to deal with pressure", if you focussed on how you dealt with the practical angle of the problem but you forgot to discuss how you managed your stress during and after the event, the interviewers may prompt you with a further question such as "How did you handle the stress at the time?". This would give you an opportunity to present a full picture of your behaviour. This is where the marking can become subjective. Indeed, if an interviewer likes you, he may be more tempted to prompt you and push you along than if he has bad vibes about you.

3. Decision Interviews

This is likely to be the final shortlist of not more than two or three people. The firm is happy that you are suited to the job, but now has to weigh up your application against the short listed applicants.

They may have to decide whether to take a chance that you will learn in return for accepting a lower salary, in contrast to someone who has the right experience, but has to be paid a higher salary.

This is the negotiating stage, so be sure to obtain as good a financial package as possible, while still recognising where the firm needs to be reassured that you are the right person for them.

Whatever the interview, you have the best chance of succeeding if you prepare. Aim to know more than the Interviewer about the interview process- often not that difficult! Tell the truth, but rehearse your answers well, either in front of the mirror, or with a friend. Practice, to ensure fluency in your answers, particularly, how you might contribute to the organisation.