Interview technique
Negative experience
Think back to an interview which you felt went badly.
First remember things through your own eyes so you can connect with the feelings and your mind set that day. Make a note of the way your voice sounded, what you were focusing on - in your mind and with your eyes, and the feelings you felt. Then imagine yourself from the interviewers’ perspective or as a fly on the wall so you see yourself in the interview room and can see how you may have appeared in the eyes of the interviewer. Make a note of how the interviewer or a third person would have seen you.
List the things would you have liked to have changed.
My bad example
I had a disastrous interview at a hedge fund soon after I started working in London.
I was naïve when it came to interviews. I didn’t know how to prepare for them; they were a whole new world to me, as was the financial services world.
In the interview I felt like I was on the back foot. I ended up being very defensive, trying to explain why I wasn’t able to do things rather than saying what I could do. The tone of my voice and attitude was of someone who felt hard done by – even early on in the interview. I let myself feel I was being interrogated. I didn’t feel my strong points were particularly strong either, so any confidence I had was very much hemmed in and wasn’t given a chance to show itself.
I was quite nervous as you might expect. I was concentrating too much on myself, concerning myself about how I was sitting, clutching my own fingers and being very preoccupied about the long black hair I had at the time.
I made possibly every mistake in the book that day.
Learning from bad interviews
Take a while to identify all the things you would want to change from your bad experience and think about how you could change those bad things. Think also about it in terms of the visual, aural and emotional experience as to how you’d change.
Positive experience
Now think of a more positive experience in an interview. This might be a part of an interview you were pleased with or could be the whole interview.
Imagine you are in the interview and are seeing it again through your own eyes this time. What things did you do particularly well? How did you sound? How is your body language in your memory? How did it feel?
Write down anything which you feel could be useful.
My good example
In a job interview I had a couple of years ago, whenever I was asked to recall a time I’d done something, I just made sure I said yes, I could show the particular quality, and gave a simple example from my past. I made sure I didn’t complicate matters by letting myself recount anything that was negative – something I’d had a tendency to do in earlier interviews.
For example, if asked how I’d shown bravery in performing a task; in the past I’d have said something like “usually I’d be a nervous wreck but on this occasion but I approached a client who I’d never spoken to before and sold 2 units of product there and then”.
Whilst the last bit is good, I’d be shooting myself in the foot by admitting that, usually, I would be useless!
I was still quite self-conscious of the position of my hands and fidgeting but my answers were simple, clear and positive, and I’d prepared well. In fact some recounts I gave were completely made up experiences. Luckily I had enough real life experiences mixed in to make my lies fit in fairly seamlessly. Made up things are best avoided if possible but sometimes, I think, it’s perfectly fair to use them.
I was really surprised how easy it was to just say yes to all the traits they wanted and keep things simple. Nowadays, keeping things simple is something I try to apply as often as I can.
In this good example, the tone of my voice was much more assured, my posture was better and I felt a bit like a ship slowly coming into port. I just had to hold my line and keep steady.
A good state of mind
With the good experience you come up with, you can start to invoke it in future by thinking back through the good past experience as clearly as you can – including visual, audio and emotional memories. It gets your mind into that positive state again and your body will also naturally respond to your mind in conveying a more positive you.
If positive experiences are few and far between you can instead start to think of how you would like to behave. Think about how your voice would ideally sound, what your posture would be like, what things you would be seeing and looking for in the interview and how you would be feeling in this ideal interview.
As it is not a complete memory you may need to work extra hard on imagining all the pieces – like your smile as you walk in, the things you notice in the room before you get down to the interview itself etc. It will be well worth the effort though.
Imagining your future interview
Imagine going through a future interview. You won't know exactly what the interviewer is going to necessarily ask but you can pick some common questions which you are more than likely be asked, to get your mind into practice.
- First of all watch yourself from a 3rd person perspective. Greeting the interviewers, sitting yourself down and answering the typical questions - pay attention to how you sound and the image you project.
- Think about what things you'd change and then re-run through it. Keep doing this until you're happy with the result.
- Then imagine it over again but this time from your own perspective - this time pay extra attention to how you feel and how the interviewer and anyone else in the imagined room may respond to you. It's useful to find out, in advance, how many people will be interviewing you for this reason.
- Again, think about what things you'd change and re-run through it. Keep doing this until you're happy with the result again.
Recently I’ve been looking at what things I would ask of myself if I was to be my future employer.
Some of the things are very obvious but are still things which didn’t use to cross my mind as things to pick out:
- Being reliable and punctual
- Being well turned out
- Demonstrating the communication skills you have
- Demonstrating examples of problem solving or successfully overcoming difficulties
- Having an overview of the company and the industry
- Having an idea of what will be expected in the role – what will be the challenging aspects and what will be the things you will be particularly well suited to
- Someone who will fit in with the company culture
After identifying all the things you would expect to see in yourself, you can then look at how you measure up to the criteria and identify which areas you could work on and improve.
Examples of tailoring
For the roles I’d like to take on in future, they stress ethics as one of the important qualities. I think this is something I could conceivably work on in my spare time and have something quite impressive to show for it. It wouldn’t be too difficult for me to run a marathon for charity or to do some voluntary work, so it makes sense to invest some time in this area.
Another area I may want to improve is making sure I fit in with the company culture. I won’t want to completely change who I am but I could read the trade journals to at least get an idea of the kind of people who make up the industry. I might even be tempted to read up on certain subjects like polo, golf or horse racing to give myself a greater feeling of familiarity with the type of people in the industry.
If someone said they liked polo to me right this minute, I’d expect to have a knee jerk reaction of shock and maybe even slight disgust. However, if I were to read up on the subject I might not be so taken aback if it came up in conversation and I may be equipped to make some basic small talk around the subject.
A long term relationship
I’ve also started to look at the interview as less of a job interview and more like a first meeting of potential friends. This is something I can handle more easily and have better associations with than seeing it, purely, as a job interview.
A job interview, to me, invokes a very detached and artificial sense in my mind; something that’s quite superficial and just a small moment in time, like an exam. Viewing it as a meeting with potential friends, gives it a more familiar feel; I can quite warm to the idea of sitting in the chairs and having a glass of water as the interviewer and I assess one another.
It also feels more comfortably weighted this way. Rather than being under pressure to perform – with them occupying the high ground, instead I’m viewing it as a level playing field with both them and I wanting to impress each other.
So by looking at as a long term commitment to someone, or some people, I start to think about it in a different way.
- I want to know who they are – the company and the interviewers themselves
- I want to concentrate on establishing a rapport with them as soon as I can
- When I speak to them before the interview – say to confirm the interview arrangements and who will be interviewing me – I will approach as if they are people I’m relatively familiar with
- I want to impress them in how I look and the things I say – and make sure I steer clear of putting them off at all
- I want to meet up with them in future
- I want to work with them rather than for them – just this can have quite a profound difference on how you’ll view them
The list could go on in even more detail.
Preparation
I used to hate the idea of having to prepare but it really has proven to be one of the best things I can do.
Having a set of pre-prepared answers is really useful. You needn’t remember answers exactly. Try to distil responses to their simplest form and this will not only make answers easier to remember but also a lot more effective.
The preparation really makes a difference as it takes the pressure off having to think of an answer to each question. The less actual thinking you have to do, the much easier things become. You can start to pay attention to details in the questions which will make answering all the more easy.
Your preparation is like setting the course of a voyage. With good preparation, you can concentrate your mind on simply keeping the ship steady and making sure you pass the right buoys and avoid straying off line.
Getting things the right way round
When I’ve been to interviews, appointments and meetings I’ve often got things the wrong way round in my head.
My mind would naturally imagine what the building might be like. I generally had one fixed idea of what the interview environment would be like and then, when I got there, I’d find the building was very much different to what I imagined and I’d find it quite difficult to adjust myself. It only increased the sense of alienation and detachment.
What I should have done was to imagine the interview many times and change the appearance of the interviewer and room each time, or perhaps every other time, I replayed my imagination. I should have imagined a pristine room and then an untidy room, a female interviewer and then a male interviewer. The more changes the better - you'll feel like quite a seasoned interviewee even before the interviews!
Even more importantly, I should have been concentrating on imagining myself. How I would act, how my voice would sound, how I would look and how I would be feeling - as mentioned in detail in 'Imagining your future interview' above.
Furthermore, in the olden days, in the interview itself, almost my entire focus would be on myself.
This is the opposite of what I should have been doing. When in the interview, your focus, ideally, should be on the interviewer and their questions, rather than on yourself and your answers. With good preparation, your answers will come out almost automatically in response to the questions you’re focusing on.
To summarise this
Avoid
- Before the interview – imagining how the building or your interviewer looks like or how they might sound as a fixed entity.
- During the interview – focusing on what you’re doing, saying and feeling
- Before the interview – imagine what you will look like, say and feel
- During the interview – focus on what the interviewer is saying, how they are reacting and, if possible, how they may be feeling
How about you?
What are your experiences? What things have you learned from interviews and what advice would you give? - I'd be really interested to hear.
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