Hey guys!
I've been interviewing for some jobs recently, and I wanted to share a few things with you because I've encountered some new kinds of interviews that I wasn't necessarily prepared for or wasn't expecting.
Telephone Interviews:
Before a month ago, I had never experienced a telephone interview. This is probably because most of the jobs I've ever applied for were more retail or entry-level jobs where a face to face interview was really all that was needed.
Telephone interviews serve a useful purpose though, especially when you are dealing with a larger company or organization or if there is a large pool of candidates for the job. Telephone interviews are generally "first-round interviews" and give the interviewer a better idea of what your personality is like, and gives them an opportunity to hear about you and your experience in your own words and not just what you've put on paper.
They can be fun but also stressful. There's nothing like sitting around in your PJ's in your own comfort zone talking about yourself. The most important thing is to *listen carefully* because you can sometimes be on speaker phone and it's really easy to get distracted when you're not looking someone in the eye. Be sure you answer and address all of the questions/issues that come up in the interview. Be sure to thank your interviewer for their time. It's also a REALLY REALLY good idea to send a follow up thank you e-mail if you have an e-mail address **This is another good opportunity to stand out, because if you take the time to research their e-mails and emphasize again how well you fit with the job especially after talking with the interviewer, it can really make or break whether you get a second interview or not.
Here's a link to a good website about telephone interviews:
http://www.seltekconsultants.co.uk/preparingtelephoneinterview.htm
Group Interviews:
I also until recently had never experienced a group interview. These can go a couple of ways, including a group interview where you and other applicants are interviewed collectively by a smaller group of executives/managers, or you can be alone (like I was) with a boardroom full of other staff.
This seems like a rather daunting interview. It CAN be incredibly nerve-racking, and I'll admit that before mine I was nervous, but generally you can find strength in numbers in both cases. In the first, you're surrounded by your peers, and usually by people of the same experience level. Yes, technically you ARE competing with these people for the same job so you have to make sure you stand out. However, you are still surrounded by a group of your peers and because you aren't completely alone you can feed off others and find a comfort niche and run with it. In the second case, just think of it as being interviewed by a group of people that want to see you succeed. Believe it or not if there is a larger group interviewing you, they usually don't want to see you fail (if they do, they don't deserve to have you work with/for them). They want you to impress them and they want you to do well and they will usually be very encouraging and laugh at your jokes and really make you feel comfortable so that you can just let your personality and experience shine through. What's important here is to show the group that you fit in. Yes, stand out and be brilliant, but you also need to quickly sum up the personality of the entire office and mesh with that and show how you quickly get along with everyone.
What's important here is that these are face to face, and you need to prepare and know what you want to get across beforehand and also know intimate details if possible of the company you're interviewing for. ASK QUESTIONS!!! If you have nothing, absolutely nothing to ask, then you risk being very "blah" to your interviewers and they can and will write you off...you can't possibly know EVERYTHING about the job already.
Here's a link to an article about group interviews:
http://businessmajors.about.com/od/jobinterviews/a/GroupInterviews.htm
Those are just two possibilities, but I wanted to give you a heads up...because while I did very well and have enough experience and know what I've done and what I'm about to be comfortable with anything, I know that a lot of people can be very very surprised when confronted in these situations.
Good luck!
Hope you all are either enjoying the last bit of school or already enjoying summer and graduations!
No comments:
Post a Comment