In the last two months I’ve been doing various interviews for roles within our office. It made me reflect at how jarring the interview experience can be for someone who may be looking for a new role, particularly if you’re just starting your career.
Interviews are a weird dance of assessing a candidate, usually filled with a set of corporate speak that can feel quite alien if you’re not familiar with it already. It took me a long time to understand what was really asked for in interviews for office jobs. Now, on the other end of the table it’s interesting to observe how different people come out in practice. So I thought I’d share these reflections which might help you avoid the pitfalls if you’re in the midst of applying for a new role.
It’s important to highlight the point of an interview. The aim is to see whether someone would do well in a role, whilst also creating a process that allows fairness to assess a candidate’s ability. But beyond that, it’s also a sense check of whether a person seems like one that would work well within the team. We also wanted to check that the role was appropriate for the individual noting their career aspirations and interest.
Here are some of the pitfalls I saw:
Being uncomfortable talking about oneself
Many people are uncomfortable talking about their own achievements. This is problematic when the point of an interview is to highlight why an individual is the best for the job. This often shows up in constantly highlighting what the team had done, rather than them as an individual. Individuals also use words like ‘I’m quite good at…’ – saying ‘quite’ devalues their own skills and experience. If there was any time to be bold about your strengths, it’s in an interview. If you don’t know what your unique selling point is, it’s going to be hard to convince the panel.
Getting stressed around minor details
I recall speaking to someone about the exact words they put in the email when sending a CV and cover letter. I get it, we’ve all been there. We don’t want to make a glaring mistake that causes an issue. But whether you address the inbox as Sir/Madam or Dear Hiring Manager doesn’t ultimately make too much difference. What hiring managers are interested in is whether you can do the job. Obviously if you put something overtly offensive that will undoubtedly be an issue, but anything beyond that doesn’t really matter.
Not really knowing the role or the organisation
When interviewing for a role, some individuals get caught out somewhat when asked about why they applied for the role, or why they wanted to work at an organisation. On the one hand, I am sympathetic that it is hard to become an expert on a whole organisation for each interview, particularly when people often have lots of different interviews at a time. On the other hand, it’s a fairly basic question that you will get asked in pretty much any interview. So it’s worth prepping a good answer for this.
An additional tip would be to anticipate what questions you think you might be asked. Although each organisation will do interviews differently, there are fairly typical staple questions like career ambitions, questions around skills and experience and other areas which will probably come up (unless the organisation specifically tells you that the interview will be organised differently).
Self-sabotaging quirks and self awareness
I saw a few self-sabotagers in an interview, which was a bit uncomfortable to watch. Some got extremely stressed by some computer issues whilst we were doing online calls. To note, most employees are very used to hiccups on voice calls by now, so it’s really not a big deal. Another issue was that they may not quite get the social cue that a question about something did not require a 10 minute response. From the point of view of an interviewer, it makes me nervous when someone is spending so much time speaking because we may run out of time to actually ask all the questions.
Giving a reason not to hire the person
Another issue was where candidates would essentially highlight that they did not have the experience for the role, making it fairly easy to put another candidate above them in the pecking order. I would also recommend not saying that you would understand if the interviewers went for another candidate – I saw this and just thought to myself how it was making it easier for me to choose someone else over this person. You are doing yourself a disservice if you make it easier for them to not hire you!
These are my tips – are there any I’ve missed?