Job Interviews

Claire_MUFC

AP007 wrote: »

You worked with him once? He was HR?

Any adviser who works for anyone who operates the WP should know all industries or be a specialist in one at least and know all about interviews........but that's in the ideal world! lol

I used to work at my WP as an admin assistant til I go made redundant, haha. Sad times

Not sure exactly details, but he did mention, or I think he did that he used to carry out interviews somewhere so has an idea what interviewers are looking for.

Claire_MUFC

Do you think this is a good idea what someone said though:

Rather than trying to guess each and every possible question that may come up, or to focus too much on just strengths and weaknesses, what would help you is if you had some answers ready for those competency based questions. So what you really need to do is think about some concrete examples of things from your past experience, that you can talk about. For example, rehearse an anecdote about a task you undertook in a previous job that was particularly challenging, how you dealt with it and why it was such a success. Another one could be about how you multi-tasked and dealt with comflicting priorities. If you have some examples like that ready to trot out, at appropriate times during the interview, you'll be able to cope with most of whatever comes up.

Quite a good point I think, and reading that seems to be one thing which as well as getting asked random questions would also help.

Do you think I should mention that to my advisor ? If we can come up with concrete examples for different competency based questions then that would be a major help. That's one thing I find hard, extracting examples. Some we even have to make up. But once I've got examples to use I don't have to worry as much about them anymore.

AP007

Claire_MUFC wrote: »

I used to work at my WP as an admin assistant til I go made redundant, haha. Sad times

Not sure exactly details, but he did mention, or I think he did that he used to carry out interviews somewhere so has an idea what interviewers are looking for.

Sorry but that is funny! I am sorry to laugh

Advisers were sacked at mine or redundant as they told me but then took on 4 times as many people so the jobs were still there

Claire_MUFC

AP007 wrote: »

Sorry but that is funny! I am sorry to laugh

Advisers were sacked at mine or redundant as they told me but then took on 4 times as many people so the jobs were still there

Oh don't worry, I can understand why you had to laugh, I have to laugh too Better than crying about it, hahaha !

elsien

Something our company stresses for the competency based questions is that we have to get the candidate to focus on themselves and what they did as individuals.
So if it's the teamwork question, we're not interested in what the whole team did, we want to know what your specific role was within the scenario you're telling us about. So if you're umming and aahing about "we did this, we did that", you're not answering the question.
And that's something it's really hard for people to do, because they can think of it as being quite boastful, and they tend to slip back into talking about the team as a whole instead of themselves as individuals.
So if you're practising anecdotes, that might be something to bear in mind.

richdeniro

I was asked what I thought my weaknesses were at an interview few weeks ago and I rattled off my usual answer about doing presentations but am always willing to do more to get better at them.

But then the interviewer followed up with 'what do you think your friends would think are your weaknesses'? I've never been asked that before and had no idea how to respond, its like asking what you think your friends think of you behind your back.

AP007

richdeniro wrote: »

I was asked what I thought my weaknesses were at an interview few weeks ago and I rattled off my usual answer about doing presentations but am always willing to do more to get better at them.

But then the interviewer followed up with 'what do you think your friends would think are your weaknesses'? I've never been asked that before and had no idea how to respond, its like asking what you think your friends think of you behind your back.

I was asked for 3 words that people would use to describe you and work then 5 that friends would describe me as.

saxonrosecliff

I asked for interview skills training at my work programme provider. She sent me on a course that their trainer ran (the most obnoxious man I've ever met but that's another story). I'm an Admin Assistant but the course was aimed at Retail Assistants, because apparently there are lots of jobs in retail and its such an easy job to do anybody can do it. It was no use to me at all.

November5th

I am off to a competency based interview this morning that I am not prepared for (and I am in a bad mood) - will report back on how this goes!

What is bothering me now about interviews is that we go through my CV line by line - but never the job description. Why are we sitting there for an hour talking about the past? It's what I am going to do that counts.

Yesterday I had an interview for a marketing position where all the promotion would be done by social media. My interviewer did not know how to use Twitter. (Gives up). He failed me, words fail me.

IN FACT I AM GOING TO REBEL! Discuss the job and not me!!

AP007

here is something

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/worklife/positive-language-interview-situations-11303/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=intcon&utm_content=wlpositivelanguagevideo