Prepare Yourself For the Different Types Of Job Interview
Types of Job Interview
There are many different types of job interview style the most common types are listed below.
Behavioural / Competency Based - By far and away the most popular form of interview, based on the very human assumption that what you have done in your past you’ll likely do again in your future.
So its all about the interviewer learning about you from your explanation of your past experiences.
Perfect for STAR story answers!
Types of job interview – Group or Assessment Center – Some companies like to use this approach when hiring a number of people for similar types of role, or if team working is a critical component with the role.
The objective with this is to complete as a team a set objective, with a team of behavioural experts watching the exercise noting individuals performance.
Because you don’t know the people your working with, these can be interesting and challenging assignments.
In my opinion the best advice is to try and forget about the assessors watching, and focus all your effort on completing the task.
Its vital that you contribute to the team, but don’t feel you have to compete to be the leader, being supportive of your colleagues, communicative, focused on the task, counts for more than being overly assertive.
Types of job interview – Informal unstructured or casual – Less experienced interviewers tend to use this technique, again perfect for your STAR stories, as you’ll help the interviewer do their job for them.
They’ll remember far more about you than anyone else they interview, which will give you a massive advantage.
Telephone Interview – Your Star Story preparation again is perfect for this type of interview, just listen carefully, and relax.
Types of job interiew – the case interview – Primarily used by consulting firms the case study type interview is a very popular approach. Its based on giving you a real life business issue to overcome. A highly interactive style of interview, as you will need to question your interviewer beyond the initial case study you have been given to identify further details, before you start to build your proposed solution.
Again this is about demonstrating your communication skills, problem solving and reasoning, before you start to suggest resolution frameworks. Often there is no wrong or right answer, what they are looking for is your ability to identify key issues, from the ambiguity, and “fit” your suggestions to the specifics of the case given.
Many of the major strategy and consulting firms offer test cases and an excellent source of information regarding this specialist type of interview can be found here.
Stress Interview – A vary rare type of interview used for roles that contain a high degree of stress, pressure and challenge. The key to surviving stress interviews is to remain calm, keep a sense of humor, and avoid getting angry or defensive. Its not personal.
Requests that accompany interview process include:-
Psychometric / Personality / Motivational testing – one of the reasons its such a good idea to have completed the MAPP assessment as a minimum.
No rules to these techniques, relax and be yourself. If your aiming at roles that suit your motivations and personality your on safe ground.
The questioning that may follow will again suit your STAR stories.
Some form of presentation – You may be asked to prepare a timed presentation on a given subject. Pick one of your stories, and just make sure you hit the time allocated. If they ask for 10 minutes don’t do 5 or 20 minutes.
Return from Types Of Job Interview to Interviewing answers
9 Best Job Interview Tips – Job Interview Checklist
Job Interview Checklist
This is really a list of key principals that are VITAL to your interviewing success.
Let’s not delay a moment longer…
- Reflect and research to gain a clear vision of what job you’re looking for.
- You must also know your own strengths and weaknesses as they apply to your TARGET employer.
- Have prepared a plan of how your may COMPENSATE for weaknesses that are highly relevant for your target role or employer.
- Assemble COMPELLING marketing materials (letters, resume or CV, brag book, testimonials, articles, OBJECTIVE Statement) .
- Master a strategy for answering tough interview questions. I recommend the STAR Method.
- Learn the power of asking great questions.
- “It’s not what you say but how you say it” – a cliche but a true one.
- Don’t dismiss the power of NETWORKING. The other old adage “it’s not what you know but WHO you know” is also super powerful.
- Roll all the above into your very own Job offer winning interview strategy.
Take your time and prepare for all the job interview checklist points above, and your interviewing success is assured.
The first two points often raise eyebrows, with many people feeling they’re too basic to be mentioned. But I’ve interviewed too many people unhappy in their careers, not to raise this point.
As a recruiter I’ve also hired for firms that have no idea of what they’re looking for – even though they’ve produced a detailed job description!
It’s not right to shoulder you the potential employee with the responsibility of helping your target employer clarify their thinking, I promise you it will pay you dividends.
Fortunately there are many great resources, many of which are free, that address all of the above points in interview acing detail.
The best ones harness the developments and understanding in human psychology. powerful marketing techniques, to give give you a distinctly unfair advantage…
To read more or download our free guide
What’s The Best Mock Job Interview?
Mock Job Interview – What’s The Point?
A mock job interview is a great way of testing out all your hard work and interview preparation that you’ve done.
You have done your interview prep haven’t you?
What you’re looking to do is reassure yourself that you’ve covered all the bases and you’re truly ready for your job interview. Done properly a mock job interview will enable you to test your ability to handle those tough interview questions interviewers love to throw at you.
So the objective of taking a mock job interview or job interview practice is to correct any mistakes whilst it’s NOT important, and build your confidence for the real thing.
So what sort of mock job interview questions should you be asking yourself?
Well you need to cover the same territory as the interviewer is likely to cover with you. This is going to cover the usual range of job interview questions and answers. If you analyze all the types of job interview questions that you could face, it’s possible to group them into 9 distinct categories.
- Interview directly relating to you, them and the role. “Why do you want to work for ABC company?”, “What do you think makes you the best candidate for the role?”
- Directly relating to specific key skills relating to the role. “As a management accountant, what do you feel are the three most important attributes for the role”?
- Reasoning type questions. Employers want to know how you think and on what basis you make decisions. “Give us an example of overcoming a disagreement with a boss or colleague, where you got them to come round to your way of thinking”?
- Strengths and weakness job interview questions.
- What you have learned from a problem or mistake type of question.
- Greatest achievement or worst failure type of question.
- Where do you see yourself in the future type of question.
- Direct questions about gaps in career, or previous career choices.
- Direct questions designed to put you under pressure. These questions are often asked when things are going well, and they want to give you one final challenge. They may even make up a situation just to see your reaction. For example “We very occasionally have to work over the entire weekend if a client project demands it, would this be OK with you”?
Clearly it’s impossible to foresee the exact questions you’re going to be asked by your interviewer but by preparing a strategy to answer each of the 9 generic categories of interview question you, make your interview prep a lot easier.
In Interview Sniper our free mock job interview answers guide, we look at each of these in detail, and give you one strategy that you apply across all 9 examples of interview question. This is much easier than taking a huge list of example interview questions and trying to work out answers to each.
Interview Sniper will also compliment your mock job interview preparation by explaining what skills and personality traits employers’ value highest, which is critical when it comes to designing compelling mock interview answers.
In terms of mock job interview products and job interview practice and training courses there are many commercial offerings available.
The product I’ve owned for ages and they update every 18 month or so is the Complete Interview Guide. Not the prettiest of websites, but the product is really good. I also like Bob Firestone’s Interview Guide, which though not as detailed, offers some really useful bonuses.
The other option is InterviewGold. Interviewgold is a fully interactive on-line mock job interview training guide. This is quite new on the market, but gets rave reviews, and interactive on-line learning is far easier than reading a book.
I’m not making any one recommendation, as all are good, and all have money back guarantees, so check them out and see what you think.
InterviewGold is available here
Bob Firestone’s The Ultimate Guide To Job Interview Answers is available here.
And Nan & Matt Deluca’s Complete Interview Guide is available here
Job Interview Practice, You’ve done Your Interview Prep Now What’s The Best Way To Practice?
A job interview practice technique is really important for testing and fine tuning your interview skills, without risking anything especially if…
Having put some real sweat, and effort into your job interview prep, you don’t want to risk it going down the pan!
Don’t take that risk, rather than making mistakes on your big day, use job interview practice or a job rehearsal as your testing ground prior to interview.
Before going into the detail of your best interview practice techniques, I just want to confirm you have done your job interview preparation?
It’s vital to your interviewing success that you’ve completed some basic research to at least cover your potential employers marketplace, the company performance, recent trends, the department, and specific role your applying for. Ideally you dig a little deeper into financial performance, and skim through recent press releases.
We’ve produced a interviewing answers free eGuide that covers the full interview process from research through to offer negotiation, which is well worth a look before you go- Oh! it’s also 100% free.
Interview Preparation should also include the types of interview, interview questions, and how you should answer and ask your own questions.
Your job interview preparation needs to prepare you for group interviews, panel interviews, competency and behavioural based interviews, and the different type of questions that may be asked.
The free guide covers building great interviewing answers using the star method, this is a great under the radar technique that interviewers love!
Wow!
Completed all this? – Awesome you’re well on your way to interview success. But can you practice these skills prior to your big day?
The final piece in the how to ace the job interview puzzle is the job interview practice piece.
job interview practice isn’t easy, as it’s nigh on impossible to do yourself.
I suggest asking a friend, family member or colleague to help you practice. You can also consider hiring a interview coach, which is a great option if the role is important enough.
This option isn’t cheap, so most people opt to draft in a friend, relative, or colleague, to run through a job interview rehearsal.
Give your kindly interview assistant a list of the likely interview questions you may face; our free guide includes many job interview question examples, and then encourage them to give you interview hell!
It’s also a good idea to blend in some technical skills questions as well. I mean if your role is dependent on a key skill like accounting for an accountant or law for a lawyer, build these in as well.
You’ll get a chance to correct any errors or weaknesses well in advance of your big day. This form of job interview practice does really pay dividends!
You’ll also get the added benefit of a tremendous confidence boost with this form of interview prep.
Two job interview prep techniques you can practice on your own. I strongly suggest using the star method for building great interview answers. A great interview practice technique to ensure you answers trip elegantly from your tongue is to say them out load. Well worth doing as what you may have planned may look good on paper or in your imagination, but if the words don’t flow naturally for you, you’ll want to revise them. It’s really helpful to use your natural language and vocabulary.
I also recommend trying visualization, most sports people use visualization to improve their performance and confidence.
Visualization is like day dreaming with purpose, take your time and enjoy the experience of running through your job interview in your head, see yourself smiling and confidently greeting your interviewer, see your interviewer enjoying the interview with you, run through some of your answers…
Visualization may appear a little odd, but the list of great performers who wear by it is endless, so trust me on this one give visualization a try it really is a great form of job interview practice.
I personally liked practicing for my interviews on my own, but now there is another option… InterviewGold an interactive on-line service that enables you to practice your interview skills as much as you want via your computer. This service is also really good as the practice interviews are specifically targeted to job types. Well worth checking out if your serious about acing job interviews.
If you like to see how industry targeted interactive job interview practice will help you please click this link.
How To Ace The Job Interview
how to ace the job interview, a great start point is to put yourself into the interviewers shoes.
It’s a real expensive business making poor hiring decisions, and potential employers are often scared to make hiring decisions for this reason. The job interview process is their only defence to this problem, so it’s only natural that they’re going to put you through your paces – wouldn’t you if you were them!
So when planning how to ace the job interview another way to consider the hiring process is as a “buying decision”. A real serious buying decision! Psychology shows us that buying decisions are based on two sets of criteria – logical criteria, and emotional criteria. And of the two the emotional criteria have the most power, and to prove this point consider all the things you’ve purchased, that with hindsight don’t seem such a good idea, these purchases are nearly always driven by a strong emotional need at the time.
If we consider the purchase of a home, you’ll have a logical list of things the home must conform to, area, number of rooms, garden, transport requirements etc, etc.
The other side of the decision making coin are your emotional needs. And these needs kick the arse of your logical requirements, as these link directly to your deepest desires…
I know the homes I’ve bought, seem to have an ‘x’ factor, they just feel right to me, many times others have failed to see my attraction, and I often can’t explain it fully.
Does this have anything to do with how to ace the job interview?… Yes, everything! Because by entering the job interview process you’re asking your interviewer to make a buying decisions over YOU. And your mission should you choose to accept it is to win them over on both a logical and emotional level.
It’s a big advantage to know that the whole interviewing game is about giving your interviewer the reassurance both logically and emotionally that you can do the job.
Emotional criteria in hiring are better known as “likability”. For your interviewer they’re only interesting in picturing you fitting in with the team and doing a great job with the company, reflecting well on their decision to hire you in the first place.
There is one other critical concept to cover over buying decisions, or hiring decisions and that is one of PROOF.
Proof takes the fear and risk of purchase, out back into the car park, and beats them black and blue!
If you consider most of your major purchases, you will have had a great deal of proof material covering the items ability to satisfy your needs, this usually comes in two forms factual features that are documented or can be proven via a demo. The emotional proof tends to be more the domain of the skilled advertiser or marketeer, that manages to help you associate the product with your deep rooted emotional needs
It’s not so easy for you’re interviewer, a CV or resume is not an independently recognised document proving your official capacity, energy efficiency, servicing intervals etc. It’s been produced by you and may possibly contain exaggeration and half truths… maybe worse.
A manager that shows poor hiring skills doesn’t stay a manager long!
Therefore plan your how to ace the job interview strategy around proving your logical reasons (skills and experience) and if you have or can get proof of prior achievements make sure you use them, – if you go to the trouble of demonstrating and proving your ability, your likability will take care of itself.
If you’d like a plan that turns this information into a winning job strategy that will turn interviews to offers download Interviewing- Answers.com free eGuide and newsletter Interview Sniper
