Have you ever left an interview wishing you had better prepared or frustrated by an out of the blue question which caught you off guard?  The job seeker market is now highly competitive and hiring companies have the pick of the talent crop so it would be a capricious exercise to throw away a golden ticket opportunity by using it as a warm up for another interview elsewhere – that other interview may fail to materialise or could be put on hold due to challenging business circumstances.  Making the time to prepare, having your facts and figures forefront of your mind and being able to deflect challenging questions is essential to putting you in pole position.

With social distancing a daily part of our norm, interviews which may have traditionally happened face to face, may now at first instance, be held by phone, skype or zoom so it is important to know what format your interview will be held in so you can prepare accordingly.  Thinking about the backdrop your webcam captures is an important consideration, make sure the view behind you is a tidy one and you will not have some strange household object growing out of your head. 

Most interviews are competency based, drilling down into behavioural and situational lines of questioning which determine whether you are the right fit or not.  Answers must be clear, concise, compelling, insightful and authentic.  A seemingly simple question such as “tell me about yourself” can reveal a lot about you depending upon how you choose to frame and construct your wording.

I will ask you a variety of questions which start with easy warm-up ones then drill down into more complex and challenging ones.  You will have the opportunity to take your time over constructing answers and finding the right words which will help ease the pressure on the day of the interview itself where you will need to be slick and thinking on your feet if you are going to impress the person interviewing you. 

If you have a particular job you have been invited to interview for, you may wish to share the job and candidate spec with me however I will appreciate if you wish to keep the name of the hiring company confidential.  I can review the details and temper my line of questioning with you accordingly. 

Ultimately, I want our session to boost your confidence and make you aware of the type of questions which could be thrown at you so that come the day of interview itself, you are not taken by surprise and left floundering over how to answer something.  Remember though it is good to be nervous but use those nerves to sharpen your edges.