Category: Interviews

Ready for your close-up? Video interviews, your chance to shine on the small screen.

Posted on by Careers Service

Does the idea of a video interview fill you with dread or are you secretly excited by the prospect? However you feel, they are becoming increasingly more popular with graduate recruiters. Don’t panic they’re not looking for the next movie star – actually they are just saving themselves some effort!

So what is a video interview?

A video interview is an interview that you record and send to the recruiter to view at a later date.

So why are video interviews so popular with graduate recruiters?

Time efficiency:  Trust me, having been a graduate recruiter, attempting to organise a phone interview in just two people’s diaries can be a nightmare, times this by 30 or 40 potential candidates for just a handful of positions and it adds up to several days’ worth of back and forth rescheduling. Video interviews do away with this. Recruiters set up one interview, send it to an unlimited number of candidates and give them a deadline to complete. You get to conduct the interview when it suits you and the interviewer can watch them at a convenient time for them.

Personality: Recruiters can’t read a candidate at the end of a phone, but on screen body language and personality come across. So make sure you are engaging and remember to smile.

Consistency: Every phone interview is essentially a different conversation, in comparison a video interviewer asks all the questions in exactly the same way to all candidates. This means that there is a more balanced evaluation of all candidates via this method, so it works in your favour.

Review and sharing: It’s easy with this format for recruiters to take a second look or share your interview with others if they want a second opinion. This is really helpful for them, so they are not just relying on their notes.

However remember, once the interview starts you can’t rewind or review your answers – it’s exactly the same as a face to face interview, without the interaction. So here are some tips to help you get it right first time:

Top Tips

  1. Check your background, take down the posters, remove that 3 day old mug and pick a room with clear bright lighting.
  2. Silence the house, warn your flatmates, silence your phone and close the door.
  3. Look presentable, just because you are in your bedroom this is not an excuse for PJs.
  4. Look into the camera, not the screen to ensure you are making eye contact.
  5. Timing: there may be a delay in the questions so make sure the ‘interviewer’ is completely finished before responding to avoid talking over them.
  6. Practice: see how you come across on video, do you fidget or wave your hands around, try to limit distracting gestures.
  7. Like a scout: be prepared. Are you using a laptop, is it plugged in with enough power, test every aspect of the equipment.
  8. Clean the camera lens, the slightest smudge can be very distracting for the interviewer.
  9. Sit still, be aware that the microphone picks up all the noise in the room so don’t tap your pen or shuffle papers.
  10. Have notes in bullet format to prompt you and place them at eye level, so you are not constantly looking down or reading from them.

As always the Careers Service is here to answer any questions or help you to prepare for your interviews so get in touch if you need more help or advice.

Good Luck!

Claire Wrixon, Careers Adviser

Surviving competency and strengths-based interviews

Posted on by Careers Service

interview

It’s that time of year when many of you will be invited to assessment centres, following all your hard work in the autumn spent completing those labour-intensive application forms. This post focuses just on the interview component, with more on other forms of selection to follow in later posts. If you need more help with assessment centres now, then look at the information on the Careers Service website: where you will find guidance on group exercises, written tests and presentations.

Competency interviews
This type of interview is by far the most common and is all about your skills. The key to success here is being confident about three key areas: you, the company to which you are applying and the wider sector in which you want to work.
Knowing yourself
• You must provide as much specific evidence as possible in your answers, relevant to that company’s needs, if you want to stand out.
• Use the STAR framework to structure your answers. Offer the Situation and Task concisely, then spend most of your time on the Action you took and why you took it (decisions, judgements, justifications) and the Result: what was the outcome and, very importantly, what did you learn from the experience?
• Typical competency questions would be: ‘Tell us about a time you worked in a team. What was your specific contribution?, or, ‘Describe a time when you solved a problem by thinking creatively.’ Get as much practice as you can in answering questions out loud, so that you can learn to think quickly and speak fluently. You can find lots of example questions in our interview skills booklet on the Careers web site.

Knowing the company and the sector
• This is your chance to show off your commercial awareness or knowledge of the company and sector in which you want to work. Make sure your research goes beyond the organisation’s web site! Google is the obvious place to start, and clicking on the ‘News’ tab will help you to find industry-specific information and relevant trade publications.
• Don’t forget to stay up to date with quality national newspapers and industry publications, many of which you can access online. Check the news on the morning of your interview, so you don’t get caught out by any important developments.

Strengths-based interviews
This is a less common style but one that is gaining in popularity. These interviews are aimed at identifying what you naturally enjoy doing and what motivates you, rather than competency interviews where they want to find out what you are capable of doing. The idea is to match candidates to work that most suits them, so they work more productively and in an engaged way.
Typical strengths-based interview questions include:
• What energises you and why?
• What did you enjoy most about your university course?
• What makes you want to get out of bed in the morning?
• What tells you that you’ve had a good day?
• What challenges do you take on to stretch yourself?
For this kind of interview, knowing yourself and being able to reflect on your motivations is crucial; it will be a much more personal experience than competency interview, so don’t be thrown! If you need help with some self-analysis, try the University’s Personal Development Planning tool on MyBristol, or have a look at Stella Cottrell’s book Skills for Success, available at the Careers Service.
Do come in and ask us about interview preparation if you’re not sure what to do.
Good luck!

Dr Tracy Johnson, Careers Adviser