My name's Dr Rob Young, I'm an organizational psychologist and I'd like to talk to you
on the topic of job hunting. So there's actually fairly good research both by
business schools and employers showing that there's a fairly low correlation
between the scores that interviewers give job-hunting candidates and the
subsequent performance of those candidates. So there are some candidates
who score very highly in interviews who actually do quite poorly in the job
itself, whereas there are some candidates who aren't very good at selling
themselves, at promoting themselves and as a consequence they don't get the
chance to do the job. So if that's you, someone who's otherwise a strong accountant but
someone who isn't promoting yourself enough, then this is about how to
think about promoting and selling yourself in a job interview. So for that
first job interview if you haven't been to an interview for perhaps eighteen months
or a couple of years I'd recommend doing two, three even four or five hours
of preparation before that first job interview. For subsequent interviews you
can do much last maybe 30 minutes or an hour's worth, but for that first interview
start by looking at the job advert itself, and start by picking out the key
phrases the key skills and experiences that this particular employer is looking
for.
So it may be that they are looking for someone with excellent communication
skills or someone who has experience of preparation of statutory accounts or
someone who has reviewed and collated management information. Once you've
picked out these three to eight phrases what you need to do is prepare stories, so
examples of how you have demonstrated that skill or experience. So, let's take
some examples. When it comes to communication skills
think about a time that you perhaps put together a very long presentation. Think
about how you research the topic, how you thought about the audience and how you
structured your content; your introduction, the various chunks of content and the
conclusion. Or perhaps think about a time that you had to persuade and win over a
skeptical colleagues or a difficult customer perhaps. Or if you're talking
about
statutory accounts or management information don't just talk about an
example and make it sound as if everything went very smoothly. What you
want to do is talk about the problems, the difficulties, the challenges that you
encountered and then to talk about what you did to overcome each one. So you want
to talk about, I faced this problem; problem one was perhaps a difficult
colleague, here's how I persuaded him. Then there was another problem another
difficulty perhaps there was a tough deadline and here's what I did, how I contributed
to make this a success. So having written out your examples and some bullet points of
what you'd like to say in an interview is useful but actually the next step is
even perhaps more important and that's rehearsing out loud what you would like
to say. What I usually recommend to clients is that they record themselves
either record your voice or even better use your webcam or perhaps your smart
phone to record how you look, that way you can judge you can watch it back for
yourself and judge whether you come across as confident and articulate
because the truth of the matter is that employers judge you not only on the
content of what you say but also how you say it, on whether you seem to be
demonstrating your personality, whether you are confident as well as having the
right skills. So that's a preparation element but then what you need to do in
the interview itself is actually insert these examples these stories into the
interview. Now, there will be occasions when an interviewer will ask you a
question that strictly speaking could be answered with a yes or no response; so an
interviewer might say something like, "are you a good team player?"
Strictly speaking the answer would be yes I'm a good team player but that's a
lost opportunity, because what you want to do is to say something like, "yes, I'm a good
team player. For example there was a time four months ago when our team faced a
crisis and this is what I did to help the team overcome
that crisis". So by using these examples you will come across as much more
credible in speaking about your real-life examples of your experience
you come across as credible, as confident, it's just much more memorable and
concrete in the minds of the interviewer and that is hopefully how you will land
the job. Having done all of your preparation you'll probably find
yourself in an interview room perhaps just like this and then the important
thing to do is then to insert your example into the conversation itself. So,
strictly speaking there will be times when an interviewer may ask you a
question which could be answered with just a yes or no so the question might
be something like are you a good team player to achieve my answer yes I am a
good team player but that would be a lost opportunity is what you really want
to do is to say something like yes I'm a good team player for example there was a
situation six months ago when our team faced a crisis and this is what I did
these are the steps I took to help the team to overcome the crisis because it's
by giving examples by telling stories using concrete details that you will be
memorable
impactful and persuasive but if you're speaking in the abstract it's very easy
for interviewers to forget who you are so use these concrete examples and
hopefully you will and that next job