- Panel interviews are a really efficient way for employers
to handle interviewing job
candidates for an open position in their company.
It is a faster way to hire when they can collectively bring
in a group of people to make the hiring decision
and it's also a great way for them to gauge how a job
candidate handles group communication
and interaction under pressure.
Hi, I'm Dalena Bradley, job interview and career marketing
coach and today I am going to give you some panel
job interview tips to help you be very
successful in this style of interview.
Before we get started, please like, follow or
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Before we get started, Have you ever, either as
an employer or as an interviewee,
participated in a panel style interview?
If so, please comment below and let me know about
your experience, I think it's good
to share information about this.
Now the first tip I have for you is to research, do your
research as you would with any interview. I'm not going to go
into a lot of detail about being prepared about knowing
about the company, the job,
the industry, the competitive landscape and all of that.
Specific to the panel interview, the most important thing
is learning who is going to be
in the room with you that day.
So ask the HR representative or the
person who has organized the interview--ask them for the
name, the title and the relationship you'd have to them
as an employee. Also find out how many people are going to
be in the room so you're not caught by surprise when you go
in there. And then once you have that information, do your
research on LinkedIn or their company website, other
online means--whatever it takes so that you can know each
and every individual that's going to be in there and
potentially things that you have in common and
looking for points of connection.
When you are getting ready to go into the interview, make
sure that you have enough hard copies of your resume for
everyone who's going to be in the room plus a couple of
extras just in case. And when you arrive and
you enter the room, make sure that you make eye contact,
shake hands and smile with every single person
you're going to be interviewing with.
Now it's common once you've gotten seated and
everyone is getting ready to begin, the
team ahead of time has probably divvied up the questions and
so the person who asks the question of you may not have
necessarily originated that question, so just keep that in
mind as you're answering. And while you make initial eye
contact with the person asking the question, as you're
responding, make equal eye contact among the entire group
because again, that person may not have been the one
originating the question and plus you really want to engage
with and connect with every single person in that room.
Be patient because there may be a few more redundancies in
questions than you might find in a one on one interview,
they may ask a couple of different angles
on one thing or one category of expertise and so that's why
it's important to have several stories categorized
by the different aspects of the job like management or
budgeting or that sort of thing so that you don't run
out in a larger group setting.
Make sure at the end, that you again shake hands with every
single person in the room, thank them for their time and
also collect their business cards so that you have their
contact information on there because the next step is within
24 hours to write each of them an individualized thank
you note. Now you'll want to try to find something unique to
say to each person but that can be difficult and so,
that's fine, just try to find something a little bit
different to say but the most important thing is to
write a separate note to each person.
So I hope these tips were very helpful for you today.
If you liked it, please like, comment, share and if you
are interested in learning more about me, please go
to dalenabradley.com and book a discovery call.
In the meantime, I wish you the very best in your next
job interview and in your career.