Competition in the job market is fierce and candidates need to understand how to make themselves stand out during the application process and how to represent themselves well in a video interview.
Victoria Sprott (Talent Acquisitions Director at Robert Half) sat down with an expert panel on August 12th to discuss candidate interview best practice in the final episode of our Your Future webinar series.
Her guests included Emma Howard (HR Professional), Dr Martin Spencer (Occupational Psychologist and ex-HR Director), Claire Blissitt (Director and Executive Coach at Get Unstuck) and DeLynn Senna (Executive Director at Robert Half).
They gave advice on preparing for virtual, face-to-face or competency-based interviews, negotiating job offers and how to get into the right headspace.
Structure your preparatory research approach
Researching a potential employer is essential but it can often be difficult to know where to begin. DeLynn recommends taking a structured approach and researching both the company and the individuals you’ll be meeting with.
There are three key areas to start your process:
1) What do they do?
Find out what products and services they offer — how are they solving a problem or meeting a need? You should also aim to build a comprehensive picture of their industry by researching which sector they sit within.
2) Why do they exist?
What is their company purpose, and would you support it? Can you find any information on their core values which might help you determine whether or not you’ll be a good fit? You can find this information on Glassdoor, social media and often on the company website itself.
“I think of core values as the heartbeat of an organisation. It's what they believe, it's how they treat employees, and it's ultimately how they make decisions,” says DeLynn. “So, when you think about joining a new organisation and whether you're going to be a good cultural fit, all that stems from their core values.”
3) Who are you interviewing with?
LinkedIn is a useful resource to help you connect the dots regarding your interviewer’s career history. Use this to identify relevant points from a personal perspective (where they grew up, where they went to school) and build a rapport to kick the interview off in a positive way.
Get yourself into the right frame of mind
A positive headspace is essential for interview success because it will determine your behaviour and the way you present yourself. Your headspace can be defined by two concepts: performance enhancing thoughts (PETs) and performance inhibiting thoughts (PICs).
“Very often we feel anxious and nervous and worried because we're dominated by these PICs,” says Martin. “Think about what we're thinking about and capture those thoughts. Write them down beforehand. What am I thinking about this? What am I feeling about this? Capture them, write them down and challenge them.”
Reinforce your personal brand with authenticity
Avoid the temptation to go into an interview wearing the professional front you think the interviewer wants to see.
“As you start to relax at work, your true self will come out. I’ve had a bit of a shock before where I've hired somebody and they've been completely different,” Emma says.
Try to relax into the interview process and approach it with a strong understanding of what your values are and how the company fits with them to create a good match.
“Lots of people have skills that have gotten them through to the interview, but what actually gets you through to the next stage is that personality match. And they can only see that if you really show who you are,” she says.
Preparing for different interview styles
There are several styles of interview question, each designed to test a different aspect of your skillset, experience or fit. To help prepare for any interview style, your research needs to cover lots of areas.
Competency-based questions
In a competency-based interview, you’ll be asked to give a very specific reference to an experience in which you’ve demonstrated the skill in question.
For this, you can use the STAR technique: situation, task, actions, and result. Structure your answer to cover off the situation you were in, the task you were given, the actions you took, and the result you achieved.
Related: Preparing for behavioural and situational interview questions
General interview questions
Most of us are familiar with the standard interview questions, which makes it easier to prepare answers ahead of time. Remember to show enthusiasm for the role and to have a firm understanding of why you’re applying.
Career summary requests
It’s becoming common for interviewers to start the process by asking their candidates to give a brief summary of their career to date. This isn’t a question which can be answered in the spur of the moment — try to practice a short and effective answer to this before your interview so you are eloquent and relaxed on the day.
Claire says: “I would urge people to have a really clear story that they're able to tell in an engaging way of how their career has evolved. And I think the really important thing around your story is to show consistency with your achievements and your progression.”
Keeping your interviewer engaged
Maintaining engagement is all about body language and rapport. This can be achieved by seeing the interview as a conversation rather than an exercise in responding to a question and waiting for the next.
“Behave as you would in a conversation — you ask questions, you show interest, you interact with somebody,” says Martin. “Kick things off by making relevant comments when you walk in the building. Talk about your experience of how you found reception or something you've noticed about the brand.”
Engaging your interviewer can serve to make you more memorable. Draw on the background research you did to ask insightful questions which show your genuine interest.
Watch the full webinar: YOUR NEXT ROLE – Interview and selection
and over to you brilliant thanks matt so good afternoon everybody uh great to see you so many of you returning and so many of you with us today on such a glorious uh weather day um i'm victorious bro i'm the talent director for robert half and i've worked here for 24 years um as a recruiter a leader within staff development and uh within the talent space so today i'm joined by another um panel of experts we have emma howard we've got um uh martin spencer sorry martin we've got uh dylan uh senna and claire blissett so i think first of all we'll just do a quick introduction uh so emma perhaps you could uh start us off absolutely and on the last um one of these webinars i finally learned to unmute myself so hi everybody um i'm emma howard so 15 years worth of experience working both in-house and agency for recruitment i currently work as a consultant working with businesses on people resilience and also on individuals with their career planning and pathways brilliant thanks emma and claire hi my name is claire blissett um i run an exec coaching company i primarily and focus on people who are stuck in some way or have reached a career plateau and they want to make a change in some way um i also currently hold a ceo role with the manufacturing business um within the east midlands um and i've always been really passionate about people and their development and i'm currently doing a master's in behavioural change and coaching at henley business school brilliant thanks claire martin so hello i'm martin spencer i'm an occupational psychologist i've worked in talent management assessment selection interviewing hr through all my career at both sides of the fence both in recruiting people and also now in an advisory consultancy role predominantly working in the area of psychometrics leadership assessment and helping people get roles brilliant thank you and dylan hi everyone i'm dilen senna and i'm the executive director for robert half's international permanent placement staffing operations and i work with our international executives and field leadership to develop our growth strategies i've been with robert half and in the recruitment industry for over 25 years and i recently relocated from the san francisco bay area to london and it's great to be here you brought the sunshine with you thank you okay thank you and uh matt hi there i'm matt robinson i manage leadership development and corporate learning here for robert half in our international zone which is all of our countries outside of the u.s i've been with robert half for almost five years but have been in recruitment for over 15 years and my role today is as always to produce this session and to facilitate the q a as we get to that point later today brilliant thank you very much so today amazingly is the last in the series of the nine webinars that robert huff have been hosting um that many of you followed you know throughout that journey so interview and selection is the last piece of the job hunt journey and so today we're going to discuss really critical areas today such as research tips on interviewing advice as to kind of when you get that offer how do you know whether it's the right one so uh as ever we um we're gonna run some polls to ensure that we're um answering appropriately to the thoughts and um of our audience today um a question will pop up on the screen it's got a number of different answers you just click the answer that is most relevant to you and we will then share the results there's bound to be lots of questions i think particularly on this subject so please as we go through the webinar populate the q a icon at the bottom with your question you can either angle it to the panel as a group or individually you can ensure that your question is anonymous and at around about 12 30 we will start answering uh all of those questions um that's going to collate them some questions might be themed so your exact question might not be asked but on the um in combination with others that are similar just when we have a lot of volume but just to ensure uh that the polls and the questions that you ask are anonymous but the call will be recorded and does go out on sort of the social media piece so um i think we will utilize the rest of the time and kick off straight away with a pole mat so the pole one so we've asked this before if you've been here for other webinars um in the series so how do you feel about your job prospects in the current climate so are you confident are you ambivalent are you cautious or are you worried stroke concerned so i know matt will give you sort of a 30 40 seconds or so to make sure we give everybody the opportunity to to answer that absolutely we've got about 75 percent who've answered so far so i'm just going to give it another few seconds before i close the poll so get your vote in now um i'll give it five more seconds okay so i'm going to end the poll and i should i'm not going to share the results with you all there you go yeah so we've run this poll a few times and there definitely is an increase in trend looking at this from memory so we've got nine percent who are confident about their job prospects we've got 14 who are ambivalent about it we've got 27 who are now who are now cautious and an increasing 51 are genuinely concerned and worried about their prospects so um so again you know it just reinforces hopefully for those individuals that you know these uh these sessions are helpful in navigating your way through that uh worrying period of time so the the interview and selection piece as i said is crucial so the first question we would like to pose to the panel is the good news is you've applied to a job and you've actually got the interview you know you're going what research should take place prior to an interview and how do you go about sort of structuring uh that research so perhaps dylan from a robert half recruitment perspective you might give some advice there yeah definitely hi everyone so you know i think just even given your responses on that poll and that you're worried about it if you do happen to get an interview clearly you want to be extremely well prepared as you would at any time but you know right now that's obviously very important to you and i would say that you're you're going to want to do research which is absolutely essential not only in the company that you're going to be interviewing with but the individuals that you're going to be meeting with and when you structure that i would think about when you look at the company you want to learn three things so i would structure it this way what do they do so in other words what are their products and services so what do they offer what problem are they solving today what need are they meeting and ultimately what industry sector do they sit within because often today particularly today you want to look at the industry as a whole and how are they performing what impacts given what's happening around us uh impacting the industry either positively or negatively and then how does the organization fit within that industry sector and how do they stand out amongst even their competitors you also want to look at their financial results so think about from a public perspective you can find that online privately it's always a little bit more challenging and difficult to get that information but it's equally important to make sure you understand the financial health of an organization so a great question that i would recommend you ask in the interview if you cannot get that information because they're privately held is how is the company doing from a financial perspective again it's a very open-ended question that you can ask and just based on the the individual the representative of the company they may or may not give you a wealth of information or maybe they will but but i absolutely encourage you and it's and it's and you should ask that question to understand the financial health of the organization today and then finally find out when it comes to what do they do but it's also who's leading the organization so find out who their key players are from a leadership perspective who's ultimately making the strategic decisions about the well-being of the organization going forward and how do they how do they maintain the relevancy in their market in their space so um obviously that information can be readily found on linkedin but also look at their website i'll talk a little bit more about where to find some of this information too so that's that's kind of one way in which i would do conduct your research so what do they do the second part that i would look at is why do they exist so again what is their purpose and what's their mission statement when you join an organization you want to believe what they believe you you want to support what they do and so really kind of step back and understand what's their mission what are they trying to accomplish what's their purpose and and do i in what i support that do i want to work for an organization and help them help them meet those those objectives and their mission um of an organization again it goes back to um understanding that you're going to be the right fit for a company and that you feel good about the organization in which you work for and then finally what do they value so this is all going to be around the culture of the organization so what are their core values i think of core values as the heartbeat of an organization it's what they believe it's how they treat employees and it's ultimately how they make decisions so when you think about joining a new organization and whether you're going to be a good kind of you know we talk a lot about cultural fit all that stems from their core values and so if again they're not readily available on their website to see that i would ask that in the interview what are your values here what do you believe how do you make decisions again that helps you understand whether this is going to be the right organization from you from an employee perspective so where to find this information so the company website is obviously a great resource to find a lot of what i just covered particularly look at their career site that gives you insight into again probably a lot more around their values and the individuals that work within the company but take a look at their website you can google obviously as well and find a wealth of information out there and then finally look at social media whether it's their linkedin home page or even go on glassdoor where current or previous employees have actually listed reviews about the organization that's going to give you a lot more insight of the inner workings of the company again going back to not only is this a type of organization i believe in their purpose their values and what they do and what they offer but is it an organization that i believe is healthy and strong and is actually going to continue to be relevant and survive today and is it one that i want to align myself with and then finally take a look at the individuals that you're going to be interviewing with so linkedin again is a tremendous resource for you what you're trying to do is connect the dots with what is their background what is their experience what do they do prior to coming to this organization and is there any relevant point with their background even from a personal perspective where they grew up where they went to school anything that you can find that would that somehow you can connect the dots build rapport and find a common connection again that helps just the beginning of any interview kick off with a really nice start so that's some advice that i would give you around how to structure and how to research both the company and the individuals you're going to be meeting with so let me pass it to emma and anything else that you would add as well here well i think dylan thank you that was so comprehensive that um that there's very little i can add the other thing anything that i would do um guys and it's nice to see you all again um i know that for many of you out there this is just a case of really needing a job at the moment so you know i know it's kind of nice to have that you believe in the company you understand the ethos the trick to actually getting the job and preparing before the interview is going through the job description with a fine tooth comb so what i would suggest you do is having looked at kind of all the great advice that lin's given you around the bigger picture go through that job description very very clearly really link through to find out what is the purpose of the role why is it that you've been selected you can clearly if you've done our previous webinars about cvs you'll be able to see that link and really do the kind of preparation around what's happening in the particular department what's happening with that particular project and kind of start to anticipate what you think are going to be some of the um issues around that the other thing that i would say as well is do not be afraid to ask the recruiter to be very specific about what the interview is going to look like it's a great way to prepare very difficult i did an interview recently where i was told it'd be one person i turned on the screen and it was five um which is a completely different experience so please don't be afraid to push the recruitment um consultants or the internal recruitment advisors be very clear around what that format is going to look like how it's going to look and what you should expect that's absolutely your right and that's a great way to kind of elevate the stress for you around researching and planning for this yeah great advice thank you um so moving on to question two um how do you know um sorry how do i get in the right frame of mind in preparation for an interview and i think uh martin given your background you'll be best poised to uh to give us some guidance here oh yeah thank you and hello to everybody uh so some sort of headline thoughts on this i think the most important thing i would say here is that the person who thinks they can and the person who thinks they can't are both right and that may sound a bit glib but it makes an important point for me that your thoughts are really really important because they control how you feel about things so we have an opportunity to focus on what our thoughts are about situation and there are two broad ways of thinking about those thoughts and i just want to introduce you to two concepts one is called pets p-e-t-s and that will stand for performance enhancing thoughts so pets pets and pits which is performance inhibiting thoughts so i would encourage you to focus on having some performance enhancing thoughts before any interview and very often we feel anxious and nervous and worried about it because we're actually dominated by these pits things we fall into you know oh dear i didn't get a job last time i don't come across well yeah i hope they don't ask me about dot dot dot all of these are inhibiting thoughts they put us in a position of weakness and vulnerability and worry what we need to do is think about what we're thinking about and capture those thoughts write them down beforehand think about what what am i thinking about this what am i feeling about this why is that capture them write them down and then challenge them with alternative more enhancing thoughts so so you know i've got great experience in this area i can really focus on my qualities of one two three i'm really good at meeting new people i'm looking forward to meeting them because enhancing thoughts so the person who thinks they can person who thinks they can't both right you have control over it focus on pets and pits you'll find a lot about this online it's also called ticks and talks if you want to look into it more deeply but that would be my advice love that brilliant thank you and uh and claire do you have uh anything to add to martin's comments um yeah kind of following up on what he was saying about um ticks and talks i i i think my advice would be to think about the kicks and the pucks so what i mean by that is say martin talked about changing thoughts but when you change your thoughts the net result of that is that you will change your behavior so there will be an intended consequence so that being the tick um so the intended consequence of kind of thinking differently will mean that your behavior will change um but the thing that i would um advise that people should really look out for are the tucks which are the unintended consequences of thinking slightly differently so it might be that if you're kind of if your um performance inhibiting thought is that you're kind of i'm not good enough you know i don't think i'm going to be able to get the job others are better than me um and your performance enhancing thoughts are thinking about all the things that will allow you to do that job that will mean that your behavior will be that you're presenting yourself your best self but an unintended consequence of that could be that you're so focused about thinking how to put yourself across in the best way that you come across as um quite intense potentially you're not looking at the cues of the interviewer and maybe just kind of you know on a mission to present yourself in a very forthright way um so that would be my thing um that i would advise and then the other thing that i would say around the pets is to set uh um a performance-enhancing thought that's quite achievable because if you set it too high then it's it's going to the fallout could could be significant in terms of unintended consequences so i think my thing is about having a balance there so being really balanced around the way that you're thinking about things um and ultimately i just think be yours you know to be yourself and to think about when am i at my best when am i able to articulate myself in the best way and how can i replicate that in the in the interview process great thank you uh thank you both um some food for thought there lots of an acronyms that i've written down um so uh we're gonna move on to poll two matt if that's all right um so how confident are you in being able to promote yourself effectively in the interview and we've got four different choices we've got very confident confident not very confident or not at all confident so again uh we'll give you a bit of time to to answer those questions yeah we've got quite a few we've already voted about 75 of the way through so just going to give it a couple more seconds uh just to allow people to have that opportunity to vote um let's give it five more seconds and i'm now going to close the poll and i'm going to share the results with you victoria there you go okay so that's uh that's really encouraging so we've got six percent who are very confident we've got nearly 60 percent who are confident and then we've got 31 at not very confident and we've got a small percentage of five people at uh at not uh not at all confidence so what we'll do is we'll thank you for for participating on that and i just encourage you to start you know as questions are coming through in your mind start populating in the q a um because we've ensured that we've allowed plenty of time today to answer your questions so just a reminder encourage you to do that but moving on to the next question so within the interview process uh how do you reinforce your personal brand but with authenticity so um emma well that would be good for smiling um yeah so this is a really important and important thing guys and um if you go through and you read a lot of guidance around how to get a job or how to do an interview what you'll often hear is a lot of kind of management um speak around you know how to hold yourself or what to do now while i appreciate for a lot of you who might be panicking really just wanting a job there is the real temptation to go in and pretend to be whatever you think that organization wants you to be and i'm here to kind of ask you to be a little bit braver than that and to actually be yourself in the interview however odd that sounds um and that's because you may well get the job pretending to be someone else so for example pretending to be massively corporate or pretending to be you're going for a charitable job pretend to be really interested in a sector that you're not you know um but as you start to relax and work your true self will come out and i have had before a bit of a shock where i've hired somebody and they've been completely different i'd prefer to have known to begin with what i would say to you before the interview as you're doing all that great preparation that didn't talk you through before start thinking about what really matters to you so get really clear in your mind around why you applied for this job what you like about it what you like about the organization and how that fits in with your values so in a lot of the previous um webinars that we've run we've talked about values and making sure that you're really kind of clear around what matters to you um but do get those really clear in your mind and i i always wanted me to write down kind of three things that i really want to get across kind of three words that really do sum up your own um brand and see if you can kindly discuss them at some point during during the process um the other thing that i would say is is do try and be yourself so although it's really difficult over zoom and it's you know it can be challenging and it can feel really really formal um do try and be yourself as you go through the process you know no one's interested in the kind of the rote answers and that's only half of it do let yourself um relax a little bit breathe which i know is a challenge for everybody um and just try and let them see exactly who you are because i want to be very clear with you lots of people have skills that have got them through to the interview what actually gets you through to the next stage is that that kind of i hate the phrase culture fit as you all know but that kind of personality match and they can only see that if you really show who you are so in order to get a longer term fit um that authenticity and personal brand piece is absolutely key for me so i don't want to say just be yourself that sounds um really trite but stop being quite so worried about putting this persona on and try and just relax get your values clear and try and kind of let it flow a little bit more um claire what else would you say i'm sure you've got some much more kind of psychologically detailed stuff to talk about but what would you say okay i'm not so sure i've got um psychological stuff but i suppose um my thing would be um around when you when you kind of think about your three words that you mentioned is really to um to lace those through um your your story and i would really urge people to have a really clear story that they're able to tell in um an engaging way um of how their career has evolved and i think the really important thing around your story is to show consistency with your achievements your progression and so on um and i know there was a recruiter that i worked with many years ago who his piece of advice to me i i still hold with me now and i use actually in some of my interviews that i that when i'm interviewing and recruiting myself but um it's stolen from a process which some of you may know about called top grading um and there's i basically go through every single role and ask the same questions and what i'm looking at is the story um so when i did this particular interview there are five things um and i'll just read them out very quickly so the first thing i always ask for anybody who's been in a job what were you taken on to do and i'm looking for and what were the metrics what were the measures of success the second things that i'd ask about that role is what achievement are you proudest of in that role and i'll kind of get them to talk a bit more about that what was the low point um what where what's the kind of biggest mistake perhaps that you made in that job is the third thing and then the fourth thing i ask quite a lot about the people that they work with and the managers they work with and i also would urge you to think if someone asked you um so your manager say is called john um and the interviewer says if i contacted john what would john say about you and it really urges that kind of piece of honesty for you to think about before you're put on the spot um when you're under the spotlight in your interview um so i think that's a really important part of this kind of preparation and then finally why you left that organization so again looking for trends um and looking for themes and so it's that kind of structure that i would hang my story off um and to provide that kind of consistency as i've kind of progressed through the different roles yeah no that's excellent both of them um i think both areas so um the next one is what you know there are lots of different types of interviewing styles um and claire you alluded to to somehow and emma's but what advice would you give on preparing for those different types of interview questions including the somewhat dreaded competency-based interviewing uh angle that so many people grown at so martin um perhaps you can give us some insight yeah so uh i'm often asked this question and the first thing i'd say is is have an analogy of an iceberg in mind so with an iceberg as we all know most of it is underneath the water and about 10 of it is above the water uh and by that i mean prepare lots of things that actually may never be needed in the interview but make sure you've covered lots and lots of ground yourself in the things that you think about before you go in so all the great points that lynn and emma have made earlier on about doing preparation and thinking about the company make sure your iceberg is really really broad so you've covered lots of areas that's the first thing i'd say because you don't know what's going to come up but you will feel a lot better if you've got a very large iceberg of things you've thought about moving on to particular types of questions especially the competency based interview the competency-based interview is pretty common and you can get a bit of a sense as to what you might well be asked by doing excuse me doing the research we talked about earlier look at the job description look at the person specification look at the values of the organization they're all clues as to things you might be asked to talk about and think about the sorts of messages you want to give across and think about the experience that you have got so when you are facing a competency-based interview question you are normally asked to give a very specific reference to an experience you have had where you have demonstrated the thing in question so for example can you tell me about a time where you've influenced a group of people and got a great result against the consensus or something like that that's a pretty typical sort of thing so i'd encourage people to use a technique which we call the star technique that's s t a and r before you go into an interview so think about the situation that's the s what am i going to cover then t is for task what specifically did i have to do in that situation a is for actions what things did i do what actions did i take in achieving that result and that's the last point the result is the r so what's the situation what's the task what are the actions what's the result prepare that kind of track for all of the things you might want to think about and then be prepared obviously to flex and go with the situation that you're asking about in the interview more general motivational type questions always think about your answers before you're going to go in you will probably get asked questions about you know why do you want the job that sort of thing don't trip up on those the unintended consequences that we talked about earlier don't trip up on that don't be focused so much on all your prepared areas that you forget to show a bit of enthusiasm about the role and some basic points of prep as well you know try and get some rest beforehand make sure you've thought about the skills and challenges that are relevant you know arrive on time know where you're going all of those basic basic things because suddenly all of your prep can be thrown awry if you turn up late and realize that it's not what you thought it was and all the rest of it or you get the interview time wrong so get those basics right but that would be my my general advice so uh over to you emma thanks following martin because um you always have such good answers i'm always like yes style that's exactly it um so i would actually use preparing for the interview as a way to re-bolster your self-confidence so one of the great things about interviews is um you're the one who's got all the answers so although we get really frightened about it actually it's one of the very few chances you ever get to talk about what you've done brilliantly so use this as a great opportunity to do that um so what i would normally advise particularly people i work with to do is we look at a different range of questions exactly as martin says we run them through with different scenarios use them to really highlight what you want to bring out your biggest achievements um but the other thing that is fairly new at the moment and i think is really worth mentioning is something that claire talked about at the beginning is around narrative so what we're often finding at the moment for people is that they're being asked at the beginning of an interview um kind of what's led you to this point um and what they don't mean or my particular dreaded favorite give me a quick summary of your career to date practice that practice practice practice it um and i cannot stress you enough do it with either a coach like any of us who are on this call or do it with um kind of a trusted advisor or friend or loved one um this can go on for 15 minutes if you're not careful i think the longest i had was 25 um and i knew within the first 15 minutes i wasn't going to hire the person because they they couldn't they couldn't keep it down um practice it and it's a really great way for you to start to reframe what's led you to this point because i want to really emphasize for a lot of you i know there's a lot of people who aren't working at the moment there is no shame in not being in work that is circumstance it's not reflection on you and your value and use preparation for the interview to really hammer home to yourself all those things that you do brilliantly and to remind yourself how lucky actually this organization would be to have you and it could be a great way just to reaffirm that oh and also um always eat before you interview i have had someone pass out on me before which is a combination of nerves and starvation so please have a banana and some water before you go in at the baseline very sound advice thank you okay so um again i'm just going to remind you we um we've got some questions coming through but if you uh need um more questions we need uh if you would like to ask a question please populate it in the q a uh thank you so um staying on the interview that um martin maybe you could take this one so how do you engage your interviewer throughout the interview process yeah so uh thank you just a few short thoughts on this picking up on all the things we talked about earlier on if you do the prep that we've talked about you'll have a baseline from which to build in terms of this this whole interview and but the biggest piece of advice i'd give to anybody in an interview is start calling it a conversation rather than an interview if you see it as a conversation behave as you would in a conversation you ask questions show interest you know interact with somebody if it's just stilted you wait for a question to come in you give an answer you know you're not going to be building the rapport and the connection that you really could so try and see it as a con as a conversation and kick it off by making relevant comments you know when you walk in the building talk about your experience of you know how you found reception or something you've noticed about the brand or something you know compliment that kind of thing make sure you know who it is you're going to be interviewing the earlier comment applies you know if you're going to suddenly find you five people in front of you uh you know that's that's a different experience than one so make sure you know who's going to be meeting you try and find out a bit about them so you can just flex and tailor your answers you know smile show some enthusiasm and think about your body language think about you know how you express yourself but the most important thing is try and see it as a conversation so they're my they're my quick thoughts but i'm sure delin has uh some others as well yeah martin thank you so i i'd also think about um how can you engaging your interviewer also makes you incredibly memorable and when you think about if they're going to interview five candidates and you're number one how are they going to remember you by number five and when you think about becoming memorable i think martin said it really well ask really insightful questions you can engage your listener or the person you're meeting with by asking really intelligent thought-provoking questions and it goes back to all the preparation that you've done around the values and what they're looking for in the job description that emma really emphasized so think about some really intelligent questions that you can ask the interviewer to highly engage them and and you'll know you've asked a great question when they say god that's a really good question um so think about that and let me give you one example so i always love to coach people to ask the interviewer tell me i've learned a lot about your organization but what specifically why did you come to this organization what brought you here and then the second part of that question is what keeps you here so typically your interviewer will say that's a really great question and it's thought and they have to stop and think so think about that and then i also want to leverage something that claire said she talked about telling your story um also what makes you memorable is you're a storyteller and and people remember stories and they remember facts and information but as emma said you've got to practice it make it very crisp and concise so be a storyteller in your experience make it conversational as martin said and then how do you leave yourself memorable by also asking great questions so that's what i would add yeah thank you um i think matt what we'll do is we've started to get uh quite a number of questions coming through so i think if we just do the poll and then maybe go to the q a and then we have some other questions we can come back to you but i'm i'm keen to to be able to answer your um the audience's questions today so the last poll before we go into the live q a so what is most important to you in your next role so i just uh i just need a job uh you need uh to it needs to fit in with your career plan uh it must have the right work-life balance it's uh for financial security uh you're looking for a compensation increase or actually you're just going to wait you know you're going to wait for the right thing so we're going to as ever give you a few moments to answer that and then we'll um we'll go into the q a yeah we've still got a few people to vote so just giving another couple more seconds victoria yeah i know there are lots of choices here okay so um last five seconds before i close the poll and closing the poll now uh just showing the results victoria to you you should be able to see those now okay so eleven percent i needed uh they need a role 30 percent need to fit in with their ultimate career plan 25 percent must have the right work life balance 17 for financial security very few people looking for an increase and 15 are waiting for the right things so that's yeah that's very very interesting so um it's great to see that uh you know that the career plan is uh is still the priority and um work-life balance is um is right up there so um i'm gonna hand over to you matt if that's okay thanks victoria absolutely no problem yeah we have got quite a few questions coming in now so do ask your questions but also to say if we don't get around to all of them we will follow up with them um if we have the opportunity to um later on after this webinar so first question emma i'm going to come to you because i know that um this is something i think you've flagged for yourself but actually obviously we're still in this covert stage and i think there was people who were still isolating worried about going back out to work um i know somebody here has said you know they've turned up turned down a job because they're frightened about you know going on public transport you know what tips do you have to get over anxiety first off i would say um please separate out your job search from your anxiety and i say this to you all with with love and affection because anxiety is um is a medical condition something which we're all suffering from at the moment um it's very difficult for employers to find the right people for their jobs at the moment if you go for a job and you turn it down they've got to go through that whole process again and we know how challenging that is for other people going through it so please for those of you who feel really anxious at the moment if you are in a position where you don't have to work straight away i really urge you to do some work with online counselling or with your gp or with you know any of the coaches who are available and out there to really deal with that anxiety it's completely natural understandable um but what you don't want to be doing is compounding that anxiety by putting yourself through a recruitment process that's anxious in itself getting panicked through it then not taking the job and getting into this cycle so really do please treat those two things as separate um the other thing i would say to everybody is that although you know a lot of us are concerned around covered and continuing to isolate um employees making it pretty clear on their adverts the moment whether roles can be done from home and it's something that really you can elevate your anxiety by discussing that quite openly in the interview and making them aware i know that the person who posted had kind of mentioned that they weren't planning on looking until september and i think that's fantastic you know give yourself a period of time to feel more comfortable i'm working with the gentleman at the moment on his job search and he's giving himself um until the end of september to get very clear on all of the stuff he's dealing with mentally never just about the job and then he'll begin his actual we'll begin his job together in october and he'll feel very ready for that but please don't compound your anxiety by forcing yourself into stressful job hunting positions and then having to turn the job down um to feel that you're kind of earning it that that to me just doesn't help your your mental health i don't know if there's anything anyone else would add on that okay thanks emma no problem thank you for that um okay so there's been a couple of questions around this i'm going to try and theme this one but um spare with me um how do you prepare for an interview in an industry that you are passionate about however don't have much past work experience to relate to so i think it's where you know you might have transferable skills but you haven't got the direct skills that people are asking for i don't know who would like to pick that one up i can start go yeah um so i what i would do is uh it kind of goes back to the research where find individuals that maybe do a similar type of job of what they're looking to hire for that work within that industry and matt said it's those transferable skills but at least try and find someone who's actually doing the job or similar to it to really try and find out and map out how does your experience in the industries in which you've worked though do align with the actual core skills of the job and what is it that you can do to try and help yourself or even offer the organization to learn more about the specifics of the industry so i think it's it's also coming in with some solutions that you can offer up of how you can better gain that experience quicker and faster but even your baseline knowledge of understanding the differences before you arrive and even again doing your research and talking to individuals and how you can align the core skills to what the job requirements are so that would be uh some advice that i would give you so maybe anyone else too yeah i i think that's brilliant answer i'd add a couple of things if i may i think um if if the job description uh clearly says you must have experience in dot dot then there is an argument that says if you haven't then don't necessarily go through the pain in the process of heading for a pretty inevitable rejection so you know be sensible if it says you've got to know about something really really specific other than that though i would have the frame of mind i've said it on a previous one of these webinars you know i can because i have that's the mindset so think about your prior experience think about as dillon was saying think about where you've done things that are relevant even if they're not specific but they're still relevant i can do that here because i have done it elsewhere and then tailor your experience to the requirements of the role thanks martin thanks to lynn okay next question so with the pandemic obviously focus on work life balance working from home is more prevalent um how do we approach that question with an interviewer about working from home [Music] and then again i don't know who would anybody like to pick that up um so i think you approach it in exactly the same way that we've always approached um discussions around kind of working patterns and things and that is not the first minute you walk through the door it's build that rapport get to that point and i would actually offer it up as a question at the end so all good interviewers will always give you time for questions at the end and i think that it's a very open-ended question particularly in first interview that says you know what are your plans in in the kind of you know return to work following 19. that gives you that entire openness and it allows them to to kind of ask you i would be very surprised if your employee if your interviewer wasn't asking you the same questions but i'd normally wait for them to offer it up and equally it gives you some great insight because if they're all saying actually we're aiming for everyone back in the office and everything everything's going to be back to normal and that doesn't work for you and that gives you a great opportunity to interview collect and think actually even if this comes through is it really right for me um so i would leave it until the end i certainly wouldn't um lead with it thanks emma thanks so much for that one um where's my question now and okay sorry i just lost one of my questions oh yeah people um one question has come through about psychometric tests so um people are obviously concerned we're worried about psychometric tests um so have you got any advice on those but on the flip of that um how much weight do companies put on the results of a psychometric test as well so martin can i pass that one to you in the first instance yeah sure um big topic psychometric test so try and keep it brief i mean uh essentially if you're asked to do a psychometric test it is a good sign because it means that uh you're being taken seriously so don't see it as a as a threat it's a positive thing see it as the potential employer taking you seriously and being interested in getting as much information about you as possible broadly there are two types of tests there are reasoning tests or ability tests and then personality tests and usually you can practice so you should find out the kind of test you're going to be asked to complete and then look at the practice ones that you will find online you can look the tests up online the british psychological society has a list of most tests you can find out a bit about them and when you're actually taking the test itself you will have the opportunity to practice practice practice so i would make sure that you prepare yourself as well as possible but there are these two types the timed ones the ability ones that usually give people a bit more concern and then the personality ones they're both really only ever supposed to support a selection process you shouldn't really find an employer who hangs too much weight on them they should be one extra point of data and you will probably find that there's an opportunity to have some feedback in the process as well so that should the the data that comes out of the personality questionnaire or the ability question the questionnaire should be validated in some kind of discussion between you and the employer so see as a generation of hypotheses and ideas about you the generation of generation of more information about you see it as a positive thing but practice them and when you particularly final tip on the ability test if you are doing ability tests make sure that you know you're prepared you're calm you're quiet you rested all of those things but general tip on ability test speed is important points make prizes so when in doubt go quickly don't spend hours and hours and hours pondering over a result because the clock's ticking and it's usually important in online ability tests to get as many done as possible that's my quick overview of psychometrics the only other thing that i'm i might add to that if i may is just around um martin mentioned that two different types of tests and the personality assessment tests um i would always really urge people to not think too hard about it and to give your initial response because if you try and budget and think well they must be looking for this or this and i'll try and answer all these questions like this or they try and ask you different questions from different angles and you try and think how did i ask answer the last one it shows through a mile off um you can see um a profile where someone's tried to um you know influence it in some way so again to martin's point around speed for the personality test where you do have as much time as you want go with your gut yeah thanks very much claire thank you very much um okay so there's been a couple of questions around this i'm trying to try and theme this question but um how or any advice that you have for people where they've had a senior role in the past they've probably had some time off um or you know due to the current situation looking to take maybe a step down a junior role to take a job have you got any advice on how to convince people that you know that's right for you because obviously people see you as more experienced so don't feel they should give you that opportunity i don't know delene have you got anything you could add to that yeah i'd actually also love to hear from um claire and emma on this one too um so the question is it matt that they are senior they're going down to more junior positions correct yeah yeah i think though i guess my advice would be you really have to think about and and i think emma touched on this as well are you going to be passionate in this position is it something that you really want to take a step back and you you know obviously the more seniority you want you have there's a lot more stress and decision making that has to be done there's a lot more responsibilities that you have to own within the organization and maybe that's not what you wanted at a point in time in your career that's fine make sure you communicate that extremely well in the interview um but that said if it's just to take a job i i think again you have to be your authentic self what is it that you want to do and are you going to be challenged in that position and because you know i think emma said it well your true self is going to come through and whether your frustration or boredom is certainly going to be shown and that's not good for you nor the the health of the organization so um i mean again i'll turn it to emma and claire but i'd love to hear what they have to say i just i you know kind of proceed with caution in my opinion unless that's your intent it's what you want i just wonder as well um whether it's it's worth thinking about the assumptions that you're making because um the question was around oh they're going to assume that i'm too senior um i'm like this so that will you're already starting to tell yourself a story about um why you're not going to get that job and in fact um they could the reverse could be really true and that actually they're really looking for someone with experience and that's a perfect fit so again it kind of goes back to the storytelling to make sure that that's consistent and authentic as to why you're stepping down so that would be my yeah yeah and i would probably tie both of them together um so i've hired people before who who are more qualified than me to work for me and i have been thoroughly thrilled to have them i think as to curtis point i'm relieved um however there is something for me around getting really really clear and i'd urge all of you to get very very clear on what your motivations are and what you want if it is that you just need a job at the moment and as we said that is absolutely fine that is absolutely fine um think about how you're going to portray that because the challenge is if actually you've stepped three levels down but you're scanning the market for something else that's something else will come up because the market will come back again um it will come up and then you're leaving somebody kind of in the lurch and there's something for me around that authenticity kind of you know connection so kind of think for me if you aren't prepared to be in it for 18 months to two years don't really take something more junior start to think i could do some contracting could use something that's part-time to alleviate that stress what could you do i think it comes about you know dillon's point around that authenticity and claire's around what's the narrative how will you um how will you articulate that job move if you're going for another job further on you can just be storing some challenges up i don't think anyone is going to be struggling to explain a gap on their cv at the moment i think if you're ever going to have a gap on your cv 2020 is the year to have it um so you know that's a great position to be in at the moment um and see if you can kind of elevate that stress in other ways rather than again you know adding it into a civilian says the stress of doing a job more junior than you you are capable of doing is actually quite considerable um we think it's all going to be you know rosie doesn't normally work out that way thanks everyone thanks for that um we've had a couple of questions about two or three questions around the interviewer themselves um specifically around you know any advice that you can give if you either don't agree with maybe something the interview is saying or they're talking about or that you're finding that they're either showing bias towards you or they're bad or inexperienced at interviews have you got any advice um around you know how to deal with um the interview themselves locate this is a starting pretend and i'd be really keen to hear what everybody else has got to say on it um please don't get into an into an argument with the interviewer in the interview that's the biggest thing i can give you because on occasion um interviewing stars can be deliberately provocative to see how you react under pressure it's something that we see much more the higher up um an organization you go and whether that's correct or not it does it does tend to happen i can see delene nodding there i think you know it's a test that people do to try and push you off and i think there's a couple of different points here number one if you do not agree with something that the interview was saying in the interview nod and smile and say okay that's an interesting point of view thank you do not get into a slanging match with them i think particularly around their organization they understand their organization much better than you do so there is just taking that step back the other element of it if you feel that they are being unprofessional or they are biased towards you in some way i would suggest that you make some notes as soon as you come out of the interview have a pleasant face on where you're in there um and then contact the recruitment team pretty quickly um you also need to decide whether that's a deal breaker for you because it's very interesting how often we feel that people have been unprofessional when we haven't got through whereas if you got through would you have felt that it was fine so just kind of get that level of balance there and then it is absolutely you're right and i've certainly done this when i've edited recruitment teams it is absolutely your right to put for the company that you felt that it was an inappropriate experience um you know there's lots of guidance around how you can do that but please please do not get into um a kind of verbal argument or something match with them in the room i don't know if there's anything else um that anyone wants around i can see kind of claire's they've got something on there um i've just got one thing and i suppose if i if someone said something to me that was a statement that i found that i vehemently disagreed with i'd be just really curious um and so i would be eager to ask them some really open questions around that's really interesting can you tell me something because it may be that they know something back to what emma's saying the context of their organization um you know they're in a different world to you and so um i would my first instinct would be to be curious and to ask the law and that's a great response claire actually thank you i'll use that next time thank you um i think we might have time for one more question victoria so um assuming you've got through the interview um you get an offer how do you know that that offer is the right offer for you how do you make that decision on that job offer so i don't know claire um maybe i could pass that to you sorry just i'll meet you myself that's okay um yes yeah sure so um i think when you get the job offer what i've witnessed and also myself um suddenly um you're extremely flattered and so excited because it's always like such a pressure release to have got the job offer that sometimes you lose your head um and you kind of think about this role with rose tinted spectacles and actually you're missing um so some of the really obvious things in front of you and so the first thing i'd advise is just be mindful of that that you could be led more by your heart and the flattery than perhaps your head the second thing that i would say is that in all of this research that um there's been so much advice around as emma said looking at the job spec go through that with a fine tooth comb all the research around the company culture but a really important thing is the person that you're going to be working for that's the enabler and this i'm sure you've all seen stats around people don't leave companies they leave their line manager and so if you haven't met your line manager um then you know that needs to be something that that you do and the other people that you're going to be working with that's an absolutely core requirement so i guess my my second point is to really just check all the gaps and try and retain your head and to make sure that the line manager is someone who you really feel that you're going to connect with and be able to work with um and then the final point i would say is beware of the counter offer from your existing employer again i think recruiters um dylan will correct me here but it's something like 80 percent um of those who accept a counter offer from their existing employer still leave within the next six months so i would just be really wary around that and also just re rewind as to what you were looking for in in your next step um and also just think well why didn't why have they given me this offer now why didn't they do that before um so that would be my tips um dylan have what have you got throughout i'm sure you've got loads more to add oh i'm just muting you you want me to hang on yeah thanks to say that's that's brilliant and you're right about the stat when it comes to the counteroffer um you know i think it goes back to what everyone has said um you want to make sure that the offer is fair you do want to take other than just salary into consideration what do you value what's important to you someone talked about one of the questions quality of life and work from home so all those things are important to you no no negotiation ever is going to be perfect but ultimately what do you value and then really make sure you feel like you got that right but ultimately i think what we've all tried to say too though is your career comes down to not necessarily the salary that you ultimately end up negotiating or the points of negotiation it's the company that you choose to work for it's the individuals that you choose to work with it's the culture in which you emerge yourself in and it's all those things even industry that ultimately propels your career and brings you true joy and satisfaction in your life and so i think step back and think about all those things as you think about entering and negotiating when it comes around your offer and feeling if it's fair just make sure the whole package is right for you thank you both um victor i'm going to hand over to you um to close us out we're almost at the know i've hour 60 seconds to just say a lot um i'm very mindful there are a few questions we haven't uh got around to coming back to you but i absolutely give me i give you my assurance that we will speak to the panel get their combined views and we will come back to your email um when we send out the recording in a few days so be assured that you will have your questions answered so i mean so many takeaways you know your values the importance of research we've got pits and pets um i can book a book because i have i think you know those are some of the sort of the personal takeaways that i've taken on board today so firstly thank you um as ever for the panel uh your committed you know time and expertise over the last nine weeks has been absolutely outstanding so thank you very much for making this such a success and and hope for um the audience today so for the participants today thank you very much for joining on such a beautiful day um i'm sure you that there were lots of other things that you could have done i hope the series and today have provided what it was intended for which was hope and direction um for your future roles and all the webinars that we've had are all available on on an on-demand version via the link or via social media network so please feel free to access them pause them record them write your to-do list or share them with people who maybe start looking for work moving forward so uh just lastly the very very best of luck on your career journeys robert harper here to support you not just over the last nine weeks but futuristically if your skill set doesn't sit in within our core lines of business and we know companies and people who can so please feel free to reach out to any of us on the panel and any contacts you have within robert half and say we're here to support you through um through the these times so without that it's one minute past one and um i shall say goodbye so thank you much very much everybody bye-bye thanks bye thank you
