5 tips for interview preparation

1.When preparing for an interview, put yourself in the shoes of the interviewer. Based on your CV what areas would you want to explore further and how might they assess whether you have the competencies required for this position? Come up with some questions and consider what examples you could give.

2. Research the interviewer. It is all very well (and necessary) to research the business you're hoping to join, but what about the interviewer themselves? Do you know their background? Use the tools available to everyone: company website, social media profiles or other contacts of yours who might know them - certainly your recruiter. Knowing more about them might help to identify shared experiences and areas to focus on (e.g. for accountants you might both have qualified in small practice).

3. Check where you're going. If you don't know the route, or are having to rely on public transport to get you there, make sure you're 100% confident you know where they are and how long it will take you to get there. You should ideally aim to arrive at reception around 5 minutes ahead of time (any more than 10 minutes early is just annoying).

4. Make sure you can get away from the office. If you have arranged an interview at lunchtime or after work, it's a good idea to make casual reference to a personal appointment you have to attend (e.g. lunch with a relative or dinner with a friend). This can be communicated informally to avoid suspicion, but will reduce the risk of you being asked to attend a meeting or to work late at short notice. 

5. Avoid rehearsing detailed answers. Preparation is essential to leaving a good impression with an interviewer, but over-preparing your answers to potential questions can be risky. You run the risk of hearing the questions you want to hear, rather than what is being asked, and you're likely to sound robotic in your rehearsed replies. 

Use your Recruiter for interview preparation!

Guest Blog: Daniel Cumberworth @ Balance Recruitment
Daniel is a Senior Recruitment Consultant at Balance Recruitment, having joined the business in 2010. He recruits for permanent, contract and interim accountancy positions for Law Firms, primarily in London.


To many people, the term 'interview preparation' is nothing more than scanning over an employers website the night before to try and remember some key facts about the business.  

I'm not saying that's wrong, but to give you that extra edge in the interview process, why not work collaboratively with your recruiter to give you the best chance of securing the role?

Recruitment Consultants will have built up a business relationship with line managers and HR contacts over a period of time, and should therefore be best equipped to provide you with an insight into their personalities, and what to expect at interview.  Often line managers will use similar technical and scenario based questions in every interview, therefore getting this advice up front from your recruiter can really put you ahead of the pack.

In the days leading up to the interview, it's worth having a good think about your current role (i.e. key achievements, core responsibilities, difficulties overcome etc) and jot some ideas down on a piece of paper. Don't be afraid to pick up the phone and call your recruiter to discuss this, it's part of their job. 

Whether it's a case of not knowing what achievements will be relevant for this interview, or maybe there's a specific competency based interview question that you've struggled with in the past, run it past your recruiter.  They encounter these scenarios on a daily basis and should be able to assist.

The better prepared you are for the interview, the more confident you will feel. This will become clear in the interview and you will have a better chance securing your next career move.

Naturally, a good recruiter will volunteer this information and arrange a time to have this discussion, but if not, make sure to chase them up and make a note to use a different recruiter in future!

Interview myths - never talk negatively about your previous employer

It’s a commonly held belief that you should not talk negatively about previous employers/managers when interviewing.

Why?

If you’ve been working overtime to clear up the mess left behind by shoddy processes and a temperamental boss who doesn’t know what they’re doing, why should you fall in line and be expected to come up with some other reason for wanting to move on?

Maybe your boss has his or her favourites in the team, who they’d prefer to give the interesting work and promotions to, and this isn’t based on merit, but on who accompanies them to the pub most often to listen to their tales of business dominance.

So what should you do if you find yourself in this situation and you’re asked at interview why you’re looking for a move?

Tell the truth! 

It may be negative, and you would probably be wise not to go in to granular detail about all the goings-on, but if you can explain the key reason/s without getting personal and put any examples in to the context of how they have a negative impact on work performance or on your career development, then these are perfectly valid reasons and therefore a prospective employer should have no reason to cause alarm.

Exercising some discretion is of course advised, but it’s far better to be open and honest than to conjure up some alternative reason, which may come across as vague and lead them to assume (rightly) that there’s something you’re not telling them. 

Have you found yourself in this situation? How did you deal with it if so?

Job Boards and the battle for quantity over quality...

With the threat of social media networks moving in on their territory, job boards have had to work a little harder recently to convince their clients (e.g. recruiters and direct employers) that their services are still as valuable as ever and that their well established business models can withstand the threat posed by LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

This is most notably evident through the significant increase on advertising spend to increase the number of job seekers registering on their sites. The campaigns seem to be working, with a number of job boards boasting record traffic statistics.

So what does this mean for the clients who advertise vacancies on their sites? Does it improve their chances of finding the best candidates? Possibly. Does it mean they will receive more applications? Certainly. Does it mean they’ll spend more time filtering out irrelevant applicants? Definitely. Quantity is assured, quality isn’t.

One job board even seems to actively promote the ‘spray and pray’ method of searching for work in their TV campaign, implying that a wholesale change in career profession is achieved as simply as sending your CV off for something that catches your interest!

Ask any recruiter what they dislike about using job boards and they’ll all tell you the same thing; too many irrelevant applications. Job board users can send their CV’s to countless vacancies in no time, regardless if they do not have the experience requested in the vacancy advert.  Very few recruiters will tell you they just want even more applications.

There is also a logical argument to say that this focus on volume has a negative impact on the job seekers who use the job boards in the manner intended. Relevant applicants will inevitably get overlooked from time to time when their CV’s are buried in amongst hundreds of irrelevant applications.

So what do I think job boards could do to improve their services? Here are a few suggestions:

·         If a job seeker is applying for a very wide range of different role types, at salary levels that indicate a reasonable level of previous experience might required, send a ‘yellow card’ email, asking them to be more realistic with their applications, or face restrictions on the number of applications they can make.

·         Limit the number of applications job seekers can make daily. This might be a bit extreme, but it would encourage job seekers to spend more time reading through adverts to see if they have a realistic chance of being considered.

·         Universal use of filtering questions. Some job boards have this feature, but couldn’t they all allow the advertisers to pose some yes/no experience questions that filter out unsuccessful applicants?

·         Require more information to be entered manually by the job seeker for each application (to reduce spamming). Adding a layer of process in to the application process will take more effort on the job seekers part. Perhaps allow the vacancy advertiser the option to add a specific question field, relating to the advert (e.g. ‘please describe your involvement in a systems upgrade project’).

So when I receive a promotional email from a job board telling me that their new TV advertising campaign is about to start, I now find my finger pressing the delete button before I’ve reached the end of the first sentence.

What do you think of the above suggestions? Would they improve service for you as a recruiter/hiring manager? Or would they be too restrictive as a job seeker? Or have you got any better suggestions? Please comment below…

What to do if recruiters don't seem to be helping you?

Firstly, I want to start this blog by stressing that it’s in every recruiter’s interest to help a job seeker secure new employment. If there is a reasonable chance they can help, they will certainly try to do so. 

There are however plenty of instances where a recruiter feels they are unable to assist. This could be for a number of reasons; some perfectly logical, and some based on the recruiters own instincts. 

They may for example concentrate on permanent vacancies and struggle to secure interviews for individuals with a series of temporary placements over a number of years (logical). Or they may just feel they have met with several other individuals with similar experience who they feel would be more likely to be of interest to their clients (instinct).

So what do you do when you find yourself in a position where the recruiters who hold the vacancies you are interested in don’t seem able to able or willing to help you? 

Firstly, you need to assess whether it’s just the market conditions that are the hold up (perfectly likely over the last few years). If not, you need to get some honest feedback from them. It may be that you’re being unrealistic in the opportunities you are applying for (lacking suitable skills & experience, being overqualified, being too expensive etc), or it may be for reasons an inexperienced recruiter is a little uncomfortable raising with you (e.g. poor grammar on written communications with them, concern over interpersonal skills, your approach, etc). Try to find out the issue and in some circumstances, be willing to take on constructive feedback.

Whatever it may be, it’s never personal and can be invaluable feedback to take on board. Remember that a recruiter has every incentive to place you with their clients and will want to do so if they can. If you can take their feedback and use it, it’s likely to have a positive impact on your career prospects.

It may mean having to reassess your career expectations, even if only for the short term. If several recruiters have fed back to you that you don’t have the level or type of experience required for the move you want to make, they could be on to something. In this circumstance, can they give some advice on how to address this or keep you posted on stepping stone opportunities that can get you there? 

If you find that you’re still banging your head against a brick wall and getting nowhere with your job search through recruiters, you may experience more success applying for roles directly with employers. Work out which firms you’d like to work for and add the ‘Careers’ page of their website in to a ‘job search’ folder on your internet browser. Check the sites weekly to see if any new suitable positions have become available. 

A bit of networking (real life and social) could also strike gold. Speak to your network of contacts and former colleagues to ensure they know you’re looking for a move. Make sure you have a professional online profile, by setting up an account on LinkedIn and update it frequently.