Want to improve your interview technique?  Being interviewed for a job is often not an enjoyable exercise but there are certain things you can do to increase your effectiveness in an interview situation and likelihood of securing the role.

Do your research

The types of channels available to jobseekers means that just doing a cursory check of a company website is not enough to give you the upper hand. Michael Moran, CEO of Fairplace recommends using LinkedIn to get a better understanding of the Hiring Manager and/or the Interviewer. It’s also important to understand why the company is recruiting and the role that this individual and the business area have in the overall company structure and strategy. Prior to the interview try and determine if the role is existing or newly created and what the growth plans of the business are. When you are asked about your skills and experience, you can anchor them by linking them to the growth objectives of the business. If you are not able to uncover this information online, make sure it’s one of the first questions you ask your interviewer.

Don’t over-prepare

While it’s important to have a range of example scenarios for the types of behavioural-based questions that may be asked, it’s also important to be yourself. Um, sorry, what you ask? Well a lot of recruitment is about finding ‘the right fit’. This is a bit of a mix between personality, skillset, competence and how you would fit within an organisational culture. The best way of determining this is firstly to have you relax into the process and understand that not all roles will be suitable for you. Secondly, interviews are less about providing rehearsed answers and more about showing how you would tackle a problem ‘on the spot’, giving the interviewer an insight into how you might operate under pressure. Saying the right thing is less important than how you cope under stress and work towards a feasible solution. Saying this, it’s a good idea to practise speaking about yourself, your accomplishments and to have some behavioural-based answers at hand. That way, when you are faced with a tricky question, you have some examples that you can use, allowing you to focus on delivering your response confidently.

It’s not a solo recital

Good interviews are the ones that feel more like a conversation than an interview. As the format suggests, an interview consists of a person (or people) asking multiple questions to another person to determine if they’re a suitable candidate for a position. However, it’s just as important to work out if this is the right place for you to work. Michael Moran from Fairplace suggests that it’s generally recommended for interviewers to speak for 30% of the time and interviewees for 70%. However, he recommends asking a range of questions along the way to change the balance of the interview to more of a 50:50 conversation. Rather than saving up all your questions to the end and then asking them all at once, try and pepper your answers with a few questions to get the conversation flowing. While the interviewers are answering questions, you can take some time to try and relax or regain focus.

For more information and helpful hints on performing your best at interview, speak to the recruitment team at Flexi Personnel.