failing job interviews Archives - Job Interview Coaching

July 29, 2022February 22, 2023

No More Face-to-Face Job Interviews

Times are changing in the world of work with an increase in remote working, workplace artificial intelligence, and the decline of low-skilled jobs. Changes are taking place, not just in the workplace itself, but in the recruitment of employees.

The pandemic, that led to the great resignation, and the increase of applicants per vacancy, which is at an all-time high, has created a demand for a new style of job interviews.

We are now in the midst of change, the evolution of the job interview.

The evolution of job interviews

In time gone by our ancestors, the hunters and gatherers, either hunted or gathered with evidence showing how these roles weren’t just determined by a person’s gender – women hunted and men gathered, and vice versa.

From a survey of over 170 ancient socialities, it was found that men, rather than women, were mainly employed as the tribe’s big game hunters.

By the time farming was commonplace, new jobs arrived. There were farm laborers, of course, who harvested the crops, but farming changed the hierarchy of job roles.

Farming created towns. People no longer needed to travel across great distances to hunt and gather, instead, tribes became villagers who sowed the seeds, domesticated wild animals, and yielded the harvest.

Towns created jobs. By the time ancient Egypt was well established, there was a need for skilled people. A bowl, axe, or pick had to be made by hand. Skilled laborers were required and could demand more payment for their skills (in ancient Egypt, payment was original made in beer and bread, and then copper coins were introduced).

As towns grew so did the demand for other types of jobs. Architects and engineers were needed to design buildings, and military leaders and soldiers were required to stop neighboring towns from attacking and stealing the crops. Doctors treated ill citizens and priests prayed that the crops wouldn’t fail.

These new job roles changed and created a hierarchy that led to a King overseeing the distribution of work and gathering of a tax, a percentage of the crops, to share among the non-food producing roles.

History of Job Interviews

The training of an employee on the job is known as an apprenticeship. Apprenticeships can be traced back to medieval times; a young person would be taught the skills of a trade at a young age. Often apprentices were family members, a son or daughter, this way a family became the experts in that trade.

Many family surnames are derived from their association with a trade:

Baxter = Baker
Bowyer = Made bows for archers
Fuller = Cloth worker
Hooper = Maker of hoops for beer barrows
Reeve = Churchwarden
Spencer = Despender of medicine
Thacker = Thatcher
Wainwright = Wagon repairer
Walker = Cloth worker

Families, especially those without children or with a growing business would take on other people’s sons and daughters as apprentices, creating job openings that people could apply for.

The industrial revolution, in the 1900s, changed the face of the world of work, for the first time hundreds and thousands of people worked together in one building or factory.

The introduction of the railways allowed skilled workers to search for job positions in other places than the area or village where they grew up.

The movement of labor and the demand for workers changed recruitment forever. 1917 saw the Woodworth data sheet – a personality test to screen WW1 recruits for potential shellshock.

By 1921 Thomas Edison had written a test, the first job interview, to evaluate the knowledge of job candidates. One test was Edison’s famous ‘soup test‘ Edison would give applicants a bowl of soup to eat while he observed if the candidate would add extra seasoning before tasting the soup.

Edison rejected pre-seasoning applicants because he didn’t want to recruit staff who relied on assumptions and was looking to hire employees who were more curious and would ask questions.

Current Job Interview Processes

Today most employers use a variation of the structured job interview. A structured job interview asks a set number of questions to each applicant and compares their answer to skills, qualities, and duties required for the advertised position.

In addition to the standard formal job interview, employers will also request applicants to attend on average 4 additional interview rounds (for high-skilled positions) which can include:

Psychometric testing – which has its findings in Woodsworth datasheet
Skill test – a practical test to evidence skill
Technical interview – a knowledge-based test/interview
Values interview – to find an applicant that will fit within the culture of the organisation

Traditionally, all job interviews were held face-to-face, with the exception of a telephone screening interview.

Just as the industrial revolution, with its big factory employers that required high numbers of staff and trains that could move skilled workers around the country, changed the face of employment in the 1900s, new technology is changing today’s world of work.

Artificial intelligence will soon be embedded in all job sectors
Remote working, allowing teams to be made up of staff from around the globe, is here to stay
Online applications create the highest number of applicants per vacancy that has ever been recorded
The decline in low-skilled jobs and growth in high-skilled job roles such as STEM
Virtual reality being used in recruitment

The Future of Recruitment and Job Interviews

2 million people apply for a job at Google each year.

The high number of applicants created a problem in the recruitment sector. Humans simply couldn’t handle the volume of applications.

The answer was to introduce artificial intelligence into the recruitment cycle. Within a short period of time, HR artificial intelligence is able to design a job advert, schedule interview dates, and deliver a live online job interview with a candidate before deciding which applicant is to be offered the position.

As with all technology, some original bugs were found. In 2018 Amazon ditched its application reviewing programme after it found that the system discriminated against women.

With 9 out of 10 companies now using some type of HR artificial intelligence in their recruitment processes, AI in HR is here to stay.

The future could see large numbers of staff, being recruited from around the globe, without any applicant having any face time with a human recruiter.

The interview process is changing

Human interviews may happen, but just not as you know it.

Is the face-to-face interview dead? Currently not. With two out of three employers favoring the face-to-face interview, there is still some way to go until all recruitment become automated.

Face-to-face interviews might not be face-to-face. The pandemic saw an increase of 67% of employers using virtual interviews with half of the employers saying they will keep on using the online interview process.

45% of employers agree that the virtual interview process is quicker and cheaper than conducting a traditional in-office recruitment process.

Virtual Reality Job Interviews

The evolution of hiring may see the traditional ‘ask and answer questions’ interview disappear.

The increase in virtual reality in the workplace will also see an increase in VR in recruitment.

The future of the workplace will be a mix of virtual reality, home working, and the physical workplace itself.

CNBC reported that: “A PwC report last year predicted that nearly 23.5 million jobs worldwide would be using AR and VR by 2030 for training, work meetings or to provide better customer service”

Virtual reality is already being used in recruiting. The British army uses VR headsets to show applicants what driving a tank would look like, KFC uses a VR “escape room” for their chefs, and the head of talent acquisition at Deutsche Bahn talked about the use of VR in recruitment: “within a matter of seconds can experience a job in a very real-life atmosphere” in CNN article.

Show and Tell

The virtual reality job interview will be about showing, not telling.

Current interview processes ask competency-based questions. The barrier here is that even a good answer doesn’t show the applicant’s decision-making processes, problem-solving skills, and how they work under pressure. It doesn’t take into consideration the applicant’s personality and how their temperaments would affect the wider team.

Virtual reality and augmented reality job interviews can put the candidate in a real workplace situation, working with (virtual) team members, and their many personalities, to complete job-related tasks. A surgeon, as an example, may have to perform an augmented reality surgery on a virtual patient creating the feeling of ‘real’ pressure.

A project manager might be asked to resolve a dispute between stakeholders, with the VR and AR characters re-acting to the applicant’s tonality, volume, assertiveness, and logic.

Virtual reality job interviews will be designed to stop deceitful job applicants from gaining job offers and to support employers to higher high-performing teams.

Chris Delaney

Chris Delaney is one of the leading job interview coaches in the country, helping career professionals to successfully pass job interviews. Delaney is the author of several job interview reference books including ‘what is your interview identity’

July 20, 2022February 22, 2023

Sweaty, scared, and ready to scream? Just another job interview

A recent poll of recruiters found that the average number of job interviews required to secure a job offer is three.

The magic number, three, does have a practical reality to it. Let’s say that a job applicant has decided to take a career sidestep or a promotion. This candidate has a vast array of transferable skills, lots of relevant qualifications, and some experience, but not a like-for-like experience as the applicant is applying for a new role, rather then the same position within a new organisation.

After an average of 4-5 hrs of interview prep, the nervous career professional attends their first interview that results in a ‘thank you, but no thank you’. A failed first interview for a new role is common, graduates also fall into this same pitfall, as do applicants searching for a big job promotion.

The reason behind the first failed interview is a lack of job understanding. When an experienced employee applies for a similar role in a new business, even if the interview is their first interview, the unexpected questions aren’t that unexpected.

The employer, following a structured job interview process, ask questions and score answers against a list of job criteria that are needed to complete business-as-usual tasks. The experienced applicant, even if they haven’t undertaken a lengthy period of interview preparation, can easily recognise the context of the interview question and present evidence that states they have the required experience.

The first rule of a successful job interview is to identify the job criteria. Appropriate examples, appropriate answers, simply score well.

A career professional wanting to climb the career ladder is applying for a new position. The first interview comes with a surprise, a list of unpredicted job interview questions and/or tests, presentations, and tasks.

Some questions asked may sound simple, and a good answer can be created in the moment by the interviewee, but again, without industry experience and a lack of context a low score is given for an interview question the applicant thought they answered well.

A confident applicant states they have the required skills, and sells themselves, but when an expert interviewer requests specifics to measure competence against the job criteria, the lack of experience shines through creating a deceitful interview identity.

Post job interview reflection is the key to success

Experience creates competence. The more job interviews a career professional attends the more skilled they become at answering tricky interview questions.

Creating a list of the interview questions asked during the first interview allows the skilled applicant to use industry research to help craft a higher-scoring interview answer, using examples that highlight how they meet the job criteria.

This is true when job interview technology is introduced. 98% of the top fortune 500 companies use recruitment automated software. Many shifting interview rounds are now conducted by AVIs – Asynchronous Video Interviews. The computer algorithms search for key terms that are then cross-referenced against the job criteria.

What is important, then, is to possess the ability to offer examples and interview answers that state enough of the essential skills, qualities, and experiences, to ensure a high-scoring answer.

Generally speaking, high-scoring answers come in one of three ways:

Being highly confident as this increases the number of words per answer
Having excessive experience that results in the nature spillage of job criteria
Attending a high number of job interviews relevant to the role to help craft answers that score well

Each job interview process, on average, is three rounds of interviews. Three recruitment rounds x three job interviews is a total of nine interviews. Each interview stage tends to last for sixty minutes, equalling a total of nine hours of interviewing.

Possessing at least nine hours of real interviews, plus a high number of interview preparation hours helps a career professional to become skilled at job interviewing.

Two is better than one

One interview alone isn’t enough.

The reflection after one single job interview isn’t enough for a candidate to become a first-choice applicant.

A list of remembered interview questions can be drawn up and new answers written in preparation for a second interview, which in itself increases the confidence of the interviewee. Once at the second interview, with a second employer, the now confident applicant can have the rug pulled from beneath their feet when 80% of the questions asked aren’t on their recently drawn-up Q&A list created after the first interview.

Each employer, even when recruiting for the same position, in the same sector, may have their own unique job criteria and therefore their own list of unique interview questions.

Over time, the new entry into a sector will find commonly asked job interview questions, which may be phrased differently, but underneath are designed to uncover the same skills, qualities, and experiences.

This is why more is better for applicants who lack experience (graduates, promotions, and entry into a new sector) The more interviews that a job seeker attends helps to improve the interview answers (and the prediction of the interview questions) for the next job interview.

Familiarity breeds confidence

It is the familiarity of the recruitment process that breeds confidence. Experienced candidates applying for the same position in a new business are more inclined to relax during the interview when they become aware that the tricky interview questions are really questions about their business-as-usual tasks.

From a job interview perspective, the lack of sector experience can, sometimes, be overturned, by being an experienced interviewee.

This is why at least three job interviews are needed to gain a job offer:

Job interview 1 – create a baseline of interview questions vs good/poor interview answers

Job interview 2 – recognise common interview questions/sector-related themes/job criteria to help shape interview answers

Job interview 3 – deliver high-scoring interview answers that increase the chance of an interview offer.

What is your interview identity?

Job offers are given to the candidate that the interview panel believes will be the best performing employee.

The content of the interview answers; the sector-related jargon used, relatable examples, industry knowhow, stating the job criteria including the required skills, qualities, and experiences vs the confident communication of competencies (verbal and non-verbal) create the candidate’s interview identity.

After each job interview the interviewee, to develop their interview skills must reflect on how they were perceived by the hiring manager – their interview identity. And make changes to improve how they are viewed in terms of predictable performance once employed.

Get Ready to Pass Your Next Job Interview

Chris Delaney

June 30, 2022June 30, 2022

The Barrier of a Structured Job Interview

The structured job interview is a standardised way of interviewing a number of candite’s to reduce unconscious bias and to create a fair hiring process.

This article will help job applicants to gain higher interview scores by not falling into the subconscious trap of the structured job interview.

Structured job interview and time problems

Even though research shows how a structured job interview is currently the best way to predict job performance, the asking of pre-written questions ‘boxes’ in an applicant’s answer.

Behavioral and situational interview questions are designed to be specific to allow the interviewee to give a relevant example/answer. The specific direction given to the applicant traps the candidate into a box, where they can’t discuss other skills and experiences, they feel would add value to the role.

It is common for a career professional, post a job interview, to reflect on their answer and to feel annoyed because they didn’t mention a key skill or experience, they knew would have highlighted their unique selling point.

In an informal job interview, the hiring manager will allow the applicant to talk about what they feel is important. The openness of the informal interview can be detrimental to the outcome of the interview as the interviewee, without conscious awareness, can discuss irrelevant information.

The duration of the interview creates a second barrier. The hiring manager, asking on average 8 job interview questions over a 45-minute period, feels pressured to ask a question, record the candidates’ answers, before asking the next question on the pre-written list. This is true even when the hiring manager requires additional information – the employer knows the applicant hasn’t disclosed all of their skills, but on the other hand, the next interview should start in 10 minutes’ time.

The pressure comes from the hiring manager knowing that each additional question and answer can possibly overshoot the allocated time slot for each interview having a knock-on delay. This ‘time’ problem comes from many employers having a recruitment day of back-to-back interviews. A solution to this problem would be a one-interview per day recruitment process.

Trained job interviewers versus untrained hiring managers

How can a job applicant overcome the rigorous job interview questions and time pressure created within a structured job interview?

First, it is important to understand that not all job interviewers are the same. A key difference is between being interviewed by a trained or untrained interviewer. Some organisations insist on a candidate being interviewed by a trained interviewer, often an HR staff member or specialist recruiter.

A trained interviewer will have spent time selecting which essential job criteria the interview questions should relate to, and how the interview question should be worded (situational behavioral or strength-based interview question).

Trained interviewers are often more confident in the interview environment than a non-trained hiring manager. Confidence increases the number of follow-up questions asked during the recruitment process.

A non-trained interviewer, often the future employee’s line manager, is likely to use commonly asked job interview questions, rather than taking the time to ask competency-based questions.

Commonly asked questions are more generic:

“What are your strengths?”
“What can you bring to the team?”
“Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?”

Competency-based questions are more specific, to drill down to a specific skill or experience:

“How would you deal with a (problem/situation)?”
“Give an example of when you (completed job duty)”
“What is your understanding of (industry knowledge)?”

Follow-up questions can be asked by both trained and none-trained recruiters, but it is more likely that a confident and experienced trained hiring manager will ask for more detailed information, allowing the interviewee to state job-relevant information, and therefore score higher on the interview scorecard.

“What specifically did you do?”
“Why did you choose that option over another?”
“What was the long-term outcome?”

It is the same experienced hiring manager who will ask follow-up questions when a job applicant unwittingly discusses a skill within the wrong context.

“Do you have an example within a (job-related context) environment?”
“Can you tell me about a team task when you took the lead rather than being part of the team?”
“Have you worked on larger scale projects?”

Duration of an interview

High-skilled positions are often gained through being successful in a multi-stage job interview process. The theory is that being asked similar questions, relating to the job criteria, over 3-4 job interviews, ensures that the employer makes a hire with a realistic vision of the new employee’s potential job performance.

In a single interview, the job applicant might be viewed as skilled, but in reality, a single interview isn’t enough to confirm the candidate’s level of competencies for medium to high-skilled positions.

For most low-skilled job roles, employers will only have a single interview as ‘potential’ rather than experience, is a key decision in the hiring process.

The duration of the job interview doesn’t create pressure on the interviewee. The job applicant can give a long or short, detailed or vague, interview answer. In fact, most interviewees are unaware of the time during the job interview itself.

Research shows how the higher number of words per answer often relates to the number of job offers. This is because, on average, the more detailed the answer, the more likely it is that the answer references the criteria on the interview scorecard.

From the career professionals’ perspective, the delivery of a job-relevant detailed interview answer is a more important focus than the duration of their interview answer.

Overcoming the generic question problem

The real problem for a job applicant is knowing what detail to reference to the job interview answer, especially when asked a vague question.

First-choice applicants – career professionals who do exceptionally well in a job interview, have the confidence to ask for additional details before answering the question.

As an example, when asked: “Tell me about a time you worked successfully within a team?” The self-assured job candidate will clarify what experience the employer is attempting to uncover: “Would you like an example of when a led a team or when I was a team member?”

Asking for specific information ensures that the right example is used for each individual job interview question.

Importantly, each answer needs to reference the job criteria for each specific question. Employers use an interview scorecard that has the interview question and a list of criteria that are required to gain a high score. If the job criteria aren’t referenced during the interview answer, the hiring manager will have no choice but to allocate a lower score.

Interview preparation, prior to the job interview, must consist of identifying the job criteria, predicting job interview questions, and crafting high-scoring interview answers.

In the interview itself, when asked a competency-based interview question, it is important to quickly reflect on what criteria the hiring manager is wanting to hear. This self-reflection can help to identify which one of the prepared interview answers to use.

Even when a prepared interview answer has been chosen, the job applicant can cover all bets by giving a specifically detailed answer.

The delivery of a detailed answer is important. If an employer refuses to ask follow-up questions, to gain a better understanding of the candidate’s future job performance, the applicant is scored on the initiative, often limited interview answers.

It is true that a weak interviewer often makes the wrong hiring decision. Many organisations with a high turnover of staff don’t interview correctly. But the same poor interview technique can stop skilled employees gaining job offers.

Specific job interview answers

Essentially, a detailed job interview answer is an example (behavioral job interview answer) or future scenario (situational job interview answer) that is embedded with the answers to the hiring manager’s potential follow-up questions:

“What specifically did you do?”
“Why did you choose that option over another?”
“What was the long-term outcome?”

The specific and detailed answer does have a longer duration, requiring the interviewee to mindful of speech speed, pauses, tonality, and to use emotional intelligence to ensure the interview panel is still engaged and listening.

For a behavioral interview question, the most famous structure to answer the question is STAR:

Situation
Task
Action
Result

When the additional detail has been embedded for the structure of the interview answer is increased:

Situation
Long-term outcome if the situation wasn’t resolved
Options to overcome barriers, including pro’s and con’s of options
Reason for choosing options
Task
Role within the task
Risk assessments
Stakeholder engagement
Action – team actions vs own actions
Additional/unforeseen problems and how these were overcome
Highlighting personal motivation
Result – short vs long term

As each interview question varies, the detailed structure can be amended as required. What is important to remember is that not all hiring managers will ask for a specific criterion when the job interview question is stated.

Nervous or less experienced recruiters ask fewer follow-up questions. A structured job interview cross-references answer against the interview scorecard (job criteria).

Many failed job interviews come down to detailed answers being given that don’t reference enough job-related competency.

May 31, 2022May 31, 2022

3 Things You Are Doing That Makes You Look Weak in a Job Interview

A hiring manager’s key objective is to determine the job performance of each job applicant. The interview, therefore, is a short window where candidates must make a strong impression that showcases suitability through the confident communication of competencies.

In the main, career professionals answer interview questions by stating knowledge, experiences, and skillsets – this includes skills, strengths, and qualities, allowing the interview panel to analyse each answer against the job criteria – a logical decision-making process.

Unknown to many job seekers, is the subconscious emotional decision-making process that influences the logical part of the brain – the gut reaction. The emotional brain – the amygdala, reacts much quicker than the logical thinking part of the brain- the frontal lobe.

This means that communication, verbal and non-verbal, produced by the interviewee initially triggers the emotional reaction of the interviewer – a generalisation ‘I like this applicant’ or ‘I dislike this candidate’ prior the interviewers logical decision-making process – a analytical choice ‘the applicant meets 5 out of 6 job criteria’s’ or ‘the candidate only has experience in only 2 out of 6 job criteria’s’.

A First Impression isn’t a Logical Process

Most employers adopt the structured job interview process as a means to fairly determine the job performance of each applicant, as research shows how a behavioral or situational interview is most likely to create a hiring decision based on the requirements to meet the job criteria.

The seven-second rule – ‘first impressions are made within 7 seconds of meeting an interviewee’ is incorrect, in fact, it only takes a tenth of a second. An article in Psychological Science explains: ‘A series of experiments by Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov reveal that all it takes is a tenth of a second to form an impression of a stranger from their face, and that longer exposures don’t significantly alter those impressions (although they might boost your confidence in your judgments)’.

Instant impressions can be wrong. They are filled with unconscious biases and, initially, have no evidence to support the belief – ‘I can see this person being a good fit’ or ‘I don’t know what it is but I can’t see them as part of the team’.

Importantly, the first impression influences the logical mind. Imagine you wanted to get a bite to eat. As you are walking down a high street looking for a restaurant you see two establishments side by side. As you quickly scan your head your subconscious takes in a large amount of information: the restaurant name. The colour and font of the restaurant’s sign. How one has tables outside and another doesn’t. If one restaurant looks cleaner than the other. The number of people in each restaurant. The style of dress of the waiters.

Instantly you are drawn to one of the restaurants – ‘this place looks nice’. Once a decision is made – ‘I like this restaurant’ or ‘this candidate seems suitable for the role’ the decision-maker will remember their choices as better or more suitable than they were. This is due to choice-supportive bias. Choice-support bias is the tendency to remember a decision as better than it actually was, by attributing positive features to the first choice, and negative features to the choice not taken.

In the job interview, this would sound like: ‘The (first choice) has X experience which would be suitable for (task). The (second choice) didn’t mention X in the interview which is an important part of the job role’.

What Triggers a Strong or Weak First Impression?

As seen with the ‘which restaurant to dine at’ decision, the subconscious computes a large amount of data which is filtered through the decision makers filters (experiences, beliefs, values, emotional state). A person’s filters makes the decision making process personal, another person choosing a restaurant may have chosen the second restaurant due to their personal filters. Or one interviewer may preference one applicant, and a second interviewer a second candidate.

What is interesting is that external factors can influence a person’s choice. Social proof, as an example – one restaurant being filled with customers and the second restaurant being empty can influence the choice – ‘if everyone is eating in the first restaurant is must be good’. In a job interview, a weaker interviewer may be influenced by a high-status interview panel members opinion.

In an experiment by Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov on first impressions, a group of participants were shown photographs of faces for 1/10th of a second, half a second, and a full second, and asked to judge each person’s IE ‘is this person competent?’ The results were compared with a second group who completed the same experiment but without a time constraints. The experiment found that no matter the duration of the decision-making process, decisions that were made in 1/10^th of a second were highly correlated with judgments made without time constraints

An employer’s first impressions can be influenced by the interviewee. Much research shows how a number of elements can help improve the first impression during a job interview. Negative impressions are often caused by anxiety. Feeling nervous affects non-verbal communication: facial expressions, gestures, and postures, and verbal communication: projection, tonality, and word choice.

Emotional Displays Influence Decision Making

A blank expression doesn’t create trust. A high number of interviewees will adopt a neutral facial expression during a job interview. Some, those with higher levels of anxiety, may subconsciously frown or have a look of shock – mouth wide open.

Both a blank expression, the look of shock, or even those who show contempt or anger will create distrust with the hiring manager. Even if the subconscious facial expressions are created due to the body’s response to anxiety, the employer will react from the initial negative impression. On the other hand, smiling and laughter, have been shown to promote affiliative tendencies in observers (Campellone and Kring 2012). Smiling improves trust, rapport and creates and more personal impression

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

The advice given for job interview preparation is to prepare high-scoring interview answers. High-scoring interview answers are examples and data/facts that meet the job criteria on the interview scorecard.

Simply stating information isn’t enough. From a logical perspective, stating the required information should result in a job offer. As discussed previously, decisions are made and influenced by the emotional mind. Using varied pace, tonality and projection can improve the delivery of each job interview answer.

Anxious people will have a tendency to speak at a fast pace. The average rate of speech ranges from around one hundred forty to one hundred seventy words per minute. Speeding up or slowing down the pace of speech can help to reiterate a point. Speaking fast shows excitement and pausing before an important point helps an audience to know that they must listen. Speaking with emotion also conveys the desired message as the chosen words and voice match.

Speaking too slowly in a monotone voice can be detrimental to the success of an interview as a slow monotone voice can be hypnotic sending the interviewer to sleep, or at best into a daydream state where they don’t listen to the point being attempted to be made.

The Power of Physical Appearance

Science Daily shared an article that explained the mind – body cycle. Sitting up straight while writing why you are suitable for a job increases self-esteem, the participants were more likely to believe the statement compared to participants writing the same message while ‘slumped’ in their chair.

Much research shows that by standing/sitting in a confident posture increase confidence. Confident interviewees will have stronger eye contact, a straight back and head held high, chest out, and walk with a sway.

Anxious applicants look down, fidget, slump in the chair, cross their legs when giving an interview presentation and avoid eye contact.

By purposely adopting a posture, a job candidate can trick the brain into believing they are more confident. Feeling confident then improves posture creating a mind-body cycle.

Improve Your Job Interview Performance

To improve your job interview identity stop showing signs of weaknesses. The weak leaks come from negative facial expressions, monotone, and fast-paced voice, and slumped posture. Instead, smile and relax. Use emotions in your voice and pause when speaking. Walk tall with your head held high and increase eye contact. You are what you feel, feel more confident, become more confident.

August 7, 2017November 19, 2020

Are You To Busy To Prepare For a Job Interview?

Do You Fail To Prepare For a Job Interview?

You are offered a job interview for a position you really desire, you have 2 weeks to prepare yourself…two weeks later, with no preparation, the day of your job interview has arrived. Why am I so busy? If I were less busy I could have prepared better

Busy people often find it hard to prepare for a job interview, but here is how you can swap busy to productive

Busy vs Productive

There is a difference between having a busy life or a productive life….the big difference is, productive people, get things done.

Are you busy or productive?

Busy people have lots of goals, productive people have priorities
Busy people say yes to everyone, productive people way up the action against the required time
Busy set long deadlines, productive people set short deadlines
Busy never finish anything, productive people finish one task before moving onto the next task
Busy people keep starting new task/goals, productive people are focused on what they are doing

To-Do List

How big is your to-do list?

Even when you feel motivated having a list of a hundred tasks to complete will distract you, as you will always think about the next task.

Once your mind wanders from the current activity, you will lose focus, once you lose focus you will start a new task, that results in getting nothing completed.

This is what happens when preparing for a job interview. You decide that your goal is to research the company, predict the interview questions, create creative job interview answers, choose what to wear, research the interviewer……

As you start one task, researching the company” you lose focus “this company looks professional, best think about my presentation…before you know you have your nose stuck in the wardrobe, with no or little research completed.

Productive people have a maximum of 3 tasks. Once they are completed they will pick 3 new task

Don’t Say Yes

You have two weeks until your job interview – plenty of time (if you set short deadlines for each task – short deadlines are more motivational then long deadlines)

Someone asks you to do X, you think “Well it’s hard thinking of great job interview answers, so I will take a break complete X and then get back to it. When doing X someone asks you to do another task….it is easy to get distracted especially when you find your current task hard.

Even simple tasks like researching the company can have the same effect, but rather than someone else asking you to do X, you ask yourself. When researching the organisation, you find the image and name of the interviewer, you ask yourself “shall I google him?” before long you are reviewing his Twitter feed, looking at his holiday pictures on facebook, researching his family history….by this time you have forgotten to research the company history

Productive people way up each task, how will this affect by goal (with a short term deadline) if it has a negative effect productive people say no (in a very polite manner, of course)