Shadowing Practice: Interviewing Part 1 - What You Need To Ask In Advance - Learn English Speaking with Video

foreign You've landed a job interview, congratulations! It's probably taken you a lot of hard work and effort just to get to this point, but this moment of excitement can often be suddenly replaced with a moment of panic when you think, 'How do I prepare best to perform really well in an interview?' In the following coaches, we're going to break down what happens at an interview. I'm going to share with you what you need to do in terms of preparation to make sure that you're going to perform well. Often candidates don't perform very well because they haven't done any preparation.

They've thought a little bit about what they might say, but that's as far as they've gone.

If you can follow my steps in terms of preparing, I guarantee you that you're going to perform well.

We'll then take a deep dive into actually how to give really good answers to interview questions, because again, most job seekers don't prepare in this area. So I'm going to share with you some tips and strategies around how you can make sure that if you're asked a question in an interview, you've got a very strong and impressive answer ready to go.

foreign The series of interview videos that you're about to watch all build on the previous one, so it's really important that you watch each of them, and ideally watch each of them in order. By the end of these videos you should feel really confident about what you need to do to perform well, so let's get stuck in. How do we actually stand out at interview? Well the great news for you, is that I believe it's quite simple. If you want to stand out at interview, there is just one rule. I've only got one rule for you, and if you can follow this one rule, then guess what? You're going to do really well! My one rule to stand out at interview is...

Preparation is key. If you can prepare really well, you are going to stand out at interview.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking James, you sound like a boring old man, you sound exactly like this guy, you sound like my parents, everybody knows that preparation is key. You know this is nothing new that you're telling me here. Well I know it's nothing new, but what I want to tell you, is that hardly any candidates prepare well. They just don't. They get invited in for an interview, and they think a little bit about what they're going to say and a little bit about what might happen, but because they're a little bit unsure, they kind of just put it in the too hard basket and say they don't really prepare. So if you can actually prepare really well, in the way that I'm going to show you now, you will stand out at interview, and you will stand out at interview in a way that helps you increase your chances of getting the job. So I don't want you to actually think about preparation as being something that's really boring. I want you to actually embrace preparation. I want you to think about preparation as your friend. If you've been invited in for an interview, it's kind of like a privileged position. Pressure is a privilege. You've got through the application submission stage, you might have got through the phone interview stage, you've worked really hard here, and now you've just got to prepare one more time, and you'll hopefully be over the line. The other great thing about preparation is it's an even playing field for everybody.

Whether you're the most experienced candidate that's going to be interviewed, or the least experienced candidate, preparation is something that everybody can do. So particularly if you feel you're not the most experienced, you're not the most qualified, or you're wondering why you've been invited in for an interview, the great thing is that it's a level playing field in terms of preparation. If you can be the best prepared candidate at interview and you come across as the best prepared, there is every chance that you might leap frog candidates who are more experienced, and more qualified, who have not done the same amount of preparation as you've done. So preparation is key, preparation is your friend, and preparation you can do.

Preparation is key. If you're really really serious about the opportunity, you need to invest the time to prepare. If you've been shortlisted and you're going through to an interview, you already know that you're in a condensed pool of candidates and it's more competitive for you. Start with the basics, so who is the company that you're going to work for, what are their values, and what is the role. Think about how you can contribute to the success of the organization in the role, and link it back to your experience. Have maybe three or four examples around what you've done in the past, and how that correlates to this opportunity as well, and then have questions to show interest.

The questions don't even have to be about the role. They could be around what would success look like in the first three to six months, and what could I expect from you as a manager, what would you expect of me within the first two, four, six weeks, tell me a bit about your onboarding and induction program.

Well the most obvious thing is preparation, but it's also everything else. So it's the it's turning up on time, it's the, it's almost a first impression of warmth and friendliness of putting you at ease, as an actual recruiter and maybe asking one or two questions about yourself as well. Be able to smile, your body language, the way you have eye contact with the recruiter. All of those things go into the mix. I want you to put yourself in this situation. You've just landed an interview. Fantastic! You've just got off the phone, they've called you and said, 'You're invited through for an interview, we'd love to see you on Thursday at 10 am. Can you make that?' 'Oh yes, yes, yes, yep I'll see you at Thursday 10 am.' It's a wonderful time, you feel like, oh I was starting to doubt, myself but I've been invited in for an interview, this is great news. So, how do you feel? Well, probably at first you feel very excited on the phone, you've been invited in for an interview, but then, again pick from this list of Emojis. Your emotions might be going up and down. You might feel quite excited at first, and then you feel a little bit nervous, and then you might feel a fair amount of dread because you think, 'Oh okay, this is getting really real here. I don't like interviewing. I always feel nervous.' So perhaps you're not feeling, you know, absolutely wonderful at this particular point in time.

But. I want you, before you actually hang up the phone, to start thinking this is actually where the interview starts and this is where you can start to get ahead. Before you hang up the phone, you actually need to ask a lot of questions. So when they say, we'd like to invite you in for an interview, don't say 'Thanks that's great' and hang up the phone. There's a lot of questions here that you need to be asking, and if you can ask the ones I'm going to show you, it's going to significantly increase your chances of performing well at interview.

So before hanging up the phone, these are the questions that we need to ask. The first one simply is, 'Who am I meeting with?' You actually need to know who you're meeting with, and you need to understand who they are, and you understand what they do. Because there's a big difference in the type of people that you could be meeting. For example, if you're meeting the recruiter or the HR manager, it's going to be a very different interview compared to if you're meeting with the line manager or the CEO. A recruiter will typically ask different questions to what the hiring manager, or a managing director, or a CEO might ask. So you need to get an understanding, and the only way you're going to know that is by politely saying, 'Hey I've got a couple of questions that I'd like you to answer for me before we end the call. The first one is who am I meeting with?' Let's find out who's going to be there, who's going to be in the meeting room with us, and what is their position.

Look them up on LinkedIn, this is a wonderful thing to do. This is a wonderful thing to do is to look up on LinkedIn who it is you're going to meet. Now there's a number of reasons why you should look them up on LinkedIn. First of all, you'll get a sense of who they are, how long they've been at the organization, what their role is, but you'll also be able to potentially use some of that information yourself. I love it when I'm interviewing a candidate, and when they sit across the table from you at interview and they say 'Hey James I checked out your LinkedIn profile, I really liked the article that you wrote on how to improve your resume.' Straight away that does two things to me. That makes me think wow this candidate has done some research, I really like that.

The second thing is they've paid me a compliment, I also like that too. The candidate is starting to build rapport and are showing me that they're doing a high level of research. You won't be able to find everybody on LinkedIn, but I'd really encourage you to see what you can find out about the people that you are meeting with. The second thing you ask is, 'What should I expect?' What should I expect now, this is a very broad question isn't it. What should I expect at interview. But, it's a broad question that might give you some great insight. So for example, the recruiter might say 'Oh look, when you come along to interview, you're going to be meeting with Tony.

Look Tony only interviews candidates for about 20 minutes. It's normally a pretty sharp interview, and he really just wants to get to know you, there won't be too many technical questions.' Now if you came along to an interview and the interview only went for say 15 minutes, and they only talked about you and not about the job, you might leave there feeling a bit worried.

But if you found out in advance that it's only going to be a 15 to 20 minute interview, and that it's really just going to be about yourself, and not about the job, then you know what to expect.

And the answer to this, and it is an open question, can be very varied. But whatever information you find out here, it's really valuable for you. So also is it a group, or an individual type of interview? The ultimate aim here is we want to learn about what's going to happen. What are we walking into. They might say 'Hey look, the first half of the interview might be with the HR manager and then the CEO will join halfway through.' One of the biggest reasons why people get nervous or anxious, is we fear the unknown. We don't really understand what's going to happen, and so by asking these questions, what should I expect, and it being really open-ended, we're going to get an answer here that hopefully allows us to relax, just a little bit, but we know what to prepare. Because particularly in a job interview, if something pops up that you weren't expecting, that's where many candidates can freeze. They can struggle. They get red in their face, they start to get sweaty, and it can throw you off course for the whole interview. It's not just for that one question, we notice that people can you know feel really distracted all of a sudden, and it throws them off of course for the whole interview. So the second question that you really need to be asking here, which is going to give you some great insight if you ask it, is 'What should I expect?' What should I expect. The third type of question for you to ask is, 'What types of questions will I be asked?' Now this is wonderful because again we're going to get a really great insight here. The answer to this will really allow you to hopefully prepare, and practice. So the person on the phone might say 'Oh look, we're going to do behavioral based questions in this first interview,' or they might say 'Look, we're going to talk to you about your technical experience' or 'We're going to want to see examples of this.' Again, whatever information we find out here is so valuable to you, because now you can go home, or get off the phone, and you can start to prepare for that. Even if you just ask the two questions that are on the screen here; What should I expect and what type of questions will I be asked. You are going to get a huge amount of insight that I guarantee 99% of other candidates are not getting.

So, ask these two questions, and get the insights that 99% of other job seekers aren't getting.

The next question we want to ask is, 'What attire should I wear?' Now, when I started my career in recruitment back in 2005, for any office based role, a gentleman would wear a suit and a tie.

Fast forward you know to 2023 and beyond and I certainly wouldn't recommend most gentlemen wear a tie to an interview, unless they know that that's what's worn in the workplace. Dress codes have become more casual, more semi-formal I guess than formal, and a lot of job seekers are a little bit confused around you know what exactly they should wear. So, the best way to find out the answer to this question, is simply to ask. Ask a recruiter, you know 'It's important that I address appropriately, what should I wear for this interview?' Because what is appropriate is going to be different for every organization. Just a note on that, and we'll speak a little bit more about it later on, but if in any doubt, dress more formally than you should expect to. So if you're like 'I don't know if it's this formal, or this formal' dress more formal. Not many candidates are unsuccessful at interview by overdressing, but many candidates make the mistake of turning up to interview and just being too casually dressed. Especially younger job seekers who are going for you know interviews for the first or second time, can really underestimate the importance of dressing appropriately. So that's our third question, or maybe it's our fourth, what should I wear to the interview. 'What is parking like?' Now it might not just necessarily be parking, but it might be what are train's like, what are tram's like, what's transport like. The question is, 'How would you recommend I get to interview?' You need to understand, first of all, if you're driving what is parking like. How are you going to get there. If it's an address in a busy area, you think I might just get a car park out the front, what if you turn up 15 minutes before your interview there's no on-street parking. You're driving around the block, all of a sudden you're sweating because it's not 15 minutes before your interview now, it's 7 minutes, and you still haven't found a car park. So ask, ask this question. 'What is parking like?' or 'What's the best way to come into your office?' Now you're prepared. If they say 'Oh I definitely don't drive, public transport's the best', okay that's great. We know that in advance. We know how we're going to get there, we need to take the train, or the bus. 'How long will the interview take?' Again, this is a really good question so that you know there's no surprises for you. In that example I gave earlier, it was just a 20-minute interview. Whereas some assessments, particularly group assessments, can be up to two hours. Now it's important for you to know how long the interview you takes so that you can prepare, again with something like parking, maybe you're working at the moment and you're going to go for an interview during your lunch break, you probably don't want to be gone for over two hours. So know in advance how long the interview is going to take, and the only way we're going to know is simply by asking the question. So this will help you to prepare and get an understanding also of what's going to happen in the interview. 'What do I need to bring along with me?' This is one of my favorite questions because all recruiters like a candidate who is well organized. We love candidates who are well organized. At the recruitment agency where I'm a director, we payroll and temp many staff out, so that means that they're on our books, they're our staff. So if you're coming along for a role with us for example, we need you to bring along payroll information, superannuation information, banking information, identification, maybe proof of residency. We need you to bring all of that along as a minimum, but often the consultant might forget to tell the candidate, so it's great for you to ask this question, 'What do I need to bring along?' The recruiter might also say 'Oh look, given that you've asked, it would be handy if you could bring along maybe a portfolio of your work.' Recruiters love a well-organized candidate, but this question here is not just only about being organized, it's also about you know making sure that you are best prepared. Because certainly not bringing the correct information to an interview will count, you know it will count against you, and it will look poorly. Now the final question, and the most important question of all, so if you ask none of the other questions. If you ask none of the other questions that I've shown you so far today, this next question is the clincher. I guarantee you that one in one thousand candidates ask this question, but if you can ask it you are going to get some amazing insight. So the final question, the most important question of all to ask is, 'What can I do to really impress at interview?' What can I do to really impress at interview. Now many job seekers are quite timid, they're quite shy, they act quite formally during the process, they think 'Oh, can I actually ask a question like this? Can actually ask how I can stand out or what I need to do?' Absolutely you can. It is a great way for you to show, first of all, that you really want the job. 'You know I really want this job, what can I do to impress at interview?' Secondly, the answer that you get to this question could make all the difference between you being the one candidate that gets the job, or you being the fifth candidate they interview that doesn't get the job. What can I do to really impress at interview. Ask this question, and I guarantee you that if you put into effort what the person replies to you with, then you are going to significantly increase your chances of getting the job. All right, so in summary. The questions that we need to ask before we hang up the phone when we've been invited into interview are; Who am I meeting with? What should I expect? What type of questions will be asked? What attire should I wear? What is parking like?

How long will the interview take? What do I need to bring with me? And the most important question, of all, what can I do to really impress that interview? Now you may not need to ask all of these questions. If you already know how you're going to get there, and you already know who you're meeting with, and you already know where to park, don't ask questions at you know the information has already come up. But asking these questions will give you a great inside running, it will help you best prepare, and it will significantly increase your chances of being successful.

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