When you are facing a panel of interviewers, make your best moves.
Whether
you are searching for jobs, looking for career avenues or climbing the
corporate ladder, you can't escape team interviews these days. The problem is
that such interviews don't have a pattern to them. They come in different
forms. You could be facing your prospective team members. Or you could be up
against the top brass—HR vice-president, the section head, the operations chief.
Or you could also be sent to a recruitment assessment centre for
multi-parametric evaluation (psychological tests for pressure-handling
abilities, team-player skills and so on).
Try
these ten tips for surviving, and scoring, in a team interview.
GIVE
VARIETY TO YOUR ANSWERS
Remember you
might be interviewed by different panels. Don't give a stock answer to all of
them. They'll be comparing notes.
Repackage your skills so that they sound different. If
you're showcasing project X as your major achievement in your present job
before one team, talk about project B before another interview panel.
A technical team will tune in to techie talk; an HR team would rather hear
about your interpersonal skills.
FINE-TUNE
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
Pull out the stops on your group management and group presentation skills.
Interviewers
are people after all. Look for the personality type underscoring each interviewer.Then
try and connect with each one of them without getting personal. Usually the
best way to make contact is to project values that you feel you can share with
your interviewers.
DON'T QUAKE IN
YOUR BOOTS
- Interviewers are not ogres. They are looking for
excuses to hire you, not spill your guts.
- Don't be obsequious. That conveys low self-esteem.
- If you face your interviewers with fear in your eyes,
they won't like what they see. They are NOT sadists.
PREPARE FOR
STRESS
- You'll be up against a time crunch in a team
interview.
- In one-on-ones, the interviewer might be taking
notes, allowing you little breathers. No such luck with four people firing
questions at you. Use stress control techniques to soothe your nerves. You
might even use the extra adrenaline to sharpen your responses.
SHOWCASE THE
IMPORTANT THINGS
- List seven important things that fit the job
description of the advertised post. Prepare to present skills that fit
such traits.
- It helps to talk to friends familiar with the job
description. You can even ask them to prepare tests that you can take from
them.
REHEARSE WELL
- Put together three family members or friends with
diverse personality traits.
- Recreate the formality of a team interview situation
and ask them to fire nonstop questions at you. That will serve as a useful
practice session.
- Ask for serious feedback, especially about weak areas
in your answers. Questions about qualifications and work experience are
usually generic, so what your mock team asks you is bound to be pretty
close to the real stuff.
CREATE A
MENTAL PICTURE OF YOURSELF
Boost your
self-confidence by seeing yourself as star performer who's a cut above. See
yourself answering with elan the questions you expect. Then replay your answers
and ask yourself these questions:
- How interesting were your observations?
- Did most of your responses begin the same way?
- Did you use 'we' often, suggesting team-player
attributes?
- Are there traces of humour in your responses?
ASK GOOD
QUESTIONS
- Research is integral to a good interview performance.
Find out as much about you can about the company concerned. Browse the
Net, check company reports, put together news clips.
- Armed with your background brief, ask relevant
questions about the company.
- If you think you have a bright idea about any ongoing
activity, try this: "Did the company consider this option ..."
LOOK BEYOND
THE OBVIOUS
- Your interview team has some core queries about you.
It's these they want you to address. Try and look beyond the upfront
questions to decipher their exact intent. Then respond to fill in what the
team is really looking for.
- Flesh out your answers to focus on the team's concerns.
If they ask you about your perception of the company's ESOP policy, they
want you to present your expectation from a stock option plan.
- Answer in sync with the general tenor of the
interview. If your work involves individual research besides team work,
don't go overboard about team-player abilities. Balance your answer.
Mention how sometimes individual work is more productive though team work
is needed to put into action ideas generated by individual research.