I wrote down a list the other day of the places I’ve had interviews in the past. The list is pretty long, due to a wide variety of part-time and summer jobs during university, returning to study a number of times and a number of significant career shifts.
I’ve been lucky to be successful in most (but not all of them – eh Merrill Lynch!) More on this another day.
But the most nerve-wracking one? Up there with them is going for an interview as a Careers Advisor to students at the University of London. You can imagine it, right…you’re interviewing for a role where a big part of your responsibilities will be coaching students to interview well!
The University of London is unusual in that it actively recruits career changers – and trains them up and supports them to get relevant qualifications while on the job. Lots of you I’m sure have heard of the STAR format for answering competency based questions at interview…but even though I had done over 30 interviews at this stage of my career I only came across this in my preparation for this role.
What helped me succeed at this multiple stage interview (I think there were 3 rounds)? My 3-P approach of predicting interview questions, preparing what I would say and practicing the delivery. I also really worked on my mindset – as I am a person who tends to get pretty nervous before interviews – making sure I was catching any thoughts that weren’t helping me and channelling my thoughts into something that would help me.
Different things work for different people in managing their mindset – for me, it was looking forward to a big slice of cake and a fancy coffee after each interview, and reframing my thoughts – e.g. telling myself the interviewers were on my side (after all, they don’t want to have to interview another 10 candidates).