In my 21 years of experience, I took lots of interviews. It includes the interviews for direct and campus recruitments. During interview I found there were many candidates who could have been cleared the interview. However, due lack of proper preparation they couldn’t make it. Therefore, based on my experience in this article I am trying to suggest some important tips for interview preparation. Also, I will give you overview of hiring process in which interview is the main and important step.
So, during preparation for the interview, first you should understand what is the purpose of interview for an organization. In other words, I can say, if you can understand what an interviewer wants, then I think it will be easier to prepare for the interview. Therefore, let’s try to understand the requirements from a interviewers’ eyes.
The objective of an interview process is to hire a right talent for the required job opening. After hiring you will be the part of a system, which will deliver either services or products. You should understand any wrong hiring will impact the output of the system. Which is a loss for an organization in terms of time and money. Sometimes this wrong hiring can be a very serious mistake, mainly at senior levels, where this can impact the organizational strategy adversely. Therefore, right hiring is a very important activity in any organization and to carry out this whole process Human Resource Department is responsible. So, let us start from the first step of this hiring process which we know as a ‘Resume’.
Table of Contents
What is the Effective Resume?
In hiring process your resume is the key and an effective resume can make your selection probabilities higher. Importance of resume is critical for experienced candidate than a fresh graduate. There are professionals from recruitment agencies who can prepare a good resume for you on paid basis. Still you should keep in mind below points, which are important during your resume preparation.
- Mention your experience explaining various roles and responsibilities in summary. From when to when and at which role you worked. Write down the key value addition you did during that role and what was impact to the organization.
- Under highlight head you can mention your major achievements during your work experience. This will be explaining the points which shows your core strengths particularly.
- Mention your various certifications and courses you completed.
- Explain your various functional & behavioral competencies. Also mention those projects where you used or exhibited these skills or competencies.
- Mention your areas of interest with reasons & justifications.
Types of interviews
Interview process starts with resume screening; therefore, an impressive resume is the key to clear your first step. When your resume is meeting the requirements of the employer then your hiring process starts. You will get a call from the concerned HR department or recruitment agent to fix a telephonic interview.
Telephonic Interview
After your resume screening you will get a call for telephonic interview. This call is important for your next level of screening. You should understand the purpose of telephonic interview is to verify your details, which you have mentioned in your resume. During the call interviewer will ask mostly about your functional skills which are required for the applied job. Therefore, you should carefully prepare your resume to align it with that functional requirement. You may be asked about some of your projects where you have used your technical skills. Also, you will be asked about willingness to relocate yourself to new location, about notice period and expected CTC. So, prepare your answers properly to clear your telephonic interview. During throughout your interview be calm and speak slowly and clearly.
Face to Face
When you are through with your telephonic interview then it is the time for face to face interview. Face to face interview will be in more detail where you will be evaluated for behavioral aspects and as well as for technical part also. When we talk about behavioral part is means to deal with the people in the organization and outside the organization as well. When you are in an organization, you will be interacting with your seniors, peers and subordinates to perform your responsibilities. So, interviewer will evaluate your competencies to see your abilities for effective dealing among team members. Therefore, it is better to refresh the basics of good team member and an impressive leader. You will find face to face interview can be of two type as below.
One on one Interview
In this category you will be dealing with one interviewer at a time. In other words, first you will have interview with functional head. Here he will assess your technical and behavioral competencies which he thinks are important for the required position. Here your reporting manager also will take your interview. When your functional interview completes, next you will be in front of the HR person. He will interview to assess your cultural alignment with the organization. He will also discuss your CTC and joining dates. Sometimes you can get the offer letter same day or you will be asked to inform later.
Panel Interview
In a panel interview a group of individuals from the company will be there and that group will conduct interview with you. In panel interview you will be facing peers, managers, supervisors and other senior level individuals. This way a panel interview is an easy and quick method to know about you. Also, a panel interview will save the time and money for the organization. Moreover, in panel interview you will be assessed on many other points which are note possible in one on one type interview. These points can be like, how do you interact with different types of personalities? What is your communication style? And how do you handle the pressure of different questions? The panel interviews are often used for hiring of very senior level executives where consensus of several top-level individuals is required.
How to Prepare for Interview?
Now we come to discuss how to prepare for the probable questions during the interview. In any interview generally your assessment is done in below three areas:
Functional or Technical
In this interviewer will question you to gaze your technical competence. He will be asking questions related to fundamentals of your subjects. For example, if you are a chemical engineer, then question can be on the basics. Such as your knowledge about process equipment, like distillation process, heat exchanger designing, centrifugal pumps, types of reactors, etc. However, functional question depends on your experience. For fresh candidate it will be more technical, while an experienced candidate will face question based on his various project work. Like how you designed that plant? How you used your technical skills to innovate the things? What was the performance of your project? Any challenge, which you faced during the project execution?
Behavioral
This part of interview is to assess your personality and people management competencies. Your assessment will include what is your communication style? Is it aggressive, assertive or negative? How do you take the challenges, with positive attitude or negative attitude? Moreover, your body language will be assessed, so be careful your words should align with your facial expression and physical postures. How do you dress and present yourself in front of the interviewer is also very important? On the other aspect of behavioral interview includes the traits to deal with seniors, peers and subordinates. Your assessment will be to check whether you are a good team member or not? Whether you have good leadership qualities or not?
Cultural aspect
In this area interviewer will check your alignment with companies’ culture. This is more relevant for the experienced candidates, however in case of fresher also this has good weightage. When we talk about culture it includes like, various benefits, perks and workplace bonuses. Onsite gym and health consciousness, free food in office, flexible work schedule, remote work opportunities, etc. Moreover, type of reporting structure, hierarchy, communication protocols, gender biasness, robust or customized business processes, etc. In nut shell it is more concerned with the employee engagement ways. Different organizations have different work culture so during interview your alignment is assessed with organization’s work culture.
STAR Model
For your interview you should prepare question using STAR model, which is a structured approach to explain your work. STAR is the abbreviation of Situations, Tasks, Actions and Results as explained below:
- Situations – So you explain what was happening at that time? Where you applied your skills, it can be technical or behavioral depending on the question. A situation for example can be, team moral was low, things were moving at slow pace.
- Tasks – At that time what were the requirements? Explain what were the challenges in that situation? For above situation it can be, my responsibility was to move the project at fast pace and enhance the team moral also.
- Actions – Explain specifically what you did in that situation or project? For our example actions can be like, I discussed with all the team members one on one to find out the causes for low motivation. Then I prepared a comprehensive plan, which I discussed with all team members. After discussions I accommodated their inputs and circulated the MOM with all team members for the implementation in time bound manner.
- Results – In this you need to tell the outcome of your work. For our example, results can be my team moral was high and they were motivated. I able to complete the project within time and capex.
So, you should try to explain your achievements in STAR model during the interview. This will help the interviewer to understand your skills and competencies.
We can define Skills as the learned abilities that you need to perform a given job well. While when we talk about Competencies, on the other hand, are the person’s knowledge and behaviors that lead them to be successful in a project or work profile.
Reasons for Rejection
Almost all of us have experienced rejections after interviews. For the rejections there can be various reasons as below:
- Our experience background is not fulfilling the requirement of applied position.
- Functional competencies are not matching with the job requirement.
- Behavioral competencies are not suitable for team work or leadership profile requirements.
- Interviewer biasness is also a big factor many times. There can be biasness from various angles, like regional, religion, cast, language, etc.
- Other candidate can have recommendation from influential person or can have relationship with interviewer.
- Your salary can be a factor, if you ask for higher salary and next candidate is ok with the provided salary structure. Your rejection is possible.
- Sometimes organizations conduct interviews for new upcoming projects and suddenly that project is on hold. You will receive a mail from their HR writing, “Sorry to inform you, presently this position is not available so we may consider your profile in future.”
- In many job requirements, your physical fitness is very important or during interview if interviewer find you are not fit, you will see a rejection.
Conclusion
In this article we discussed about what an effective resume should include. What are the types of interviews which are common in practice? Moreover, we discussed which type of questions will be asked and how to prepare for question? How to use the STAR model to answer a question effectively. I think this article should help the candidates to understand the whole hiring process. Which starts from your resume and finally close with the offer letter. Between these two end points there are numbers of activities. Finally, we also discussed the probable reasons for rejection after the interview.
Thanks for reading and looking forward for your questions and feedbacks to improve this further.