Making an impact and getting the job you want. Interviews can be nerve-wracking. Join Oxford university careers adviser Jonathan Black for crucial advice on how to handle them, see what it’s like to get put through your paces by Naomi Strong of Morgan Stanley, then learn how to make a great impact with Charlie Walker-Wise at RADA Business
How are you so this section we’re going to talk about interviewing how to ace the interview there’s really only one question people have in an interview which is do i want to work with you and everything else is going to flow from that with all aspects of the job search it’s worth thinking about what are they looking for from their position to work out if they
Want to work with you how will they assess if they want to work with you and if you knew that how would you show them but first things first you’re in the room because you deserve to be and because they think on paper that you can do the job it’s not an excuse you’re not a make weight or a wild card they genuinely think that you could do the job so this video will
Show you how to ace the interview and we’ll also be hanging some top tips so when you’re going to an interview part of the preparation i would suggest is what are the let’s say three things we can all remember three three things i want to get over to this panel depending on the job it might be i really deliver projects on time i keep to budget and i’ve worked in
This industry before or something like that so you’ve got your three things and you’re going to make sure that in every answer you’re going to weave one or two or three of those aspects into the answer so they’re coming away with the message you want to deliver the first question we always ask which you need to answer is what attracts you to the job it’s the
Most obvious first question and you’ll be amazed the number of people who haven’t prepared the answer for that we want to know what are you going to bring to the job that’s a great open question where you can immediately talk about the three things i’ve got these three skills i’m going to apply them i would also encourage you to think of the worst question that
Could come up and it might be explained this gap on your cv or it might be why did you leave this organization that way at least you’re ready for it you can hope that it doesn’t come up but you want to plan for it to come up and make sure you’ve got a story that fits so obviously this is an interview but i’d love to get to know you and understand how you got
To this point of applying so would you mind telling me what your motivation to apply for a role within the financial industry yes so i think one of the most important things are the people that work within this industry so when i look at all my friends who works at work as bankers or in wealth management they all come from very diverse backgrounds and because i
Myself i’m doing two degrees psychology and business and management at the same time i am hoping to find that diversity within the people that i work with too so i’m looking for a role in consulting and particularly wide like to do most is find out about each industry so whether its banking whether its wealth and asset management whether there’s capital markets
Whether its challenge of banks i think that the broad range of industry knowledge they get from consulting is something that i’d really value can you talk about what your personal strengths have been when you’ve been faced with a team environment before yeah so recently actually at university we had to build up a firm that is a consultancy and we were put together
In a group and i really wanted to do an entrepreneurship consultancy found some research and tried to convince the group with evidence that i think that this would be great in here one of my biggest achievements was actually going from that place where the project looked like it was going to fall apart to a place where it was actually a very sustainable and is
Now a sustainable project that’s being passed on great thank you very much for coming in so just in terms of feedback on the interviews from my mind the key thing is to remember whoever you’re walking into the room to see is just another human being yes they want to test some things but really they want to get to know you and understand why you’ve come to apply
For the role in their firm so the more you can make it personal and the more you can almost disarm them with your personality the better clearly being eloquent and having the content prepared beforehand will always hold you in good stead but the more personal you can be the more it’s going stick in someone’s mind but a lot of us when we’re interviewing it can
Be part of a day where we’re seeing maybe eight to ten candidates and the ones that will really stick in your mind are the ones where you’ve had a proper dialogue it hasn’t just been a q&a i’ve asked the questions that i have to on the piece of paper to that point when you do have time at the end of the interview without just being so relieved to rush out
The door try and have an interesting question to ask and the easiest thing is to ask someone about what they do because people love to talk about what they do especially if they’ve been doing it awhile and they clearly fulfilled by it it’s an easy one to to show that you have interests but also that you’ll get a proper answer and get some real insight into the
Career that you’re interviewing for so what can you do to make that first impression really good let me just stop you there we’re here today at rada business for some one-to-one coaching in personal impact i’d love you to be in charge i sweetly are you need up on the appetit if we can become more aware of what we give off and how people receive us then we
Can become better flexing our style being sure that in an interview setting we show up in the way that we want to the key is going to be self-awareness rounding is really important because it means that we have a strong solid base to work from we talked about people being down-to-earth so make sure you’re well rooted and solid on the ground this is about taking
Responsibility for ourselves for our own presence as soon as we give into the chair if you lean back in the chair if i took the chair away from you what would happen now well just but if you start to lean forward you’ll find that your weight starts to transfer onto your feet if you took the chairs get up you can just get up so the range of movement that we need
To start is so little because we’re already taking responsibility for our physical presence the breath is fundamentally important to calm us down to keep the system easy loose and relaxed and most importantly to feed us with that really important oxygen-rich blood to power our brains the reason this is important is that when we get stressed we tend to hold our
Breath and as we hold our tummy contracted ribs nothing moves and we can’t get a lot of oxygen into our body when i asked you the question that you aren’t expecting nor the question that’s really difficult or the one that you didn’t prepare for the body will go then actually the thing that we need to do then most is breathe because we need we need all of that
Lovely oxygen-rich blood in our head when we hold on to the breath the first thing we need to do is breathe out breath behind the voice is important to give your voice energy and energy in your articulation is important to give your thoughts clarity make sure you energize both good okay very nice so we get that sense of movement that sense of freedom which
Releases the sound emotion is carried on the vowel we express emotion through open vowel sounds and the clearest way to explain this is when a baby is unhappy what do they do and what’s the sound of the cry and parents come running and go what’s wrong so it’s really important when we’re speaking with someone that we remember to use this balance of vowels and
Consonants that we match i’m really really excited by that so there’s a sense of this space so someone can see that we care very different from i’m really really excited about that make sure that you take time to open your window as you’re sitting in the waiting room outside open up that window extend your peripheral vision become aware of the environment we’re
Going to work with a closed window an open window walk around the room and just notice what changes for you about how it feels to negotiate the furniture and the other person in the room i think that we spend too long at work in closed window sometimes for very good reason i’m stressed out i’ve got a lot of work to do don’t bother me and my desk but i also think
That when we go to that meeting or that interview we’re nervous obviously so we go saying oh i hope they think i’m good enough and have i’ve done i have a done all the thinking i need to and did they like the presentation i sent through and have i included all of that and have i done all of the things and and and and and and and what happens is we come to the
Door and we put a hat on the door handle and we walk through and we are in and our closed window mode and it’s really really important that we open ourselves up into open windows so the first thing that people experience of us is someone who is curious use eye contact to find your thoughts avoid wandering around as you try and think about what you want to say
As much as you can stay connected to the people you’re speaking to there’s bags of research that tells us that trust comes through the eyes so if the first thing i see of you are you know low lids then then i don’t get to see who you are so remembering that that when we come into the room that we are entering in and taking our space not an aggressive way but
In a way which says that we are confident one thought one breath deliver each thought with its own breath the literal meaning of inspiration is to breathe in so inspire each thought as a new idea our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us we ask
Ourselves who am i to be brilliant gorgeous talented fabulous actually who are you not to be you are a joke a very good yeah we get we get the idea how much sense did that make well none so there is a direct link between breath and sense one breath per thought constantly it works the other way one thought per breath it is our our our verbal punctuation if in an
Interview setting you can shift the focus away from what are they gonna think of me to get the nerves away from ourselves off ourselves off am i good enough am i slashed off i might clever enough all of that stuff to thinking well how can i help them understand more how can i help them understand more about me because then what you’re doing is an act of generosity
We’re giving someone something and we don’t have to perform so amazingly the star is an excellent technique to use so this is where you’re going to describe the situation i was brought in the play wasn’t going on time it was going to run over and we were under but we were over budget and it was going to be late the task i took on was to pick this out to divide
The team into four and get people to focus on their own particular area the actions i took i took not we took were to set out a project plan to meet weekly etc etc and as a result we actually came in just over budget but dead on time if i were to think about it again on reflection actually what i would have done differently would have been maybe to start quicker
And divide into three teams not five because then we had fewer and to meet slightly more often and you can even use those words and people will be happy with that if you say well the situation was tougher the task lied to come with this these were the actions we took xy and z and as a result we did this bang so interviews all in the preparation think about the
Stories you’re going to tell the key skills and the experiences you want to get over think about using the star answers and having those ready and do your homework and prepare on the organization and the industry that you’re going to interview with so the key messages don’t wing it prepare and practice all the questions so that on the day you’re well prepared you
Transcribed from video
How to succeed at interviews By Financial Times