Currently, the most popular topic of conversation in the Workthing+ forum is interviews. We like to discuss interviews because every interview situation is different, and we’re always looking for the best way to approach each one.
If I could only offer you one golden interview rule, it would be this: be yourself.
This is particularly true when it comes to group interviews. Picture the scene: a room pulsing with egos that think they’re applying to be Sir Alan’s next Apprentice rather than the inevitably less glamorous position advertised. But while their heads expand, make sure you don’t lose yours.
My most enlightening experience of a group interview was when I attended one of those draining all-dayers made up of team tasks, logic tests, presentations and roleplays in a roomful of fifty other candidates.
Our first challenge was to stand up in front of everyone and introduce ourselves with our greatest ever achievement. All well and good, until we were informed that we weren’t allowed to relay anything boring like obtaining a degree, doing a bungee jump…or skydiving.
My heart lurched. I’d been mentally scripting out my proudest achievement to date: launching myself out of a plane at 14,000 feet, which for someone who’s petrified of heights, planes and falling, was no mean feat.
I’ll admit that I thought about concocting a story to surpass everyone else. Then it occurred to me: your greatest achievement is exactly that – yours.
So I stood up, and told it anyway to a reception of cool indifference. I spent the rest of the day with my heart not in the tasks, lamenting someone else’s judgement of me and my supposedly ‘boring’ achievement.
In retrospect, I wish I’d walked out; the job wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t for a company that employed people who thought skydiving was boring.
The thing about group interviews is that you have to sell who you are, so don’t let the fact that you’re in the same room as the people you’re competing against change the message you’re trying to get across. In a one-to-one interview situation, your competition is out of sight, out of mind and therefore less of a distraction. Bring this mentality to group interviews.
It might sound obvious, but in group interviews remember to speak. If you don’t say anything, your interviewer will have nothing to judge you on. There’s no point being anyone except yourself, because your interviewer is going to remember why they picked you out from a crowd and if they don’t see this trait later, they’ll know you were bluffing.
Stand out from the crowd, but don’t stand back from who you are.
Natalie Harris
Editor, Workthing+
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