Opinion Sur Joven

The recruitment process, along with all of its interviews, is in my opinion just another game of seduction. Notwithstanding your work experience, your education, the languages you speak and all the courses you’ve attended to, there’s a dance between the interviewer and the applicant that must be danced with surgical precision. Within a limited amount of time and without the possibility to press the PC’s “undo” button, applicants must display their best skills and the interviewer -who’s playing both the rival and the ally roles at the same time- will try to find the most suitable profile.

You’ve already made a modern and up-to-date résumé, you’ve entered your information in search engines and websites of different companies, you’ve used your contacts, you’ve passed some recruiting filters, a vacancy has appeared and now they’ve called you: Bam! This is your chance, but... What should you do? In average, a person spends nine hours a day, five days a week and approximately 250 days a year at work. It’s an environment where people learn and develop professionally, their social groups grow, they obtain salaries and benefits, and much more. Therefore, we are supposed to choose our job, instead of our job choosing us. How can we do that? Making the best out of the recruitment process is a good way, because –instead of an enemy battle field- it could be a path to the secret world of the company you aim at working for. In this article we’ll analyze each stage of the process so that you can make the most out of it.

Group Interviews - Assessment Centers

Group interviews, especially those called Assessment Centers [1], are really popular these days in young professionals searches. In short time interviewers can see numerous applicants competing with each other and each person interacting within the whole. There’s a lot at stake. It’s a group interview where a case is assigned to all participants. First they analyze it (individually or in groups) and, suddenly, all of them start to give their opinions. There are always moderators/coordinators and observers.

In your first time at an Assessment Center, you probably won’t know what to do, what to say or what to avoid saying. The most important thing you have to know is that the solution of the case isn’t relevant. Observers pay attention to each individual’s performance within the group, the role each member plays, the leader, the mediator, the organizer, etc. They analyze the way they approach situations as well as their strategies to solve them.

Each human resources team looks for a specific profile. Therefore, if they’re searching for a particular profile for a job position and you’re not selected, you have to change your traditional “who’s fault is it” imputation. The famous phrase “It’s not you, it’s me” is, in human resources, “It’s not you, it’s the job profile”.

See below general tips that work every time:

Make the most out of your time. The interview is your chance to show your best. Leave inhibition, shyness or low self-confidence aside. The most important thing about you is your unique ability to solve problems, work in teams, make contributions and reach goals.

Participate and let participate. Everyone knows you’re all there for the same reason: getting the job, and that only one will be chosen. Expressing your opinions is important, though listening to and analyzing other people’s opinions are just as important as well.

Prepare a personal introduction. You’ll have to introduce yourself at some point, so you should prepare some key words to describe yourself. Start with your name, your education background and your work experience. Then talk about what you’re looking for, your personal contributions and the difference you could make in the company. Always remember to make open comments so as to avoid closing opportunities, because there might be other vacant positions.

Be coherent in your comments and proposals. Don’t let yourself be carried away by most applicants’ thoughts. Having analytic thoughts of your own is highly appreciated. But be open to listening to and interpreting everyone’s ideas.

Give your ideas a direction. Most people make comments to be listened to but don’t aim at reaching the goals. If you can’t think of anything useful to say, you can suggest something like "What’s our goal?", "What are we aiming at?", "What are our priorities?".

Include the applicants who aren’t participating. There are always shy people. It’d be convenient to integrate them with phrases such as “What do you think?”, “Do you agree with this or that?”

Individual interviews

At this stage the aim is that your personal characteristics and your work skills be suitable for the job description. They say each job position is an unfinished puzzle and that each candidate brings the missing pieces to complete it. The more pieces candidates bring, the more suitable they are for the position. Whatever piece they’re missing, they’ll obtain it with training in the short run and experience in the long one.

As soon as you’re scheduled for an interview, you should start gathering information about the company on the Internet (its services, its mission, its values, etc.) or through contacts who have worked there. This information is very useful for you to obtain deeper knowledge about the organization and be able to find out what they’ll be expecting from you.

Getting ready

What should I wear? This is a key issue. You should dress appropriately for the job position and the company, but there are standard outfits that work every time. Men should wear a suit; plain colors are the best choice and wearing a tie is the key to look elegant.

Women have wider clothing options and nowadays they even wear jeans and T-shirts in interviews. However, I suggest going back to classics: formal pants, a short or T-shirt, shoes and a few colorful accessories.

The first thing interviewers assess in an interview is punctuality. You should arrive half an hour late to a friend’s party, fifteen minutes late to a class, in time for your psychologist’s appointment and fifteen minutes earlier to a job interview. I arrived half an hour earlier to the interview with my current employer because I remembered what a friend of mine told me once: the sooner he arrived, the better results he had. Use those extra minutes to relax and concentrate.

The interview

Interviews usually start with your work experience, going through your résumé and enriching them with your accounts. Thinking about the traditional questions in advance is a good way of training, such as the ones about your strengths and weaknesses. They’ll always ask you about the reasons for your actions: it’s more relevant to know why you did something instead of what you actually did. Also be prepared to describe the contribution or difference you could make.

By the end they’ll inevitably ask you “Do you have any questions?" If you’re one of those people who don’t always need to make questions, at least elaborate something simple to fill that moment: ask something about the company, how the process will continue, what the career plan is like, etc. Don’t ever ask about the wages in the first interview. If they don’t give you that information, then you’ll find it out at the following stage.

Interview with Human Resources

This area’s goal will always be finding suitable profiles for the vacant positions. In this meeting a further description of the job position is provided; they make sure the applicant is capable of becoming a part of the organizational culture and they make a further search for core competences (the ones common to all employees in the company) and specific competences for the position. [2]

Interview with Managers and Directors of the Company

You’re close, really close. Managers are different in that they have a global view of the area, and that includes you. They don’t focus on where, when and how you worked before, but on key aspects of your performance, such as how you’re going to comply with your tasks effectively and how you’re going to integrate within the area.

Pre-employment checks

Psychometric examination

You’ve made it to the psychometric examination stage, an informal interview aimed at getting to know your analytic skills, your personality and your potential. You ask yourself “What’s the right way of drawing the house, the man and the tree?", “How should I write the story about the man under the rain?", "How far should my imagination go in the Rorschach Test?", "Do I have to restrain myself from seeing sexual or death-related images in an inkblot?” I’m sure you have a psychologist friend who can give you some advice on this.

For Human Resources, this is just another report on your personality. On the one hand, you should be yourself because some things will be noticeable even if you try to conceal them. On the other hand, you should know they expect you to restrain yourself: no matter how comfortable you feel, this isn’t a chat with friends but another step in your recruitment process.

Health check

At this stage you’ll go through a complete health examination to ensure a safe work environment and prevent future risks. Moreover, being aware of your current health status to visualize its variations in time is very important.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you may still think job interviews are hostile and inquiring situations where any faux pas can ruin it all.

It’s true that there’s always a cruel or unfair aspect in every interview, because many times they never get to know your entire potential. But thinking that way will only make you worry and be nervous, even causing a self-boycott if you can’t control it.

Instead, if you decide to enjoy the process, everything changes. Be sure to see each interview as a game, learn from every question, be open to knowing new organizations, make new contacts and take something for yourself: an experience, an anecdote, further knowledge of what you like and dislike or a lesson learned to find that ideal job you’ll get at some point of your career which requires you to go through many good and bad times until you find it or at least until you realize what it’s like.