All credits to Koshy et al. (2017)
Before the Interview: Know yourself. To be an effective team member, Koshy et al (2017) states that one must know themselves well – their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, values, motivations, experiences, career aims and skills.
- What are your weaknesses, strengths?
- How would you describe yourself?
- How would your colleagues, friends describe you?
- What was your best research project?
- Where have you shown great leadership and management skills in your career?
- Where have you shown great teaching skills?
STAR/STARR/SAR is helpful in framing your answer:
- Situation: describe the situation that you were in to provide some context for the interviewer.
- Task: what were the goals that you and your team were trying to achieve?
- Action: what were your individual actions?
- Result: describe the outcome and the implications of your work.
- Reflection: what was done well and what could have been improved?
Koshy et al. advise that the 'action' and 'reflection' components of your answer should reserve the most time and emphasis. Try to use the word 'I' rather than 'we' when answering these questions.
Keep a good portfolio – prepare a list of your achievements; have this laid out in front of you so you can quickly and easily refer to it and its most salient points.
Know the job – it makes sense to know the drawcards of the organisations, health services. and roles one is applying for. This is something I've been attempting to do in my spare time (lol what spare time). By googling the values of each of the health services and making a bit of a spreadsheet with all their vision statements etc highlighted, I feel somewhat more attuned with each institution. Except that globus pharyngeus still hasn't gone away.
Anticipate – scourge the internet, your friends, for interview questions. Prepare yourself for what is likely to be asked.
Articulate fluently – this is where the performance art comes in. Preparation is key (shudders). Koshy et al. advise that it is better to be more overtly rehearsed because it shows the interviewer that you can get straight to the point of your achievements, and dish it to them on a silver platter. Rehearse your answers, write them out, speak them out loud to ensure you to get used to talking about yourself in positive terms. I will certainly need to work on my 'presentation skills' within the next few days, weeks.
D-Day - the Interview:
Koshy et al gives some lovely tips for how to remain composed (and not manic) on the day of the interview. They suggest knowing your CV well, making efforts to smile, appear relaxed with a good amount of eye contact (eek! this might be difficult with a webcam when I, for one, am constantly distracted by my 'self-view' lol), and trying to come across as the type of person that the interviewer would like to work with. Apparently this is someone who is bright and in control, with a relaxed, conscientious and warm-hearted manner.
After the Interview:
The authors of the article emphasise that it is important to review and reflect on the interview as a learning opportunity. Try to recall which questions were answered not so well, and how you conducted yourself during the interview. They also suggest that getting feedback from the interview panel might be useful; phrasing things in a polite- (but also low-key plaintive) way of: 'I wondered if you could point out any areas where I could do better at interviewing or any areas in my career where I should pay more attention?'. This seems like a fairly reasonable way to receive some somewhat demoralising but useful insight into where one's performance might be refined.
I hope these tips that I've gathered here from Koshy et al. will stick. Brb, because I definitely need to start practising and doing some dress rehearsals ASAP.
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