Yes we are desperate to have you....But

Yes, there is a talent shortage and yes, we are desperate to have you but, that doesn’t mean you can sit back and expect the offers to roll in. Even if you are what we call in recruitment, an “Underwater Basket Weaver”, you still need to impress at interview.

Nerves are always a factor in interviews and despite how many interviews you do, they can always feel a bit strange.  This being said, the behavioural questions that you are asked at interview are generally standard and specific to the role you are going for, and will assess the behaviours that will be expected of you.

As a general rule, interviews contain 4 major sections.  The first section will generally be about you, i.e. your experience and qualifications/licences.  It is important to remember that the interviewers will only want a brief synopsis on your background, so any longer than 2 minutes may cause the interviewer to lose interest.  Be succinct, but don’t skip over important points.  If you are in the resources industry, then expect the second section to typically be on safety.  This will consist of behavioural based questions that will assess what you have done to improve safety as well as your behaviours around safety. Don’t be afraid to be honest in this area, it is easy to spot the fabricated answers!  

The third section is generally on your technical skills.  These will be questions that are designed to test your technical understanding and experience.  Take your time to think about your responses here as it is a critical section and you need to be exact. The technical section will be one of the only sections of the interview where the “right” answer needs to be given. Typically, most other sections will demand a “right” behaviour to be demonstrated.

The fourth section will be to test your values and behaviours.  This may be in the form of questions about what you have done in certain situations (both in practice and theory), and feel free to give examples such as “I have never been in that situation, but if I was, I would...”. Simply saying “I haven’t been in that situation” is hard to measure.  The biggest piece of advice in this area is to try and find the company’s core values or code of conduct, which will generally be found on their website.  The questions asked of you in this section will be based on these.

If you approach and prepare for every interview on the basis that the interviewers will ask you to provide examples of how you have responded or acted in certain situations, then you will typically get more offers.  Easy.

Recruiters spend their day interviewing, so it is important that you make an impression for all the right reasons, not because you talked and talked without actually answering the question....