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HEATHER: Hello and thank you for joining Episode 25 of Talent Connection, a podcast about connecting job seekers and employers, produced by Cachinko. My name is Heather Huhman, and I am the founder & president of Come Recommended, as well as the Career & Recruiting Advisor for Cachinko. I’m joined by my co-host, Tony Morrison.
TONY: Thank you, Heather. Good morning. My name is Tony Morrison and I am the vice president of Cachinko. We help job seekers find jobs matched to their specific skills and preferences. Cachinko operates a job matching and career networking application on Facebook. We developed this application to help job seekers to build a stronger career network with friends in similar industries and professions and connect with companies that interest them.
HEATHER: Today’s episode is “How to Prepare for Different Types of Job Interviews.” Definitely a great topic. So, let’s get started. What are some different types of job interviews?
TONY: There are many different types of job interviews. I’ll run through a quick list.
Informational interview – intended to collect information about a job, company, industry, or profession.
First interview – used for fact verification and initial personality screening. It is also called a screening interview. The first interview often is conducted over the phone. More and more companies are experimenting with video interviewing as well.
Second interview – the company likes you well enough to bring you back, and now they will test you for preparedness, socialization, and cultural fit by having you interact with many people from various departments.
In general, there are probably two basic structures for an interview:
Structured interview – is a standardized approach to interviewing and comparing candidates. All candidates meet the same people and are asked the same question. The company representatives compare and contrast the responses to make the candidate selection.
Unstructured interview – is a more conversational style of interviewing. The interviewers have an objective to discuss skills, traits, and identify examples of you demonstrating the skills needed and the character traits desired. However, each interviewer decides upon the questions and wording.
Other types of interviews include:
Behavioral interview – intended to discover how a candidate has acted or might act in specific work-related situations.
Lunch interview – breakfast, lunch, and dinner interviews are designed to evaluate the social behavior of a candidate. This may also be a public interview.
Public interview – usually in a coffee shop or restaurant, it is again designed to see how you react under social pressure.
Group interview – an interesting style in which you are interviewed amongst a group of other applicants.
Panel interview –a board style of interview, in which the candidate is interviewed by a panel of interviewers all at once.
HEATHER: What are the pros and cons of each type?
TONY: Well…let me see if I can recall them all. Maybe you can help me to remember an interview style if I forget one that I’ve mentioned.
For the informational interview, I cannot really think of a con. You are in control of the informational interview. If you are serious about the job, and you have sufficiently researched the job requirements, the company, and you believe that you are a good fit, then you use this technique to learn more about your target job from someone with experience inside the company.
The positive point of the first interview is that someone thought you looked good on paper and wants to learn more about you. The con is that you must prepare for anything. You most likely will not know the interviewer, their style, or the questions they might ask. You just have to prepare for every possible scenario.
The pros of the second interview are that you now know the company likes you well enough to bring you back and have you meet with more people. Moreover, you now know a little more about the company culture, the interview questions and general style, as well as the personality types of some of the individuals with whom you will meet. The cons are that they are not going to ask you the same questions over again, and so you will have to dig a little deeper to prepare for an interrogative style of interview. The second interview will also cover several hours or a full day, and you will meet several people. They will compare your responses for consistency and your level of preparedness, social skills, and personality-fit with many different people.
The pro side of a behavioral interview is that you get to tell a story about your experience. The interview feels more like a casual conversation. Everyone has a story, and if you have practice telling a few short stories of your successes and failures, accomplishments and conflicts, then you have a really good shot at catching the attention of your interviewers. On the con side, if the interviewer has not practiced this technique, or asks questions poorly, or asks questions in a leading manner, then this interview style can be stressful. You must listen carefully to the questions, stay focused on your answer, and if you are asked a question that perhaps throws you off guard, or makes you a little nervous, you must be careful not to ramble on.
Meal and public interviews are designed to evaluate you outside of your comfort zone. The expectation is that you will loosen up over a meal. The pros of this technique, especially if you are interviewing for a position that requires you to be social and interact with internal and external clients frequently, is that then you can relax and let your social skills shine. However, if the position does not require social skills to entertain external clients, and you are an introverted person, it may feel a little stressful to interview in such a public setting.
Group interviews are great for positions that require teamwork, and for project team-oriented individuals they can really shine. Candidates generally feel less stressed since they focus on each other more than the interviewer does. If the technique is used well, the interviewer or their assistant is evaluating the interaction of each candidate with their peers as well as with the interviewer. Persons in a profession that generally work alone may not perform well in this interview format.
Structured interviews generally ask questions to assess your skills, experience, ability to apply your knowledge to the company’s specific needs, and assess your communication style. The pros are that the questions are standardized, and they require precise and concise answers. Since the interview is a standardized template for all candidates, interviewers must assess your responses against competing candidates. Interviewers may get bored asking the same questions over and over again, and may not really listen to you at all. Candidates may memorize the answers to these types of questions and the interview starts to feel like an oral exam.
The pros of an unstructured interview are that it’s more casual, conversational style of questioning and answering. The candidate’s response can determine the flow of the conversation. The interviewer follows-up the candidate’s response with more questions. Candidates therefore may appear to have more control over the interview process. But, they must be careful to participate fully, answer questions precisely, and not ramble or dominate the interview.
HEATHER: Why would an employer or hiring manager use a certain type of interviewing style?
TONY: I discussed a couple of specific reasons in my answers that I think are worth reinforcing. For instance, group interviews are a great technique for positions requiring work in project teams. Interviewing over a meal is a great way to evaluate a candidate’s social etiquette and assess how they might react in social situations with clients or colleagues.
The cost of making a bad hire can be very high. The cost is estimated to be between 1.65 and 2.5 times the first year salary for that position, and that’s if the company determines the person was the wrong fit and they let them go in the first year. Companies absolutely must evaluate candidates on paper, in person, online, etc. To be effective, the interview techniques and styles that company use should be aligned with the position requirements and the cultural fit requirements of the company.
HEATHER: How can job seekers prepare for any type of interview?
TONY: First, understand the job from the position description and be confident in your ability to perform it well. Second, research the company in business and trade journals, technical forums, their website, and websites like Glassdoor. Third, know who your friends are who can help. Find friends in your immediate network, or friends of friends who have connections inside the companies that interest you. Lastly, prepare, prepare, prepare.
Role-play for the different types of interviews. Anticipate the questions that an interviewer might ask you about yourself, your profession, current technology, trends, etc. Have a friend help you by playing the interviewer.
Practice answering your questions in the mirror, in front of a video camera, or recording on the webcam of your personal computer.
Know your strengths and your weaknesses in your profession, but also know your interview strengths and your problem areas so that you can practice improvements, such as speaking more slowly or clearly, body language, and facial expressions.
Anticipate the different styles of interviews, as well as the personality types of the different interviewers.
And, prepare your list of questions, and be prepared to ask your questions when the time is appropriate.
HEATHER: What should job candidates do if a hiring manager throws an unusual question at them during an interview?
TONY: We can go online right now and find huge list of the usual job interview questions that candidates have encountered, and we could use to prepare for our next interviews. Employers know this but want to catch the job seeker off guard. Employers are using unusual questions to assess how well the candidate responds to an unexpected question or situation — one for which they could not have possibly rehearsed an answer. Not all of these unusual interview questions have a right or wrong answer. The employer wants the job seeker to think quickly, stay composed, demonstrate creativity, and, depending on the nature of the question, be able to inject humor.
When I hear about the unusual questions employers have asked candidates, I laugh and think about Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The Bridge of Death. Employers might ask you questions that are not related to the job at all, just to see how you respond to a change of direction in the interview. They may ask about your favorite movie, last book you read, hobbies, last travel destination, etc. They may ask you a philosophical question such as, “If you were stranded on a desert island, what two things would you bring and why?” They may throw you completely off the wall questions like, “Why are manhole covers round?”
You cannot prepare for these types of questions. So don’t stress about them. And, don’t nervously answer the question with the first expletive that comes to mind either! When you are asked an off-the-wall question, remember that there really is no right or wrong answer. What is most important is that you stay composed, take a moment to reflect on the question, and give a respectful and thoughtful response to the question.
Put all of your hard work preparing for the interview to good use. For example, you should have identified critical areas for success in the company, in that role, and be able to describe your strengths that meet those critical requirements. In the context of a question like, “If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?” You can then pick something, strong and sturdy like an oak and describe your personality traits that make you strong, dependable, loyal, etc. Alternatively, if you are prepared for these types of off-the-wall questions, maybe pick another tree that is historically significant and can help you to tell a good story like the yew tree that is one of the strongest and most resilient woods, and was used for centuries to make bows for England’s armies.
HEATHER: Thanks so much, Tony. That’s all the time we have for today. You’ve been listening to Talent Connection, a podcast about connecting job seekers and employers, produced by Cachinko. For details about the next episode, please visit blog.cachinko.com.
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