I’ve written quite a lot over the last few weeks about interviewing and recruitment. Howevever there are a couple of other recruitment techniques I want to mention in an effort to prepare you.
The first of these is assessment centres.
Recruitment takes a lot of time and effort. When you’re recruiting a pool of people, for example a number of junior engineers all at once or perhaps an entire team. It becomes more efficient to combine these into a single recruitment event rather than conducting individual interviews with each candidate.
Aside from the time saving opportunities this also gives the assessors a few opportunities such as seeing how you can undertake a group task and how you interact with people througout the day. Far from being daunting these can be a lot of fun and often give you much more chance to talk to existing members of staff and compare notes with other candidates.
Many people see the other candidates in their assessment centres as the competition, and this is true to a point. After all, there are often only a limited number of vacancies available. However, you should be careful of this mindset. One of the reasons for putting candidates together is to see how they work together and engage with potential peers. If you’re in super competitive mode you’re not going to demonstrate your team work skills to their full potential.
Assessment Centres can take many forms and have many different components. When I’ve run assessment centres we’ve done a presentation to the candidates to tell them about the company and the role, tours of the office, interviews, a written test, a group activity, and a meet and greet where we’ve invited existing employees down to meet the candidates. Try to relax and enjoy the experience as much as possible. It’s a long and exhausting day – but you’ll get a lot out of it.
Another type of interview which has exploded since Covid-19 started rampaging across the globe is the video call interview.
With isolation and social distancing the norm today it can be extremely difficult (and unwise) to meet candidates face to face. Because of this many companies are doing video calls to interview candidates.
The rules for a video call are not that different to a regular interview however I will run through a few of the basics for you.
- Always arrive on time, test technology beforehand if possible and make sure you have a contact number for the company should IT let you down.
- Consider what you’re wearing. A suit and tie is probably not essential for an interview at home but maybe a football shirt for your favourite team isn’t the best choice either?
- Consider your background. Imagine you are being interviewed by the BBC (other news agencies are available). Make sure your background is clean and tidy, there isn’t a lot of noice, and you’re well lit.
- Consider where your camera is. Many people have cameras on a second monitor but remember this is a conversation. You other person wants to feel like you’re looking at them, not staring off distracted in the distance (even if that’s where your screen is). Try to put the camera as close to the interviewer as possible and look into the camera on occasion. For more tips on Non-Verbal Communication remotely check out this post.
And that’s about it. Many of the basics for in person interviewing still apply, but don’t be surprised if you’re not invited to more and more remote interviews as time goes by.
Have you been to an assessment centre or had a video interview? What were your experiences? Drop me a message or comment below and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the series.
dotdotdev.com 