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Mock interviews enable candidates to have a fair idea about the things they are going to experience at actual interviews, and prepare them to accurately deal with them. Generally these interviews are organized by career services, where a career coach trains the students and recent alumni for new opportunities by being perfect at the actual interview sessions. But, accuracy does not come automatically. It needs thorough practice and guidance from an expert trainer. Mock interviews do just the exact thing with the candidates bringing them to perfection and boosting their confidence.
Mock interviews help candidates reduce their anxiety about interviews, by training them for typical interview questions. The person conducting the mock interview session will be an experienced interviewer and a skilled trainer. He or she can guide candidates about whether their responses are suitable or not along with providing them the most appropriate set of responses which they can practice. In the process the candidates gain confidence and a better grasp about their strengths and short comings. No fresher is perfect enough to execute everything faultlessly. The purpose of these mock interviews is to point out one’s weaknesses, rectify them and enable the candidate to answer and conduct themselves as perfectly as possible.
Mock interviews also prepare job seekers for behavioral-based issues in an interview. In a real interview the behavioral standard is judged much by the interviewee’s body language. So, it is very important to know how one can appear best by employing those standard set of gestures. From the moment of entry in the interview room everything about the posture will be marked minutely. Therefore, one needs to know very accurately about what the things are that one should do and what not. Right from the way of stepping into the room, greetings to the panelists, way of looking at them, style of sitting and manner of responding to them – everything counts on. And mock interview sessions are the best ways to gather knowledge about all these little details which are too important to overlook.
Mock interviews provide candidates with an opportunity to test out their interview skills with someone who isn’t evaluating them for an actual job. A mock interview may be offered through career services for students or recent alumni, by a career coach or through a local workforce services office for candidates in the process of transitioning to a new opportunity.
1.They help you reduce stress and anxiety about interviewing.
If you’re not sure how to answer typical interview questions, mock interviews provide a great opportunity for you to “test drive” your answers. The person conducting the mock interview is most likely a skilled interviewer and can give you feedback on whether or not your response is suitable.
2.They help you boost your confidence.
Job coaches who conduct mock interviews are usually ready to point out your strengths in the interview process. By having confidence in your skills, you will perform better in an actual interview.
3.They provide you with constructive feedback in a low-stress environment.
No one is the perfect candidate, so mock interviews help you clarify responses to certain questions and help you work on areas where you may have weaknesses. In a real interview, there’s often not feedback about your interviewing abilities, so a mock interview is a perfect opportunity to find out why you may be having some difficulty in landing your dream job.
4.They can help you prepare for behavioral-based interview questions.
Many companies use “BI” questions. If you’re not familiar with this type of interviewing, it may be advantageous to give it a practice run in a mock interview.
The expression that practice makes perfect may very well be true with interviewing skills. Take advantage of mock interviewing opportunities even if you think you’re skills are at a very high level. There are things that we can all improve upon when it comes to making a great impression on a prospective employer.
The Importance of Mock Interviewing
Mock ups aid in familiarizing yourself with the situation. That is, what is the intensity of your interview going to be? There should be familiarity with the outside economy, in terms of understanding where you stand in the market which is based on your expertise.
Feedback implementation: Once you have performed the mock up, next step is to implement the feedback you have received. Make sure you learn to accept the feedback in a constructive manner so as to nail your interviews in a better way.
Here are a few things you need to remember while going through a mock up or trying to practice for a better output. Working with experienced personnel is like getting feedback from a sports coach to learn how to improve your game. By doing so you learn where your strengths lie and where you are weak. Time spent wisely, will track you on the correct path and assist you greatly in all situations. In today’s world being in a composite form helps you take on the competitive challenges in top shape.
Finally, the interview match is one game that you definitely need to win. So make sure you prepare well. All of us who have been through this article have learnt more things than we expected to. Friends who have more to share and express should feel free to do so. We wish all the best to one and all. Good luck with the interviews. Hope you come out with flying colours.
As recruiters we spend over a thousand hours each year just trying to locate candidates, but we spend very little, if any time to actually help them win the job. A mock interview is a great tool for increasing your number of successful placements, for boosting your company’s credibility with candidates, and for impressing your clients.
It is possible to conduct a solid mock interview in twenty minutes and by doing so you will significantly increase your candidate’s probability of winning the job. Compare that to your returns gained from twenty additional minutes of sourcing. Clearly, as the opportunity cost is low and the return on investment is high, mock interviewing is a no brainer. Additionally, candidates will appreciate your effort in helping them through an interview and allows you to build closer relationships with them which increase trust in the long run. Finally, even if the mock interview isn’t enough to push the candidate through, at-least the client will be impressed with the quality of candidates that you provide for them.
Here are some of the fundamentals that everyone needs to be reminded of when heading into an interview:
1.Do not introduce negatives.
We have all had candidates who got to the final stages of an interview process and said that one thing in the final moment that ruined all of that hard work. Never introduce negatives by talking about bad past experiences. Most candidates do not even realize that they are doing it, so when you are preparing them you have to point out their mistakes in the moment.
2.Qualify your statements.
General and overly broad statements are cliché and do not fool good interviewers. Your candidate is a subject matter expert in their field, and they need to be able to qualify their statements, talk about exceptions, and make distinctions. A general framing technique for this is: “well in situation X, I would use method A for this reason. While in situation Y, I would use method B, for that reason.” Doing this will show that an interviewee has fluid intelligence
3.Layout highly specific examples before the interview.
The candidate should know the job description and position before hand and be able to talk about specific examples from their background that are most closely associated with what they would be doing in this job. Every example that they give must describe a positive result of their work, i.e. increased profitability, higher productivity, lower costs, happy customers, etc
4.Don’t merely answer the question; answer the purpose behind why they are asking the question.
Consider this open ended interview question: “Tell us about yourself and walk us through your background?” The interviewer isn’t interested in hearing every single thing that someone has done at every job, he wants to know if the candidate has the relevant experiences for this job and if what matters to the interviewer, matters to the candidate.
5.Connections with that job.
Most interviews are not simply about whether or not someone can do a job, more importantly they are about what connects that person with the job across many dimensions. It’s about why the candidate is working in that industry, why she wants to work at that company, why she wants to work for that manager, and why she will be good in that role. The candidate has to build a narrative based on their past experiences and has to be very selective about which experiences they want to highlight and why. Since I began prepping candidates for their interviews my percentage of successful placements per interview has significantly increased. You spend hours finding candidates, why not spend twenty minutes greatly increasing their chances of winning the job you found them?
Since I began prepping candidates for their interviews my percentage of successful placements per interview has significantly increased. You spend hours finding candidates, why not spend twenty minutes greatly increasing their chances of winning the job you found them?
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