handshake.gifI received a pleasant e-mail this morning.  It was an offer of employment from my new employer.  Of course, I gladly accepted with open arms.  I must report to work on April 7th, so I need to get cracking and pack things up here.  For some of you who don’t know, I have been living in Japan for the last 2 years and a bit.   My move is a far one, but I’m happy to do so.  

In this post I want to talk a little bit about the interview process I went through.  I want to focus on, in particular, the interview.  It had been quite sometime since I last went through this process and things have changed a bit.  I learned that interviewers now, like to conduct what is called a behavioural or situational interview. 

This interview style has candidates answer questions by citing examples of past experiences.  They do this as they believe past performance is a pretty good indicator of future performance.  You must give specific examples and they must not be vague, so you simply can’t use your imagination to answer these questions.  When answering these situational questions your thoughts must be organized well and you need to communicate them well too.  The best way to do this is with the STAR  approach.  STAR stands for: Situation or Task, Action and Result.  First, you layout the situation, next the action you took and finally the outcome or result.  Framing your responses in this manner will help you to clearly communicate what you want and it is how the interviewers want you to answer.   If you blab on for 10 minutes and you’re all over the map with a response, then it is a sure sign the interview is not going well.  Interviewers, who use this approach, are scoring you and you’re scored on how well you answer these questions.  I read somewhere that you need to keep each answer under 2 minutes or you’re blabbing on too much.  

Anyway, the best way to do well with this kind of interview is to prepare, prepare and prepare.  For a list of sample interview questions please go here.  You can narrow down the questions to prepare for by knowing what the job entails.  If you’re desired positions requires someone with good customer service skills, then be prepared to answer: “Tell me about a time you gave excellent customer service to a customer.” 

Actually, I’m terrible at interviewing as I tend to get really nervous, but this time was different.  I really think it was all the preparation and thanks to a good friend who gave me a mock interview with feedback.