Final interviews

So – you’re at the final stage.

Looking back, you’ve created and submitted an excellent CV, answered some application questions about the organisation and your role, completed a situational judgement test, answered five video interview questions, attended an assessment centre, and FINALLY you’ve made it to the last part, the final interview. Naturally, you’re really nervous but I’m here to help you ease those nerves by giving you some hints and tips as to how to nail your final interview!

What are recruiters looking for?

In a final interview, employers are doing the final checks to make sure you are the best candidate for the role. This will often be done through the use of competencies or strengths, both of which are useful to understand before you go into any kind of recruitment process.

Not only are they considering your suitability through competencies/strengths, your attitude can play a large part in how a recruiter might view you, as well as how you respond to their questioning. So make sure that you come into the interview with a positive mindset, and act accordingly!

What is a competency?

A competency is a key skill that employers believe will be essential in the role you’re applying for, and therefore want to find out whether you possess that skill. They can do this through a range of methods, including the assessment centre, but one of the most common is through interview questions, which I’ll talk about in a bit.

There’s a massive variety of competencies that employers might be looking for, including: communication, self-awareness, resilience, curiosity, adaptability, collaboration, time management, problem solving. It’s usual for you to evidence these with examples of when you’ve demonstrated the competency, using something like the STAR or CARL method (which I’ll introduce you to in a couple of lessons’ time) to do so. A competency-based interview can be useful for the organisation to understand your strengths and areas for development by understanding your skillset – you can leverage this and showcase your best examples of using these skills!

Some competency-based questions could be:

• Give an example of when you have successfully handled conflicting deadlines
• How do you go about influencing others with differing opinions?
• Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership skills to lead a successful team

What is a strength?

Competencies are becoming less common within the interview process for larger organisations – employers such as the civil service have moved away from competency-based interviews, and have moved instead towards ‘strengths-based’ interviewing. This means they are looking at your potential, as opposed to your past experiences as indicators of your suitability in role, and will focus on the things that you are ‘good at’ and enjoy doing (if you want to find out about how to determine your strengths and super strengths, you can visit another of our MOOCs, Finding Your Why). The benefit of employers using this method for interviewing is that they can shape your role for you to be able to utilise your strengths even more whilst you’re in the job.

Some strengths-based questions could be:

• What are the two key personal qualities you would bring to this organisation?
• Which parts of the role are you most looking forward to? And which will you find the most challenging?
• When have you felt really engaged in a task that the time seemed to disappear? Why were you so engaged in it?

Interview questions

There’s a few other ways that recruiters might ask you a question. Some other common types of questions you can get asked include:

• Situational questions: You will need to put yourself in the shoes of someone in a situation, thinking about how you would respond to/in a hypothetical scenario
• Technical questions: Here you can demonstrate your understanding of the role, and how your technical skills and knowledge meet the role requirements
• Organisational questions: These will test your understanding of the organisation, so it’s good practice to always research the place you’re applying to.

Most questions you get asked will require you to provide an example. Even a question as simple as “What are two strengths of yours that you will bring to the organisation?” can be answered in two ways – you either list two strengths and be done, or you list two strengths and give examples of either when you’ve demonstrated them, or how they will contribute to the organisation.

It’s always good to have a bank of examples, competencies and skills of yours that you’re aware of and can provide to a recruiter within an interview.

Activity

Choose a competency or a strength and write a STAR response to it.

Share your thoughts with your fellow learners.