Tag: failing job interviews

A recent poll of recruiters found that the average number of job interviews required to secure a job offer is three.

The magic number, three, does have a practical reality to it. Let’s say that a job applicant has decided to take a career sidestep or a promotion. This candidate has a vast array of transferable skills, lots of relevant qualifications, and some experience, but not a like-for-like experience as the applicant is applying for a new role, rather then the same position within a new organisation.

After an average of 4-5 hrs of interview prep, the nervous career professional attends their first interview that results in a ‘thank you, but no thank you’. A failed first interview for a new role is common, graduates also fall into this same pitfall, as do applicants searching for a big job promotion.

The reason behind the first failed interview is a lack of job understanding. When an experienced employee applies for a similar role in a new business, even if the interview is their first interview, the unexpected questions aren’t that unexpected.

The employer, following a structured job interview process, ask questions and score answers against a list of job criteria that are needed to complete business-as-usual tasks. The experienced applicant, even if they haven’t undertaken a lengthy period of interview preparation, can easily recognise the context of the interview question and present evidence that states they have the required experience.

The first rule of a successful job interview is to identify the job criteria. Appropriate examples, appropriate answers, simply score well.

A career professional wanting to climb the career ladder is applying for a new position. The first interview comes with a surprise, a list of unpredicted job interview questions and/or tests, presentations, and tasks.

Some questions asked may sound simple, and a good answer can be created in the moment by the interviewee, but again, without industry experience and a lack of context a low score is given for an interview question the applicant thought they answered well.

A confident applicant states they have the required skills, and sells themselves, but when an expert interviewer requests specifics to measure competence against the job criteria, the lack of experience shines through creating a deceitful interview identity.

Post job interview reflection is the key to success

Experience creates competence. The more job interviews a career professional attends the more skilled they become at answering tricky interview questions.

Creating a list of the interview questions asked during the first interview allows the skilled applicant to use industry research to help craft a higher-scoring interview answer, using examples that highlight how they meet the job criteria.

This is true when job interview technology is introduced. 98% of the top fortune 500 companies use recruitment automated software. Many shifting interview rounds are now conducted by AVIs – Asynchronous Video Interviews. The computer algorithms search for key terms that are then cross-referenced against the job criteria.

What is important, then, is to possess the ability to offer examples and interview answers that state enough of the essential skills, qualities, and experiences, to ensure a high-scoring answer.

Generally speaking, high-scoring answers come in one of three ways:

1. Being highly confident as this increases the number of words per answer
2. Having excessive experience that results in the nature spillage of job criteria
3. Attending a high number of job interviews relevant to the role to help craft answers that score well

Each job interview process, on average, is three rounds of interviews. Three recruitment rounds x three job interviews is a total of nine interviews. Each interview stage tends to last for sixty minutes, equalling a total of nine hours of interviewing.

Possessing at least nine hours of real interviews, plus a high number of interview preparation hours helps a career professional to become skilled at job interviewing.

Two is better than one

One interview alone isn’t enough.

The reflection after one single job interview isn’t enough for a candidate to become a first-choice applicant.

A list of remembered interview questions can be drawn up and new answers written in preparation for a second interview, which in itself increases the confidence of the interviewee. Once at the second interview, with a second employer, the now confident applicant can have the rug pulled from beneath their feet when 80% of the questions asked aren’t on their recently drawn-up Q&A list created after the first interview.

Each employer, even when recruiting for the same position, in the same sector, may have their own unique job criteria and therefore their own list of unique interview questions.

Over time, the new entry into a sector will find commonly asked job interview questions, which may be phrased differently, but underneath are designed to uncover the same skills, qualities, and experiences.

This is why more is better for applicants who lack experience (graduates, promotions, and entry into a new sector) The more interviews that a job seeker attends helps to improve the interview answers (and the prediction of the interview questions) for the next job interview.

Familiarity breeds confidence

It is the familiarity of the recruitment process that breeds confidence. Experienced candidates applying for the same position in a new business are more inclined to relax during the interview when they become aware that the tricky interview questions are really questions about their business-as-usual tasks.

From a job interview perspective, the lack of sector experience can, sometimes, be overturned, by being an experienced interviewee.

This is why at least three job interviews are needed to gain a job offer:

Job interview 1 – create a baseline of interview questions vs good/poor interview answers

Job interview 2 – recognise common interview questions/sector-related themes/job criteria to help shape interview answers

Job interview 3 – deliver high-scoring interview answers that increase the chance of an interview offer.

What is your interview identity?

Job offers are given to the candidate that the interview panel believes will be the best performing employee.

The content of the interview answers; the sector-related jargon used, relatable examples, industry knowhow, stating the job criteria including the required skills, qualities, and experiences vs the confident communication of competencies (verbal and non-verbal) create the candidate’s interview identity.

After each job interview the interviewee, to develop their interview skills must reflect on how they were perceived by the hiring manager – their interview identity. And make changes to improve how they are viewed in terms of predictable performance once employed.

Get Ready to Pass Your Next Job Interview

Chris Delaney

The structured job interview is a standardised way of interviewing a number of candite’s to reduce unconscious bias and to create a fair hiring process.

This article will help job applicants to gain higher interview scores by not falling into the subconscious trap of the structured job interview.

Structured job interview and time problems

Even though research shows how a structured job interview is currently the best way to predict job performance, the asking of pre-written questions ‘boxes’ in an applicant’s answer.

Behavioral and situational interview questions are designed to be specific to allow the interviewee to give a relevant example/answer. The specific direction given to the applicant traps the candidate into a box, where they can’t discuss other skills and experiences, they feel would add value to the role.  

It is common for a career professional, post a job interview, to reflect on their answer and to feel annoyed because they didn’t mention a key skill or experience, they knew would have highlighted their unique selling point.

In an informal job interview, the hiring manager will allow the applicant to talk about what they feel is important. The openness of the informal interview can be detrimental to the outcome of the interview as the interviewee, without conscious awareness, can discuss irrelevant information.

The duration of the interview creates a second barrier. The hiring manager, asking on average 8 job interview questions over a 45-minute period, feels pressured to ask a question, record the candidates’ answers, before asking the next question on the pre-written list. This is true even when the hiring manager requires additional information – the employer knows the applicant hasn’t disclosed all of their skills, but on the other hand, the next interview should start in 10 minutes’ time.

The pressure comes from the hiring manager knowing that each additional question and answer can possibly overshoot the allocated time slot for each interview having a knock-on delay. This ‘time’ problem comes from many employers having a recruitment day of back-to-back interviews. A solution to this problem would be a one-interview per day recruitment process.

Trained job interviewers versus untrained hiring managers

How can a job applicant overcome the rigorous job interview questions and time pressure created within a structured job interview?

First, it is important to understand that not all job interviewers are the same. A key difference is between being interviewed by a trained or untrained interviewer. Some organisations insist on a candidate being interviewed by a trained interviewer, often an HR staff member or specialist recruiter.

A trained interviewer will have spent time selecting which essential job criteria the interview questions should relate to, and how the interview question should be worded (situational behavioral or strength-based interview question).

Trained interviewers are often more confident in the interview environment than a non-trained hiring manager. Confidence increases the number of follow-up questions asked during the recruitment process.

A non-trained interviewer, often the future employee’s line manager, is likely to use commonly asked job interview questions, rather than taking the time to ask competency-based questions.

Commonly asked questions are more generic:

• “What are your strengths?”
• “What can you bring to the team?”
• “Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?”

Competency-based questions are more specific, to drill down to a specific skill or experience:

• “How would you deal with a (problem/situation)?”
• “Give an example of when you (completed job duty)”
• “What is your understanding of (industry knowledge)?”

Follow-up questions can be asked by both trained and none-trained recruiters, but it is more likely that a confident and experienced trained hiring manager will ask for more detailed information, allowing the interviewee to state job-relevant information, and therefore score higher on the interview scorecard.

• “What specifically did you do?”
• “Why did you choose that option over another?”
• “What was the long-term outcome?”

It is the same experienced hiring manager who will ask follow-up questions when a job applicant unwittingly discusses a skill within the wrong context.

• “Do you have an example within a (job-related context) environment?”
• “Can you tell me about a team task when you took the lead rather than being part of the team?”
• “Have you worked on larger scale projects?”

Duration of an interview

High-skilled positions are often gained through being successful in a multi-stage job interview process. The theory is that being asked similar questions, relating to the job criteria, over 3-4 job interviews, ensures that the employer makes a hire with a realistic vision of the new employee’s potential job performance.

In a single interview, the job applicant might be viewed as skilled, but in reality, a single interview isn’t enough to confirm the candidate’s level of competencies for medium to high-skilled positions.

For most low-skilled job roles, employers will only have a single interview as ‘potential’ rather than experience, is a key decision in the hiring process.

The duration of the job interview doesn’t create pressure on the interviewee. The job applicant can give a long or short, detailed or vague, interview answer. In fact, most interviewees are unaware of the time during the job interview itself.

Research shows how the higher number of words per answer often relates to the number of job offers. This is because, on average, the more detailed the answer, the more likely it is that the answer references the criteria on the interview scorecard.

From the career professionals’ perspective, the delivery of a job-relevant detailed interview answer is a more important focus than the duration of their interview answer.

Overcoming the generic question problem

The real problem for a job applicant is knowing what detail to reference to the job interview answer, especially when asked a vague question.

First-choice applicants – career professionals who do exceptionally well in a job interview, have the confidence to ask for additional details before answering the question.

As an example, when asked: “Tell me about a time you worked successfully within a team?” The self-assured job candidate will clarify what experience the employer is attempting to uncover: “Would you like an example of when a led a team or when I was a team member?”

Asking for specific information ensures that the right example is used for each individual job interview question.

Importantly, each answer needs to reference the job criteria for each specific question. Employers use an interview scorecard that has the interview question and a list of criteria that are required to gain a high score. If the job criteria aren’t referenced during the interview answer, the hiring manager will have no choice but to allocate a lower score.

Interview preparation, prior to the job interview, must consist of identifying the job criteria, predicting job interview questions, and crafting high-scoring interview answers.

In the interview itself, when asked a competency-based interview question, it is important to quickly reflect on what criteria the hiring manager is wanting to hear. This self-reflection can help to identify which one of the prepared interview answers to use.

Even when a prepared interview answer has been chosen, the job applicant can cover all bets by giving a specifically detailed answer.

The delivery of a detailed answer is important. If an employer refuses to ask follow-up questions, to gain a better understanding of the candidate’s future job performance, the applicant is scored on the initiative, often limited interview answers.

It is true that a weak interviewer often makes the wrong hiring decision. Many organisations with a high turnover of staff don’t interview correctly.  But the same poor interview technique can stop skilled employees gaining job offers.

Specific job interview answers

Essentially, a detailed job interview answer is an example (behavioral job interview answer) or future scenario (situational job interview answer) that is embedded with the answers to the hiring manager’s potential follow-up questions:

• “What specifically did you do?”
• “Why did you choose that option over another?”
• “What was the long-term outcome?”

The specific and detailed answer does have a longer duration, requiring the interviewee to mindful of speech speed, pauses, tonality, and to use emotional intelligence to ensure the interview panel is still engaged and listening.

For a behavioral interview question, the most famous structure to answer the question is STAR:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

When the additional detail has been embedded for the structure of the interview answer is increased:

• Situation
• Long-term outcome if the situation wasn’t resolved
• Options to overcome barriers, including pro’s and con’s of options
• Reason for choosing options
• Task
• Role within the task
• Risk assessments
• Stakeholder engagement
• Action – team actions vs own actions
• Additional/unforeseen problems and how these were overcome
• Highlighting personal motivation
• Result – short vs long term

As each interview question varies, the detailed structure can be amended as required. What is important to remember is that not all hiring managers will ask for a specific criterion when the job interview question is stated.

Nervous or less experienced recruiters ask fewer follow-up questions. A structured job interview cross-references answer against the interview scorecard (job criteria).

Many failed job interviews come down to detailed answers being given that don’t reference enough job-related competency.