Posted: Wednesday 9 November 2011
Preparing for the perfect interview
Lara Gilmour and Lawrie Carlaw of S6 continue their Talking Points coverage:
A familiar face was welcomed on Friday the 14th October at Talking Points as Mr David Setchell returned to deliver a presentation on interview skills. Just like he outlined in his previous visit to our year, he utilised his favourite method when giving a PowerPoint presentation: “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them”, an effective technique indeed.
On Friday he was continuing his instruction of presentation, however the main focus this time was on how to conduct yourself before, and during an interview. His introduction was interrupted by a scripted example (acted by Laurie Anderson) of how you should not behave upon arriving (e.g. barging in late and not letting the interviewer speak). This served its purpose well as it was a good way of engaging the audience.
Mr Setchell very helpfully outlined basic points which, if you adhere to his advice, can be instrumental to getting you the job/place in university which the interview is based upon. During his speech he involved the audience by provoking questions and taking “show-of-hands” surveys which ended up revealing the main things an interviewer is looking for. About three quarters of the way through his presentation there was another scripted event (this time acted by Scott Meenan) which showed the importance of phone manners and organisation. Scott received a call telling him that the firm would be happy to see him for a meeting about the job, however Scott had completely forgotten the name of the firm or what it did, and admitted to applying for many jobs by simply photocopying his CV and posting them without research into the job. This highlighted that if you’re applying for a job you should know about the firm, and read up on its history and any major events that have been related to it in recent times.
At the end of the hour all of 6th year were much better informed about how to handle interviews, and hopefully we can all use these skills in October 28th’s “Interview Skills Workshop” and in the future, therefore we are very grateful to Mr Setchell for his presentation and we hope that this is not the last we will see of him.