Rethinking Job Interviews – to improve personal performance and results

After more than a decade of providing exclusive job interview prep and performance insights to the clients of a leading personnel consultancy, I am taking my product and know-how to the general public. The idea has been tucked away in my brain for several years. Now the time has come for the go-live.

 

The basics up front:

a highly interactive interviewing webinar spanning two days (4 hours each) with a maximum of 4 participants.

You might be asking yourself why it’s taken so long to make this valuable content available to a larger audience and target group? Certainly a valid question. My clear answer is rooted in my personal talent set. But that’s a different point entirely and will be saved for another blog. The key words, however, are Clifton Strengths and Executer. Stay tuned.

In these years of working with several hundred participants – most of them belonging to senior management and representing all types of industries and companies – I have yet to find one of these highly experienced professionals who did not benefit from the input and interaction in the interactive webinar. Even senior HR leaders who work with such topics on a regular basis leave the session with actionable insights.

A question several people have asked is:

 

“Does the interview workshop really need to be so long?”

And I get the point. Who likes the thought of taking part in a 4-hour workshop online? Exactly this doubt motivates me to win the sceptic over. And by the end of the session the same people make comments like “We should continue” or “Yes, that much time is really needed. Don’t cut any of this content.”

 

So, what’s the focus of the webinar?

On Day 1, I share my Top 10 recommendations for interviewing and take time for discussion. Some of the new ideas are challenging and provocative. From there we move into a 3-part presentation focusing on Mindset, Preparation, and Delivery. Each segment includes tangible tools and methods to be assimilated and applied. Before entering the final portion of Day 1, we look at a pool of interview questions. Here we place special emphasis on the category “Questions I find challenging and prefer not being asked”. At the end of the Day 1, I present strategic concepts for responding to two particularly tough questions in interviews.

Day 2, which also typically lasts about four hours, is all about applying the input from the first session. The goal is to learn through experience. In an atmosphere marked by trust and respect, each participant – maximum of four per group – has the opportunity to pose specific questions based on Day 1. In addition, dedicated interviews are “staged”, each one lasting 15-20 minutes. Differentiated feedback from everyone in the digital room follows each 1-on-1 interview sequence.

 

By being active observers, feedback givers, and interviewees, each participant benefits immensely.

All in all, approximately eight hours of focused attention are required to walk through these two 4-hour sessions. Each participant leaves with a greater sense of clarity and a firm grasp on new approaches to dealing with job interviews and self-presentation. Some participants choose to continue with 1:1 coaching to dig deeper into their unique framework and challenges. This highly personal route forward enables them to face and deal with underlying issues that threaten to impede their progress on the job market.