What are tips for doing a group interview?
Do you have any advice on how to ace a group interview? What is the employer looking for when deciding to interview candidates this way?
I can do well enough in the phone interview to get to the group interview but the group format makes me nervous. I can’t come up with any compelling and unique answers to the questions being asked. Is it best to be the most vocal, outgoing candidate? How can I be more memorable to the interviewers?
Claudia
First of all, the concerns you have for a group interview should be the same concerns you have for an individual interview.
It’s unlikely that you will field different types of questions as a group that you would as an individual. But the interviewer wants to know what you are like in a group. So they are looking for nonverbal cues. And comfort level.
Which actually, are pretty similar. That is, all you can do in an interview is be comfortable with yourself. Those are the people who get hired, over and over again. It’s why the same group of people are always getting job offers and everyone else doesn’t get offers: People who are comfortable with themselves get jobs.
The trick in any interview, whether it’s a group or one-on-one is to have done enough soul searching to be comfortable with who you are. Then you can feel relaxed as you answer the questions.
There are about 100 questions that anyone could ask you. And there are about ten answers to those 100 questions. (Except for case studies – but those are formulaic, too, just a different formula.) So you should practice interviewing either with friends (if you are generally confident) or with a coach (if you are less confident), and then go into the interview being yourself.
And one more thing: The most interesting people are not the people trying to be most interesting. The most interesting are the ones who are most true to themselves. We are not in an interview to entertain – we’re in an interview to connect.
Last piece of advice: Tell good stories in an interview. You only need one or two stories and you can fit them into an answer to almost any question. Here’s a post about that.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/02/04/be-memorable-by-telling-good-stories-about-yourself/
Good luck in the interview!
Penelope