Hello, Hello, Hello, Welcome back to another episode of the Straight Shooter Recruiter podcast. I am your host, Emilie Durham. I have been a careers coach for many a year. I've worked in recruiting for like seven almost eight years. I'm a writer for Canadian business. You know the drill, like, if you're here, you know the shit is about to be fire. And today I want to give you a nobs straight to the point, how to prep for an interview when you only have a couple of hours or
a very limited amount of time. I am not going to answer any questions in this episode because this is designed to be a freaking crash course. Like, you just got a call, you have an interview tomorrow, you don't know where to start. You don't have time for me to answer your questions of the week. Okay, you want the answers and you want to keep it moving. So that's the intention of this episode. It is designed to make your life a lot easier. If you want me to answer your question
in next week's episode, click the link in the description. If you want to rock the merch, because baby, this merch goes crazy. It is so cute. I'm literally wearing the off the Clock T shirt right now, and I always get compliments on it because the quality is fantastic. The black stitching is so chic, and it's just fun to wear, especially on a casual Friday, like when I'm recording this. But that's neither here nor there. I feel like I'm operating in freaking turbo speed. Let's get your ass
prep for that interview. Let's get into it all right, Besty. You've just got the call. You have an interview today or tomorrow. This is specifically what I want you to do. Now. How you prepare for an interview does vary based on what round it is, so let me give you a quick overview of what the expectations are for each round of different interviews.
All of these tips are industry agnostic, which means they're going to apply no matter what industry you work in, and it doesn't matter if this is your first internship or if you are much more senior in your career. These tips
are going to transfer to every single thing that you do. When it comes to the first round interview, the recruiter or the hiring manager is typically looking to understand if you are a general fit for the company, and if you have the general skills required for the role, it's probably not the interview where they're going super in depth on your technical skills and experience. And we'll break that down more in just a second for your second round interview or your third
round interview. So whether it's your final round or it's your second meeting with the team, this is where they're going to get really nitty gritty about the specifics of the job to see if you actually know how to do the job. So the questions get a lot more nitty gritty. Let's break into this a little bit more so for the first round interview. No matter what, you can be expected to answer questions like tell me a little bit about yourself.
You're also going to be asked why do you want this job or why are you looking for your next job. You're probably going to be asked to explain a breakdown of the day to day work you do in your current position, or if you're a new grad, talking about what you're looking for in that next position, and they're likely going to break down a couple of questions
based on the job description. So every single time you apply for a job, make sure you take a screenshot of the jobs and pop it into a folder on your phone just in case the position gets unposted at any point in time, Because the job description is the best way to anticipate what questions you're
going to be asked in the interview. For example, if you're interviewing for a recruiter position, let's say, and the job posting talks a lot about needing to understand how to do technology recruiting and working with data, you bet your sweet honey buns, I've never said that before. Don't know where that came from, but you bet your sweet old honey buns that they're going to ask you a question based on data and based on how to recruit for technology.
So it gives you a starting point to know specifically what you're going to do. So the first step is to not only prepare for the basics like answering, tell me about yourself and why do you want to work here, which I won't break down in this episode because I have so much content on that, both on the podcast but most specifically on my YouTube channel. I have a whole playlist on how to answer commonly asked interview questions. So just go there. But the next thing that you are going to have to do
is think about how you're going to answer job specific examples. And the best way to do this is create a literal list of the skills they're looking for in the job description that they've posted, and have a couple of examples written next to it of work you've done that demonstrates that. Maybe it's a school project you worked on, maybe it's I don't know, like a thing you
built, whatever it is, you know what I'm talking about. Have a couple of examples that are aligned to each of those core skills, and what I want you to do is practice answering a variety of questions tied to that skill, specifically using the Star method. So the Star method is a method of answering interview questions that is really structured and make sure you're giving the interviewer
or the recruiter the right amount of information. The S stands for situation, the T stands for task, the A stands for action, the R stands for result. I just left an executive interview, executive, I am talking C suite executive interview, and you want to know what the feedback is that we gave to the candidate who's getting the job. We said, you answered everything with the star method. It was great. So it doesn't matter what level you're at. This is what people want to see. So practice.
For example, if you're asked about how you work with data, tell me tell me a time you've worked with data. I might say when I first started working at into It, I noticed we had a huge opportunity to hire more account managers in sales. There's a situation the task. So I started doing a complete, in depth analysis about the talent market and the areas of opportunity across our different territories. The action the data showed me that we had
an opportunity to hire more in Quebec to better serve that market. The result, we ended up adding thirty percent additional customers in less than six months and hired fifteen people. Boom, I just gave you five sentences that told me, or told you rather exactly what you needed to hear. But another call out. Do you notice that I'm only talking about me in this interview.
It's super important that you are calling out the winds of other people and talking about teamwork and collaboration, but specifically when it comes to you answering tough to answer interview questions. We don't want to hear what your team did. Yeah, I want to hear what you did, So don't say we did this, we did this. What you would say is our team was working on
this, and here specifically how I contributed. And to be honest, these tips carry really well into second round interviews as well, but it's almost a guarantee you're going to get these style of questions in both. So it's just good to know, and I also find it helps you like mentally prepare. Now, what I think is the most important differentiator between preparing for a first round and like a second round or final round interview is how much they expect
of you. In the first round interview, the recruiter is typically looking to learn more about your general experience and general fit for the company, but maybe not nitty gritty. That changes when you get to the second round. So
here's a key difference. When you are entering that first round interview, it's a really good idea for you to have an understanding of what that company does and their values because you're probably going to be asked why do you want to work here, and you saying something like, oh, I love your commercials on TV like that's it's just not enough. You know, I need you to step it up, step it up. And you know how we do that. You go to their career website. You look up their values.
Yes, companies love when you butter them up with their values. Okay, and you say, oh, I saw this as a value of yours. I saw you volunteer here and that you invest in here. That means a lot to me because of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And you want to make sure like it's authentic. You don't want to just make shit up. But you call on those specific things listed on their website when they ask you why you want to work there, because it proves that you do
research. In that second round interview, you got to take it a step further. In the first round, you know they're getting it's like a vibe check. You know, it's a first date. They're trying to see is this person the right fit. The second round interview, they want to see you show the hell up. And how you do that is the next time they say, you know, tell me about yourself, because chances are you're
going to meet with a second person who has not heard that spiel. You're going to say the same thing you did before, using that amazing YouTube video that I've put together, but you're going to add on this sentence, and you're going to say, after speaking to the recruiter last week, I was
so invested. I went to your career website. I learned a little bit more about your investment strategy and your product, and did some more research on people who've been in this role previously, and I just think I'm an amazing fit. It shows you do research and it further cements the idea that you are the ideal candidate. Second round interviews tend to get a little bit more
technical. So the same way you prepared to answer basic questions around the job description in the first round, get ready for them to drill a lot deeper. So in your second round interview, in addition to preparing information on why you want to work at that company, I need you to go deeper on why you are specifically qualified for that role, backed by data. It might not be as necessary in round one, but round two, when they say, talk to me about how you grow teams, have numbers to back up
your experience. If it's your first job, and they're asking you how you collaborate. I want you to talk about the size of the projects you've worked on. How many people did you partner with. That's the stuff that really matters. So it's important to click down, go deep on data. This is a tip that's important for every interview, but it's particularly important to further
along you get in the process, and it's something that's really overlooked. So at this stage, you would have prepared to answer tell me about yourself. You're prepared to talk a bit about the company and why you're a fit for the job. You have some examples ready to go to share using the Star method. The last thing I need you to do is come prepared with amazing
questions to ask in that interview. I also just left an interview, actually yesterday I left this interview and the feedback from the team was I don't think this person wants the job. They didn't ask me any questions, and I'm like, oh my god, this person is an amazing fit for the role. I don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot by not having these things. So at the end of the interview, when the person is asking you, do you have questions. For me, always say yes, And
this is why your research is important. If you found that a value aligned to you are aligned with your values on their career website, say, I see your value is being bold. Can you talk to me about how that shows up in your team? I see on the website you have invested in this. How does that impact our team? Like? Those are the questions that make you stand out, and those are so easy to prepare because literally you just need to go on the career website like it really is as simple
as that. Other quick fire tips for preparing for an interview, go to LinkedIn and take a little creepy creep of the individual you're speaking to. See what school they went to, what companies they worked for. That's another great way to ask really thoughtful and impactful questions. At the end of the day, preparing for an interview, yes, is stressful, but it's not rocket
science. You just need to be prepared to answer some basic questions about who you are, why you want that job, and have really great structure in terms of how you are answering those questions. Now, if you feel like you prepare for interviews and maybe you still get nervous It's a great idea to have notes with you, not a script, because you don't want to over prepare and feel like you're not yourself and that you're not organic. Another great
tip to prepare for an interview is practice. I just literally kissed my microphone by accident. Whoopsies, I hope you didn't hear that. I was like right up in my MIC's face. Another great tip is to record yourself answering commonly asked interview questions. It'll help you get a flavor of what your communication style is like, and then it'll help you adjust and correct for body language,
your pace, all of those good things. But I do have a full episode on this podcast about communication and how to be a clear and direct communicator, especially in interviews, as well as some content on YouTube if you prefer a visual for that one, so definitely check that out. But this is short, this is sweet, and the reason for that is it doesn't need to be complicated. Anyone telling you it needs to be complicated, frankly, is trying to stress you out and make you feel like you need to
spend money on a career coach to prep for an interview. And it ain't like that it's simple. It's clear. You make bullet point notes, you practice, you practice, you practice, You're going to be fine. I believe on you. If you have an interview this week, DM me let me know how it goes. I care about you, mutually. Talk to you next Sunday. Bestie,