First Graduate Job interview!

Brookert

Brookert

Brookert

Soldato
Joined
13 Dec 2010
Posts
4,219
Hello all! I have my first round interview for a graduate job coming up in Jan 2013. This was after a Verbal-reasoning test, and a numerical test, so I'm not the dunce I thought I was!

What you guys experience in your first round graduate job interviews?
 
It's been a while since I sat my assessments but what you get will depend on the company/role. Some will use assessment centres with multiple exercises and others may just use interviews and/or another exercise.

For mine it was an assessment centre with four segments - an interview, a briefing exercise, a written exam and a group exercise. Remarkably after all that they still ended up by employing me so you could argue that it's not a very good method of sifting. :D

What sort of information are you looking for? If you can indicate a bit more about what you want that might help people to tailor their responses.
 
The verbal reasoning tests are the hard ones. Telling an engineer to not make any assumptions is like telling Blackhawk not to post a picture of his Audi A1 :p

Do you have a phone interview or a face-to-face one? I've just been through (and passed, phew!) two phone interviews which were (in)competency ones.
 
They can be demanding. In the past I have had some ludicrously mean questions thrown my way as if it's some sort of sick 'jigsaw' trick :p

Not to worry. Prepare hard, keep your cool, be enthusiastic and you might succeed! Otherwise, just take it as experience. The more of them you do, the better at them you will get.

One tip though - mimic the general tone and attitude of whoever is interviewing you. E.g. don't be a robot to a friendly chatty man, do make lots of BEEPS and BOOPS to a iron lady with no soul.
 
Prepare for all the obvious questions, you will have probably written a huge amount of answers to application questions by now, so you can just use them as the beginning of you prep.

The above advice is good, other small tips include having a warm (dry) hand for them to shake, easiest done by holding a cup of tea/coffee before the interview. Eye contact is a must.


Don't be afraid to ask for clarification on questions. Often the second time an interviewer phrases a question it will be much easier to understand, and at the least it gives you a bit more time to think of a good answer.
Don't be afraid to clarify your own answer either. I remember a couple of times giving my answer, and them summarising it back to me quite differently to my intention, adding some clarification afterwards helps to ensure their impression is as you intended.


The first couple of minutes of general chitter chatter can be very useful. If you can get a friendly repertoire before it gets down to business then the whole process will be a lot smoother.

Make sure you address and talk to all the interviewers in the room (if there are multiple), otherwise you will end up with conflicting reports going back to HR.


Finally, ask for the interviewers business card/contact information at the end of the interview.
 
semi-pro waster said:
It's been a while since I sat my assessments but what you get will depend on the company/role. Some will use assessment centres with multiple exercises and others may just use interviews and/or another exercise.

For mine it was an assessment centre with four segments - an interview, a briefing exercise, a written exam and a group exercise. Remarkably after all that they still ended up by employing me so you could argue that it's not a very good method of sifting. :D

What sort of information are you looking for? If you can indicate a bit more about what you want that might help people to tailor their responses.
Click to expand...

It's for the Forestry Commission, their graduate development programme. I think the best ammunition for the interview part will be knowledge on who they are and what they do. Also, I'll directly address their 'What we expect' section and how I will 'deliver' in those areas, if you like :D

Dave said:
The verbal reasoning tests are the hard ones. Telling an engineer to not make any assumptions is like telling Blackhawk not to post a picture of his Audi A1 :p

Do you have a phone interview or a face-to-face one? I've just been through (and passed, phew!) two phone interviews which were (in)competency ones.
Click to expand...

Oh no you di'int :D It's an interview with 3 senior managers, and as part of that interview, I have to give a 2 minute presentation on an object representing why I will be good for the role, I think......

Nitefly said:
They can be demanding. In the past I have had some ludicrously mean questions thrown my way as if it's some sort of sick 'jigsaw' trick :p

Not to worry. Prepare hard, keep your cool, be enthusiastic and you might succeed! Otherwise, just take it as experience. The more of them you do, the better at them you will get.

One tip though - mimic the general tone and attitude of whoever is interviewing you. E.g. don't be a robot to a friendly chatty man, do make lots of BEEPS and BOOPS to a iron lady with no soul.
Click to expand...

Your exactly right. I've always played interviews like that, I suppose it's about connecting with the interviewer and making them believe in you.
 
So far I have had 4 graduate interviews, 3 offers. Best advice is just be yourself and don't try and ******** (BS). If you don't know something say you don't know, and make sure you have prepared and know about them in depth!

Personally the assessments centers can be very tiring but make sure you are 100% for each stage.
 
Good to hear people on the forum are getting interviews. All the no hopers on disney studies degrees would have you believe there are no jobs out there, yet I have had lots of employment of various kinds since leaving school....
 
Looking forward to when I've been at my current company for 12 months then I can become one of the grad assessors :)
 
I've had 4 now, 2 reasonable ones and 2 for nightmare companies with awful interview techniques (in-depth awkward questions, repeated).

I've been trying to just be myself and honest but it doesn't seem to be working, I have realised that they want you to know absolutely everything about their company though. Which I think is a bit wrong, in my mind an interview should be the company pitching themselves to you then you pitching yourself as to why you would be good at working there..
 
invoke said:
I've had 4 now, 2 reasonable ones and 2 for nightmare companies with awful interview techniques (in-depth awkward questions, repeated).

I've been trying to just be myself and honest but it doesn't seem to be working, I have realised that they want you to know absolutely everything about their company though. Which I think is a bit wrong, in my mind an interview should be the company pitching themselves to you then you pitching yourself as to why you would be good at working there..
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At the same time however, they know that candidates will be applying to several positions both within their sector and in other areas. By expecting you to know a bit of background (don't read out the Wiki page to them :p) they are looking for evidence that you've done your research and have their company as one of your top options. It's not completely unreasonable that they don't have to pitch themselves to you; when applying for big companies most people know (roughly!) what they do and all the information is available on their websites, in the news, Wikipedia etc.

Interesting how different interviews can be though. I've just been through two telephone interviews for people operating in the same sector; one was an hour and a half and pretty in detail, whereas the other was only about 25 minutes. Passed both of them so doing something correctly, but I couldn't see how the second company could filter out candidates given that they didn't really ask an awful lot!
 
Dave said:
At the same time however, they know that candidates will be applying to several positions both within their sector and in other areas. By expecting you to know a bit of background (don't read out the Wiki page to them :p) they are looking for evidence that you've done your research and have their company as one of your top options. It's not completely unreasonable that they don't have to pitch themselves to you; when applying for big companies most people know (roughly!) what they do and all the information is available on their websites, in the news, Wikipedia etc.

Interesting how different interviews can be though. I've just been through two telephone interviews for people operating in the same sector; one was an hour and a half and pretty in detail, whereas the other was only about 25 minutes. Passed both of them so doing something correctly, but I couldn't see how the second company could filter out candidates given that they didn't really ask an awful lot!
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It was quite similar for me. In this case it's software engineering, so I don't know how different it's going to be to other positions as that's all I've done.

1st. Was just a hiccup, phone call to ask a few questions and that's it (It's a company I have previously worked at) - OFFERED

2nd. Passed CV filter, did online programming tests then was phone interview (lasted around 40 minutes) fairly technical although nothing major, followed by assessment center which lasted from midday to 5pm, consisted of 2 interviews (one technical, one business oriented), and 2 practical sessions. - DECLINED

3rd. Passed CV filter, again phone interview (lasted over an hour) broad range of areas, followed by interview at main offices in London. - OFFERED

4th. Headhunted via LinkedIn, online test, phone interview lasted around 45 minutes, broad range of questions, nothing too technical. Skype interview (camera) technical oriented as well as business questions (lasted just over an hour I believe), assessment center consisted of dinner night before with other candidates, sleep in hotel, leave hotel by 8:05ish then day lasted until 4/5. Consisted of role play meeting with a manager, role play presentation with executives, technical interview and group exercise. - OFFERED

Number 4 was the most vigorous and tiring, but the most exciting and fun because at the point of assessment everyone knew each other (to some extent) and since there were enough positions for everyone it wasn't a competition.

What you will find though is these take a lot of your time. In most cases I had to travel from Durham down south (London/Ipswich) for many of them.
 
Brookert said:
It's for the Forestry Commission, their graduate development programme. I think the best ammunition for the interview part will be knowledge on who they are and what they do. Also, I'll directly address their 'What we expect' section and how I will 'deliver' in those areas, if you like :D
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Having a knowledge of who and what they are should help you but I'd also recommend practicing your examples beforehand - these might be examples of when you worked in a team/when you showed planning/when you overcame problems/when you reevaluated and changed your current plans to suit circumstances etc. You probably won't be able to guess all the questions in advance but with a bit of thought you can prepare some answers to a number of the more common questions.

General tips would be to try and speak clearly, use eye contact appropriately and build up a rapport with your interviewers. Don't be afraid to clarify questions if you are unsure or take a pause before answering - try not to let the pause last 10 minutes but a bit of thinking time isn't necessarily a bad thing. Focus on what you've done and what role you played in the example. Try not to use examples where you don't have a conclusion, even if it's something that is in process then being able to say "the signs are good that I will complete XXX project by whatever date and initial feedback has been positive" is infinitely better than shrugging your shoulders and saying it hasn't finished yet. The employer should remember that for many at graduate interviews it's likely they haven't had much in the way of employment so examples may be a little bit thin on the ground.

invoke's comment that it should be the company pitching themselves to you may be partially true - it is a two way process, the organisation needs to decide that they want you just as you have to decide you want to work for them. However for most organisations you can find out an awful lot about them in advance - for most candidates the information they will have about you will have come from you so that's at least partly why the focus is almost always going to be more about you selling yourself to them than the other way round.

Ev0 said:
Looking forward to when I've been at my current company for 12 months then I can become one of the grad assessors :)
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I did that this year, for the previous couple of years I went along to speak to the candidates and give them a bit more information about what they might expect. The assessing is actually pretty hard work, you've got to see quite a lot of candidates in a day and then write up notes for each of them along with a discussion at the end of the day to ascertain scores and work out whether they meet pass marks etc. It might be different for you and your company but there's a fair bit of work involved in doing it.
 
I used to do a lot of grad recruitment when I was in Investment Banking, keys things we looked for are:

Honest responses to questions with no bull
Prepared to muck in and have a go no matter the task
Grad can think on their feet (We threw some weird team scenarios at them)
That they come across as us rather than I
That they communicate well with others (Body langugage looked at as well as verbal)

Hope that helps
 
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