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PROJECT 15: Mock Interview |
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OVERVIEW: |
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Chapters 17, 18 and
19 discuss many aspects of interviewing. Interviews are conducted for employment,
graduate school admission, bank loans for entrepreneurs, promotions,
recognitions, and even for volunteer positions. Employers and others are
taught how to interview using many different methods. Over many years,
extensive improvements have been incorporated into interviewing with the goal
of making the interview process more valid and reliable. A great deal is at
stake for both the interviewer and
the interviewee. The process is constantly making continuous and substantial
change to ensure better employment, acceptance, and promotional decisions.
Seldom is this a casual “let’s talk”
situation. The research presented in your textbook reports on the results of
this progress so you can learn how to better perform in these more
sophisticated approaches to selection. The interview is no longer a gut feeling situation, especially in
the hiring process where high salaries are involved. One of the best ways
to learn any topic well, after you have been properly trained, is to practice
what you have just learned. This role-playing will give you valuable insight
that should be helpful in your future interviewing preparation. You are asked to set
up a hypothetical situation that
involves you interviewing for consideration. The situation may be a real job,
an internship opening, a call-back interview, for graduate school admission,
or for promotion. You can even make this interview a meeting with a
commercial banker where you are requesting a loan for your business. The
situation is up to you to select, but the situation must be well described. Your Career Counselor will be the mock interviewer. Your counselor will critically evaluate you on an
evaluation form that you give to them at the beginning of the mock interview.
As you will see from the instructions this must be as real as you can make a mock interview. You should prepare behavioral-based questions based
upon your specific courses, work experiences, and activities listed on your resume
that are oriented to the job you want. Your Career Counselor
will ask you most of these questions which you should be prepared to answer
with succinct past behavioral-based answers. You should be prepared to answer
any probing follow-up questions. The Mock Interview
project may be one of the most important exercises that you do in this class,
so everyone is encouraged to complete
it. Every interviewer, regardless of the situation, has multiple
candidates and a limited time in which to make decisions. Why pick you? Upon completing this
project you will have observed and experienced a major part of the interview
selection process. Just the activity in preparing for this will be a major
career educational experience. The goal of this project is to put you over
the top in all of your future interview situations. |
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PROJECT
INSTRUCTIONS: |
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Your finished project
should fulfill ALL of the
requirements below. A. Job
Description: Submit a Job
Description. Your Career Counselor needs to have some knowledge about the
position or situation for which you will be interviewing. You can submit a
short job description following the format in Figure
19.1 in the textbook, or you can copy a real job description from the web
or any other source. You can even copy the admission standards from the
website of a graduate program. The counselor needs to know the qualifications or job specifications
plus the duties/tasks that you are
expected to perform. Again, copy or make it as real as possible. Good job
descriptions are also available at www.careeronestop.org. Make this
less than three copied pages. You must present to
your Career Counselor the exact situation for the mock interview in one to
two minutes. Discuss the company, job description, graduate study admission
requirements, international or local environment if relevant, the
circumstances about a unique interview situation, and any facts that would
impact the final evaluation. B. Cover
Letter/Resume: Submit a cover
letter and resume if appropriate. The interviewer (your Career Counselor)
needs to have some written documents about you that can be read before the
interview and later assessed with the interview evaluation form. You probably
can submit something that you have already
prepared. This is to be no more than five pages maximum. C. Behavioral-based
Interview Questions: Prepare six
behavioral-based questions that you want the interview to ask you. One of
these must be “Tell me about yourself.”
Two questions must relate to your academic background; one or two questions
are to be about your management or leadership skills; and one or two
questions are to be about your prior work experience. You need six total
questions. Leave space between the questions for your bullet-point replies.
(See Part D for details on these.) Remember that you
must prepare answers. Your interviewer will be following a routine similar to
that in the Recruiter’s Guide,
Figure 18.5 in the textbook, and completing an evaluation form from those
listed at the end of Chapter 18. Their constructive evaluations will focus on
the “Fifteen Knock-out Factors” in
Figure 18.6. Interviewers typically focus on reasons to reject you. Your
answers should be one to two minutes in duration. The answer for the “Tell me about you” question should be
a commercial about you using the ideas from the three chapters on
interviewing. Figure 18.3 on Assertive
Interviewing should help your “commercial.” The questions that
you submit can be based upon the general
questions found in the frequently asked questions in Figures 17.8, 17.9 and
17.10. You may not use these questions verbatim. Use these questions as a
guide structuring your actual questions in the context of your situation and
your competencies. Your Career Counselor will only accept questions that
reflect your unique circumstances. You
may have already prepared these from an earlier project. D. S.T.A.R.
Answers: You must submit a proposed answers outline to your
questions above. You are expected to use the techniques described in the
interview chapters. Matching your answers to the questions developed in part
C and following each question number, identify three
to six bullet points that will help remind you of the answers that you want
to give. MEMORIZE THESE! Use the techniques
described in the interview chapters in your responses! Prepare your strategic
marketing plan that you are presenting verbally and without props. Use ideas
from “Convincing Presentations,” Figure
17.2, in your textbook. The interviewer is
trying to predict your success in future situations like this. Review the
“Predictors of Success,” Figure
17.4, in your textbook as you construct your answers. Avoid using your
time to discuss your “can-do”
factors so you can emphasize your “will-do”
factors. Whenever possible,
you must use your S.T.A.R. answers, Figure
18.2, in response to behavioral-based questions. The ZAP technique in Chapter 18 will allow you to talk glowingly
about yourself in an indirect manner. E. Evaluation: Submit an evaluation
form. Links below and figures found at the end of Chapter 18 in the
textbook illustrate five different evaluation forms similar to those used by
on-campus recruiters. Your annual performance appraisal forms are often
similar to these except for the specific focus on your job tasks and
accomplishments. They are also similar to graduate school evaluation forms. Copy any one of
these forms. Take it to your mock interview and give it to your Career
Counselor. If time is available, you will get some verbal feedback at the end
of your interview. Time often runs short so normally the counselor will
complete this form later and return it to you with comments the next time
that you meet. When you get
subsequent feedback, the counselor will try to give you constructive
feedback. That means that the evaluation will not all be positive. By
focusing on areas where you have issues,
you can make improvements and enhance future interviews. 5. Trait-Based
Candidate Evaluation Deliverables: Turn in to your Career Counselor: Ø
Job
Description or Ø
Cover Letter
and Resume Ø
Six questions
and S.T.A.R.S. identified (separate page per question) Ø
Outline of
answers to questions Ø
Blank
evaluation form printed from the web You may use anything that you have previously
prepared for another project for any of the above items. |