Yay... but help!

[Jeni1709]

I've found out that I have an interview next week and while I'm excited to get back into work after redundancy, I'm quite worried. It's a fairly low paid admin officer post, and the interview is a full day. Interview, 3 tasks, meet the team and a presentation.

I think I'm really worried about what the tasks could be? It's a temp uni admissions admin post. Any ideas?

[Katkin79]

Congratulations on the interview - great news!

Fear of the unknown is horrible so I totally understand your worries but try not to waste too much time expecting the worst. If I am in this situation I try to think about how the people interviewing want you to do well - they want someone to get the job and as you want the job too there should be a lot of positivity in the room :) however overwhelming it can be.

Have you got a job role/list of tasks and responsibilities (if not can you google it - lots of public sector organisations have info online) Could you spend time looking at that and have a real think about the issues you would deal with each day and might make up part of a task? What do you think the people advertising for the job want to feel confident about in their new recruit and therefore want to test/ illustrate via a task? I would imagine that with a uni admissions post they will want to know about organisation skills as there are very busy times of the year (enrolment). Maybe something about dealing with people/conflict management - how do you explain that someone can't enrol or has missed an important deadline which makes their application a problem. Might be wrong but just thoughts.

When I have recruited people in the past, a large obstacle in the interview process has been how to get the person to come out of themselves and show a bit of their personality and character. Some of the tasks might be formal, maybe some a little more relaxed and fun.

Did you get the interview direct or through an agency? If the latter you might be able to ask for some tips/guidance, especially if that agent has worked with the organisation for a while and they are familiar with how they work. If it is direct you might be able to ask for some more details via the person who arranged the interview via a quick email or a call to reconfirm the date/time.

Hope this helps
Very best of luck with it - I hope it goes well xx