How do I get better at job interviews?

[spiderplantsalad]

I've been looking for a job for quite a while and although I get plenty of interviews, I never actually get the job. I've been temping for a while now as it's the only work I can find, but I'm getting rustier at the skills I had as the temp work is fairly low level.

Things I've tried - asking for feedback. Always positive, they liked me but not enough. Sometimes I've failed on a technical test as my skills are rusty - fair enough. I'm not able to keep them up at home so have dropped that from my CV. I'm still getting interviews.

I've tried preparing competency answers - whatever I'm doing, it's clearly not good enough.

I've tried changing the types of jobs and sectors - again, I'm getting rejected at interview stage.

What can I do? I just can't go on this way.

I do have ASD but still, I used to be able to do this!

Anyone?

What are the skills you cannot keep up at home? Appreciate you may not want to out yourself, but perhaps a ballpark or something comparable.

The sector change thing can be challenging, as you're potentially going to be up against people already working in that sector. Have you developed a bit of a narrative around why you want to change jobs/sectors which demonstrates transferable skills and adaptiveness?

I used to work with big databases, so fairly technical. I could do a course but the temping doesn't pay enough. I'm temping in a sector i quite like, so was hoping that would help. I can work on some kind of narrative but tbh I'm so demoralised by now it's hard to think of positive reasons. I'll try though.

There might be absolutely nothing wrong with your interview skills and it's just a case of so many people applying for the jobs. So you're not getting the job but neither are the 80 other people that applied for it. You are getting interviews though so that's good, and your feedback is good so it might just be a case of keep on trying.

I'm looking too at the moment and was shocked when 1 website showed me 80 people had applied for a job I was interested in

I was encouraged not to accept that feedback and to politely say that that feedback wont help me in the future. What could I have done differently at interview.

I’m the same. I’ve had six interviews this year and the feedback is always the same: ‘you were great, you interviewed really well and you were absolutely appointable but someone was doing the job elsewhere/an internal candidate was already doing the job/there was someone with more direct experience... and on and on it goes.

It’s so disheartening. There’s nothing constructive I can take from it, it’s just being told over and over that I’m not quite good enough

The best thing I ever did for interviews was to mock interviews with a friend and film them. It's excruciating but it helps massively. Give your friend the form and job spec, ask them to prepare seriously and sit down for a full 45-minute interview. Total role play, no bluffing or stopping, treat it like the real deal. Then you are challenged to articulate your answers much more clearly - sometimes the great example in your head comes across as rambling and confusing when voiced.

Do the same with as many friends as you can persuade!

And watch the film back to see how you react when you are flummoxed by a question, or when you realise you are a little off-track.

It's the best and most effective form of interview preparation I've found.

Also, if you realise in the interview you hit a bit of a wrong note on one of the questions, you can use the "any questions for us?" bit at the end to clarify or add something. Sometimes you just know you didn't quite connect with the panel on a specific issue so you can briefly go back to that topic and add a clarification or point to another example on your application.

Also, having done interviewing, what always helps bump candidates up for me is showing that they really want the job. Have a bit of energy, be enthusiastic and straight out say "I really want this job, because..." And mean it! You'd be surprised at how many people come across as not that bothered, after going trough a competitive short-listing process.

Think of questions you might get asked and practice them. All the usual stuff, why do you want this job, why do you think you’d be good at this job, give me an example of a time when you’ve worked well in a team, communicated well, made a difference.

Expand on the questions loads. At a recent interview the first question they asked was “why do you want this job”. A few years ago I’d probably have given a very brief answer of something like “I think have the necessary skills and it’s quite local to me and sounds interesting”. My technique was shit. But this time round I was like “well firstly let me tell you about myself.......”. And spent over five minutes telling them about me from a career point of view and then at the end summed it up along the lines of all this experience demonstrates why this job would be a perfect fit for me and then bigged up the organisation a lot as to why I’d actually like the job.

Could you get involved in open access data projects in your spare time to keep those skills alive Spiderplant? Stuff like this: fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-were-sharing-3-million-russian-troll-tweets/

For this project, some people developed more user-friendly databases which helped others to analyse the data better, whilst others applied their analytical skills.

Forgive me if I'm way off in understanding the sort of work you do, or the requirements to carry out the work.

Amusedbush - you have my sympathies! It's horrible. I've been interviewing for a few years now, and am so tired of never being good enough. It's completely demoralising. I hope your luck changes soon.

Thanks redexpat - I'll try that. Hopefully they will say something useful.

Sycamore - that sounds excruciating but actually quite useful. I'll ask around and see if anyone can help. I think as time - and thirty or forty interviews - have gone by, I've just got more nervous and miserable, and I do stumble a lot now. It would be useful to see how it looks from the interviewer's side though. I've done lots of good practice answers, I just forget and stumble my way through them all.

Thanks all.

That actually looks really interesting Mousehole! Thank you :)

I feel you Op, it's demoralising. Like the idea of videoing. I know I don't interview well, find a conversation that's 2 way much easier.

I'm starting childminding so no interviews with awkward questions for a while hopefully!

I decided I was sick of stumbling through answers when I knew I had lots of examples and just wasn’t giving them and got myself a notebook. In it I had different titles bllet pointed lists with example of how I showed different skills and hit different areas of the job spec. I then also had bits for notes about the interviewers from my pre-interview prep, and bits where I had looked up and written down information about bits of the jobs I hadn’t ever worked on before but what they would involve and how I would learn.

Then if I stumbled I could just pause and look it up. I got every job I interviewed for, including one which was a) a speculative application and b) I wrote down the date of the interview wrong and didn’t turn up. I don’t know if the book did it or not, but I just decided it was ridiculous to not have a written prompt if I wanted one. Actually having it there made me less nervous and probably meant I stumbled less.

I was also honest where I didn’t fit job spec characteristics but I don’t know whether that was a good idea or not! So I would just say “I’ve seen other people doing this, and I have some familiarity with it but it’s not something I’ve personally worked on. However, as you can see from x and y, I’m a keen and quick learner and am always happy to get stuck in, so while I would need some guidance at first I’m sure I would get the hang of it quickly” again, I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but it did seem to work.

It must be really demoralising: my last round of applications before this one, I had applied to 10s of jobs before I got one and was just so fed up with the time required.

I like the sound of that book, Nacreous - and your approach must have been good if you got the jobs! It sounds similar to how I do my cover letters so maybe I should expand on those a little bit when I'm preparing answers. They liked it the first time round so presumably the same in interview!

Good luck with childminding, buckeejit - sounds like a really good thing.

I just heard back from an interview I had on Thursday. I didn't get it.

Surprise, surprise... I came across really well, I was very friendly and confident but there was someone with a bit more experience.

ARGH.

Oh that's annoying, bush. It's not even helpful feedback. I'm sorry. I hope you get the next one.