Archive Assistant Job Interview

[Crumbleininterviews]

I've been lucky enough to secure an interview for this role after several years off as a stay at home mum. I used to work in libraries, but have always wanted to move into archives so this is my dream role as an entry into the profession.

I am pretty confident at writing applications but crumble in interviews (hence my username). Does anyone have any experience of interviewing for such a role, or of the kind of questions they may ask? I've also got to do a task which I assume will be some kind of information retrieval exercise.

Any advice would be much appreciated! I've had a couple of unsuccessful interviews already for other roles and I just feel so out of touch with what employers are looking for these days. The answers I used to give to some basic interview questions don't seem to cut it anymore.

I don't know about archives in particular, but I would think about the STAR approach to interview answers (easily googlable).

Thanks so much @EBearhug will Google now, I've never heard of the STAR approach before.

It's commonly used in lots of interviews these days (including the IT one I had yesterday.)

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result/Resolution

So you need to think of a situation where thr things you did helped improve things for the company, a colleague, the department, made money, saved money, saved time...

If you can relate it to your library work, good, but examples from running a PTA event or something could also be relevant.

I struggled yesterday with "what is your greatest achievement?" and talked about mentoring a colleague who got promoted, but in the background my head was thinking, this is generic, I should have prepared better.

You can probably come up with a few scenarios thst can be adapted to different questions (though obviously you should avoid reusing that example for the next question.)

@EBearhug Thanks that's really helpful! I'm definitely going to think of some situations that I can adapt and apply to a few scenario questions.

I find it so frustrating as I almost always get an interview for the jobs that I know I meet all of the criteria for, but am just not confident at all in interviews. I hope you're interview went well and I've got my fingers crossed for you!

I had a long string of "you came a close second" responses before my current job. Main issue was not as much experience as the other candidate. Not going to gain any if no one will employ me, I was thinking... I could do Monday's job, got on with the people, but there might be other candidates who do have even better experience. I can't really change that.