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Have you ever appeared for a walk-in interview? Have you been the victim of a serial interview where you are shunted from table to table, spending just a few minutes at each? Or, for that matter, have you kicked your heels outside the HR manager’s office, while he “processes” half-a-dozen candidates who are in the queue before you?

You may think it is all very natural and acceptable; after all, you are looking for a job. But it is not. It is necessary that the company or organisation planning to hire treat you with a certain degree of respect.

“The problem in India is that it is regarded as an interaction between unequals,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “The company thinks it is doing you a favour by giving you a job. This is particularly so if it is for a junior position.”

Yet, if you look at it more closely, the interview is probably your first exposure to the company. In the normal course of things, you will approach others. If everything else is equal, would you not join the company that has shown you the maximum respect?

“Every next HR manager carries a chip on his shoulder,” continues Singh. “The profession is only now graduating from keeping musters and adding up the number of days’ leave taken. When they get a chance to boss around, they do it. They little realise that the person they are treating so cavalierly today may well become their boss a decade down the line.”

In India and other former colonies, this could be somewhat expected. Every person in authority sees himself as a Napoleon ordering the rank and file to march on the double. Such people feel they have inherited the mantle of the British conquerors. Even today, some 60 years after Independence, they have to keep the wogs in line.

But, strangely, jobseekers seem to get short shrift in other countries also. A recent survey (see box) by Hyrian, an independent US recruitment process outsourcing company, says of its findings: “The theme that rose to the top was the issue of respect. It appears that in many cases, potential employers are failing to show common courtesy to candidates.”

The survey was essentially about job interviews. And very few respondents had nice things to say. It matters. “Because job candidates are often in a relatively vulnerable position, the impact of discourteous treatment is magnified, creating negative impressions of a company that may carry over to future job searches,” says the survey analysis. “Hiring managers have a major opportunity to create goodwill and positive impressions of a potential employer by providing timely updates and / or closure to all candidates, and being better prepared for interviews.”

In India, even the top companies are facing another recruitment risk today. In the mad scramble for talent during the past few years, they hired like crazy. In the current slowdown, they are showing people the door. This is ostensibly on grounds of poor performance. But when attrition rates were much higher, these “poor performers” were also valued. In the IT sector, people are being benched (put on standby until new projects come the company’s way). They earn much less. On campuses, people who have been given offer letters are being asked to hold on.

All this hits a company where it hurts most — its reputation. Unfortunately, it takes a few years for the damage to manifest itself. By that time, it may be too late.

“A company’s reputation in the outside world depends on the respect it commands from its own public, and that includes potential hires,” says Singh. “It has cleared them to the interview stage. It must treat them not as CVs without a face but as future stars in the organisation.” Does it cost so much to offer a cup of tea and politeness?

INTERVIEW GROUSES

What applicants dislike most about job interviews (per cent)

I never hear back from prospective employers 45

The time the process takes 35

The time it takes to get an offer 30

Discourteous delays in the interview 19

Hiring managers are not prepared 10

The number of interviews is excessive 10

Source: Hyrian survey of 231 US executives; each respondent was allowed to choose two factors

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FOLLOW THESE TIPS AND YOU WILL SAIL THROUGH THE INTERVIEW:

Worldly wise:-
While you should definitely stay abreast of the developments in your field, keeping up with the larger world can only help you. A big part of interview success is connecting with people, and one of the best ways to do so is by finding common interests and knowledge. The more you expand your interests and knowledge, the greater chance you’ll have in connecting with the interviewer.

Furthermore, in an ever-shrinking world, everything is interconnected. “I think in order to truly understand a company’s business problems, you have to understand that company’s position in the world,” says Steve Fogarty, senior staffing partner at public relations agency Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. “As an interviewer, when I feel that a candidate is well-read and pays attention to what’s going on broadly, they rank higher than candidates who don’t.”

Curiosity counts:-
How many times have you failed to look up an unfamiliar word? Now’s a good time to get into the habit. Install Merriam-Webster’s online toolbar on your computer, if necessary. And when someone uses a word you don’t understand, ask for an explanation or do an Internet search later.

“There are opportunities to learn all around you all the time,” Fogarty says. “If you think about the smartest people around you, they’re people who ask the best questions. They’re not the people who have the answers all the time. Asking questions everywhere you go is a way to learn a lot and bring a lot to an interview.”

Speak well :-
Fogarty says you can develop your skills by putting yourself in situations that force you to try to communicate well. “The more you can volunteer to do public speaking, the better, because that’s really going to make you feel comfortable in an interview,” he says.

He also recommends taking a communications class. Fogarty, who considers himself an extrovert and a natural communicator, took his own advice. His instructors videotaped him and pointed out subtle tendencies he never knew he had. “Just because you’re comfortable at doing something doesn’t mean you’re good at it,” he says.

Lastly, ask a recruiter or even a family member to interview you, and record it to listen to later. You might be surprised at how you come across.

Silver tongue :-
We’ve all come across people who have an unusual knack for communicating well. Observe them carefully. What sets them apart? Is it the way they use their voices? Their hands? Their words? Fogarty notes that the best communicators are great storytellers. So the next time you’re listening to a good story, find out what makes it enjoyable, and see how you can apply these principles in your next interview. Conversely, note what makes people ineffective communicators, and avoid those habits.

Feedback facts:-
A massive detriment to career success is that “people are unaware of how they act”, Fogarty says. “This is where I think a lot of people struggle in life in general. We’re all guilty — every single one of us. I think you should solicit feedback at every opportunity that you can. If you think you irritated someone, find out why. Right or wrong, it’s perception. You could be conveying something unknowingly.”

Constantly work at finding out how people perceive you. “I think it makes you a better interviewee over the long haul if you get feedback about how you convey yourself to others,” Fogarty says.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Forty-three per cent of job seekers surveyed by a job site said that they were annoyed at being asked questions unrelated to job skills. Thirty-eight per cent said they did not like being asked personal questions.

Sample these questions:

“Who is your favorite Beatle?”

“Why aren’t you married yet?”

“If you could be a dog, which dog would you be?”

“Would you join a church to get a job?”

“Are you happy in your relationship?”

“What is your perception of the painting in our lobby?”

Queer query

The survey findings are a wake-up call for organisations that this is happening behind closed doors when the applicant is face to face with their potential boss. Questions pertaining to family status or religion can easily venture into illegal territory under antidiscrimination laws. That means potentially exposing the company to litigation — and hindering the firm’s efforts to find talented workers. But even questions that are simply inappropriate, though legal, can pose problems. “If you could be a dog, what kind of dog would you be?” and “What would you do if I gave you an elephant?” are two examples of the bizarre questions asked, according to survey respondents.

Andrea Coombes, a reporter for MarketWatch, spoke to Scott Erker, senior vice-president of DDI’s Selection Solutions, a human-resource consulting company in Pittsburgh. “Candidates perceive these questions as not related to the job,” Erker said. “You’ve got candidates scratching their heads thinking, ‘What do I say?’ ”

Job jolt

Two-thirds of job seekers said the interviewer influences their decision to accept or reject the job.

The survey did not assess how prevalent the practice of asking inappropriate interview questions is, but the survey yielded hundreds of examples of bad questions. Erker said, “I think it’s more prevalent than we think.” Sometimes, awkward questions result when a hiring manager tries to be friendly, not realising she’s overstepped her bounds — “Is that your natural hair colour?” is one example.

Hold back

If faced with a perplexing question, don’t answer immediately, Erker said. “Take a moment and think about why this person might be asking this question. What is it about this job that this person might be looking for you to respond to?” It’s OK to ask for clarification. Often, Erker said, “Asking such questions will help you understand the motivation of the person and why he is asking it. “For instance, if asked “if you were a dog, what kind of dog would you be?” you could say, “That’s an interesting question. There are many types of dogs out there. What exactly is the answer that you are looking for?” Erker said.

Veer off

Another option: deflect the question. “You can say, ‘You’re probably asking that because you want to know X. What’s important to know about me in that regard is …’ ” Erker said, “Answer the question that you want to answer.” Don’t forget you can refuse to answer a question, though doing so won’t help your job prospects. “You can say, ‘I prefer not to answer that’ or ‘I don’t see the relevance of that question. Is there another question you can ask me?’ ” Erker said. “That’s likely not going to get you the job, but it gets you out of that situation.”

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

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If you have been brought up on a diet of Job Interviews for Dummies and have successfully coped with the bigger dummies on the other side of the table, this may not be for you. But in today’s world, things are getting complicated. Interview questions have changed (see box). Techniques have been designed to catch you on the wrong foot. A crash course is in order.

A study by Career Directors International says “as employers face ever-mounting expenses surrounding hiring, training and staff turnover, coupled with higher than ever volumes of résumé submission, innovations are being introduced to make smarter hiring decisions, resulting in a better fit between positions and new hires”.

In HR, India has been keeping pace with the West; if anything, recruitment is a tougher proposition here. But don’t expect to find these techniques during an interview for a public sector bank job. You could encounter them in strange places — at the real estate company that is expecting you to sell premium condos, at the advertising agency that wants you to hawk fairness lotions to men, at the BPO that is buckling under a call centre crisis… This is where innovative interview techniques come into their own.

The Career Directors’ survey lists several new twists to the traditional interview. Only some, however, need bother the jobseeker. The others are new mainly in name; cut the sizzle and you will end up with the same old steak.

The first of the new variety is the fishbowl interaction. “The only difference between the fishbowl and the case method is that the fishbowl is typically a group activity, and the case method interview is an individual case analysis,” says the report. “In the interview, jobseekers are asked to resolve a real-world business problem associated with the company. This requires the use of analytical skills, and an ability to both identify key business issues and present a structured problem-solving methodology with which to approach them.”

The second innovation is the puzzle interview. “With the expanding IT market, some companies, Microsoft included, have adopted creative outside-the-box strategies to identify the best candidates for a job,” says the report. “The puzzle interview is not a straightforward problem or question.”

To get to grips with the puzzle interview is a complicated affair. The report says you have to first determine whether the required answer type is monologue or dialogue. “Logic puzzles typically call for a monologue. A jobseeker is given limited information and is expected to find the solution without receiving further information… Open-ended questions are similar to Rorschach blots, and are purposely unstructured. The concept of this question is to generate one-half hour of conversation…” There is a lot more of this and it gets increasingly abstruse. Perhaps you need to rethink that interview call.

The third product of HR creativity is the speed interview. Says the report: “First there was speed dating and now there is speed interviewing… speed interviews could include a circuit of as many as 14 mini interviews of 15 minutes apiece in a row.

“A typical speed interview meeting could include up to 10-15 jobseekers, each of who moves along to a new interviewer at the ring of a bell. Entry-level candidates will often find themselves in this type of interview.” This is assembly line HR, a typical American product. You could call it workplace musical chairs.

“However much of a joke you find these things when you are reading about them, they are dead serious when you are applying for a job,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “It’s more about finding out how you react in an unfamiliar situation.” Still puzzled? Welcome to the fishbowl.

ODDBALL QUESTIONS

What you might be asked at your next interview

• If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you select?

• If Hollywood made a movie about your life, who would you like to see playing the lead role?

• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

• If you could compare yourself to any animal, which would it be and why?

• If you were a salad, what dressing would you be?

Source: On the job: Prepare for the new, bizarre trend in interviews, by Anita Bruzzese

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There is a corner of every office that is much frequented but seldom explored. No management experts write about the washroom or facilities as they are euphemistically called. The boss probably has a loo of his own. So he is not too concerned where the rank and file perform their ablutions and more.

Yet if you are visiting corporate headquarters for a job interview, it’s an absolute must that you take a comfort break. (Not during the interview, of course.) Check out the conveniences. Are they clean? Are they adequate? There is a formula for the number of stalls required which depends on the number of employees (see box). Is it enough or will you be left hopping on one foot during lunchtime?

There are other aspects. In office complexes today, there is often just one set of WCs per floor. This is maintained by the building administration and each individual office on the floor gets a key. It can be a real pain in the neck. To prevent keys from getting lost, they are attached to massive keychains, rather like five-star hotels did before the smartcard. It’s too big to put in your pocket or handbag. When you step out into the corridor, you are making a statement for all to see.

There are newer questions arising around the issue. In the West, particularly in crowded cities, “loo emporiums” are making headway. Reports the BBC: “Unisex toilets are apparently the latest in ‘office cool’, and are currently being tried out by city workers in London. There are no urinals in these loo emporiums, so men have to queue alongside their female colleagues. A new etiquette will be needed to combat rows about men leaving the seat up and women hogging the mirrors. Some say spending a penny in a mixed environment will inject an air of camaraderie into the office.”

In India, it seems they can do without such camaraderie. Unisex loos have not taken off anywhere but in dotcom companies, where the employees rather than the managements have forced a merger.

But there is other loos’ talk that concerns Indian CEOs too. With cellphones proliferating, people have started using stalls to make personal calls. In a cubicle farm, you have no privacy. So what if you are calling your significant other sitting on the potty. If she has an office culture similar to yours, she may be sitting on one at the other end too. But the bottom line is that the restrooms get clogged up.

It is happening for another reason too. In some offices, employees are not allowed to send personal emails or surf the Internet. They do so in the loo on their mobiles. In the UK, a nationwide survey by T-Mobile found that nearly half the respondent base of 2,000 employees used their mobile phone to access the Internet at work; 15 per cent resorted to hiding in the toilet just to get online. Smoking in the loo is, of course, old hat.

Loos are big business, by the way. Last year, a World Toilet Summit was held in New Delhi with more than 40 countries participating. It was promoted by the Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation (WTO). Incidentally, the WTO also has a Toilet College in Singapore.

The WTO is taking the big view of bathrooms. At a micro level — that of the individual corporation — hear out Gerry Crispin, principal of MMC Group, an international staffing consultant: “A good leader doesn’t have to spend his or her time cleaning the restroom. But clearly, if the restroom is dirty, that would be an indication to get the hell out. It says something about the management, as well as the employees who choose to be there.”

There are more ways than one to find out if a job stinks.

COMFORT BREAKS:-

Recommended number of office loos
People at work ………………No of toilets…………..No of washbasins

Women or unisex
1-5………………………………………. 1………………………… 1
6-25………………………………………2……………………… ..2
26-50………………………………….. 3……………………….. 3
51-75…………………………………….4…………………………4
76-100…………………………………..5………………………… 5
Men
1-15……………………………………….1…………………………. 1
16-30…………………………………….2…………………………. 1
31-45……………………………………..2…………………………. 2
46-60……………………………………..3…………………………..2
61-75………………………………………3…………………………. 3
76-90…………………………………….4……………………………3
91-100…………………………………. 4…………………………..4

.
Source: Health and Safety Executive

Sweet smell

Preparing for an interview is not like preparing for a date. I had one interview with a woman who doused herself with perfume (the same perfume my ex-girlfriend used to wear) right before stepping into the small interview booth. The perfume was overpowering and brought back bad memories.

Tongue-tied

“My number one interviewing pet peeve is an applicant who won’t talk,” says the interviewer of client services at a software company. “I try to ask open-ended questions and prod for longer answers, but no luck. I’ve even mentioned to a few that I need more information so I can get an idea of where they are coming from — still no luck. I always end the interview saying, now it’s your turn to ask questions, and still no luck; they don’t have any. Oh well — next!”

Draw the line

“Candidates who ramble on are the ones who get to me,” says the interviewer. “Last week, I was interviewing a candidate and asked her a question. She talked for 45 minutes straight. I had to say, ‘Let’s wrap this up’. I stood up while she continued to talk. I walked to the door of the office and opened it. She left, but continued to talk while walking out of the door.” The lesson? Candidates should stay focussed, and answer the question asked in less than two to three minutes.

Spot on

“Typically, candidates are simply too intimidated by the process,” says another interviewer. “Asking, clarifying or replying to follow-up questions shows that the candidate is confident and thinking about the whole picture instead of enduring an interrogation.” It is important for candidates to think analytically and logically while answering questions. He should prepare before hand the likely questions he may be asked and brush up on his field of study. It helps to speak with people who have appeared for interviews at the company to which you have applied.

All eyes

People who do not make any eye contact during an interview irritate the interviewer. “I realise some people are shy, but to never look at me once — they look down, around, everywhere, but not at me for the entire interview. I find that extremely annoying. I also tend to distrust someone who will not look at me when I’ve asked a question.” If you are uncomfortable looking into someone’s eyes, look at his “third eye”, just above and between the person’s two eyes. Never try to avert the interviewer’s eyes as you may end up losing a job offer.

Magic word

“Poor communications skills really get to me,” says the interviewer. “What I mean by this is not merely their language fluency, but more about the use of language. Slang words and streetspeak just don’t have a place in business environments. Also, candidates who say ‘um’, ‘like’ and ‘uh’ between every other word lose my attention very quickly.”

Honesty counts

One major complaint among recruiters is when a candidate is not completely truthful. Small lies are all too common in the world of recruitment. This includes not being completely forthcoming with relevant information, embellishing accomplishments, hiding jobs or leading the process on with no intention of ever following through. Building trust during the interview is the key to getting an offer.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

……

The job interview was going along fine. The interviewer seemed satisfied. The candidate thought he had clinched it when out of his pocket fell a copy of Job Interviews for Dummies.

It was no accident. The job seeker had done it deliberately to introduce the topic of how much he wanted the job and how hard he had prepared for the interview. He thought it would win him an extra brownie point or two.

You never can tell. In certain cases — in a traditional public sector organisation, say — it may have. But in a fairly modern IT company, it didn’t cut any ice. “The book said that job interviews are not real life but theatrical events,” rued the candidate later. “I was just trying to use the right props.”

Job Interviews for Dummies has a lot of advice. But it begins by saying that interviews today are no longer what they used to be. “Interviewing used to mean that a couple of people sat down in a room and swapped information,” says the book. “Now you may face a panel of 12 eyes that glare at you all at once, or you may be invited to a nice lunch to see if you are so uncouth as to go home wearing it.”

For jobs where you are expected to entertain people, table manners are a must. In certain places, you are interviewed over drinks. Fresh lime sodas, mocktails and such small beer start at a disadvantage.

Charting these treacherous shoals is difficult, which is why there are so many books on the subject. What the books obviously don’t tell you is that only a fraction of what they expound is relevant to any given interview. “The truth is that every interview is different,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “Today, much of the information that was sought in the earlier interview process is already available to the interviewer. External agencies do the culling of candidates. The company is not looking for your qualifications; that’s a given. All they want to know is how you will fit into the organisation and how long you will stay. Each interview is thus very different. There are no rules or recipes for success.”

More universal are the rules for failure. A recent survey of 3,000 US hiring managers and HR personnel by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com has come out with a Top 10 list of things not to do. It makes for interesting reading:

• Candidate answered cell phone and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because it was a “private” conversation.

• Candidate told the interviewer he wouldn’t be able to stay with the job long because he thought he might get an inheritance if his uncle died — and his uncle wasn’t “looking too good”.

• Candidate asked the interviewer for a ride home after the interview.

• Candidate smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room.

• Candidate said she could not provide a writing sample because all of her writing had been for the CIA and it was “classified”.

• Candidate told the interviewer he was fired for beating up his last boss.

• When applicant was offered food before the interview, he declined saying he didn’t want to line his stomach with grease before going out drinking.

• A candidate for an accounting position said she was a “people person” not a “numbers person”.

• Candidate flushed the toilet while talking to interviewer during a phone interview.

• Candidate took out a hair brush and brushed her hair.

Another hair-raising story: a candidate insisted his mom sit in during the interview as she knew him best. She answered all the questions on his behalf. And (you guessed it) she got the job.

THE SIX DEADLY SINS :-

Mistakes you should never make during a job interview:

1) Lack of research
It drives the interviewer nuts if the jobseeker knows nothing about the company.

2) Communication
You have to get your point of view across. No monosyllables, please. But no bloomers either.

3) How you act
If you answer your cellphone during an interview, kiss the job goodbye.

4) Bad attitude
Lack of enthusiasm or over-confidence can kill your chances.

5) Deportment
Yes, you love that T-shirt and pair of jeans. Not everybody does. Certainly not the company you hope to work with.

6) Dishonesty
Don’t ever lie about your academic qualifications or job history. These days, there is too much information about you freely available.

Click to see also:->

Interactive Ethics Training
Job Hunting
Questions To Ask Employers
Interviewing

Listening Tips

Tips For Success!

Source: Adapted from The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Interview Questions and Answers by Sharon McDonnell

Use this opportunity to be absolutely objective about the situation. Were you really prepared, or were you just “winging” — that is guessing — the answers? Could you have been more effective with additional practice? What should you do to prepare for your next interview?

One of the most helpful things you can do post-interview is to let go of your self-recriminations by venting. After the interview is over, go to your car, or drop in at a coffee shop, and take pen to paper to write about what just happened. Just let your thoughts pour out. When you’ve finished, put the writing away, and let go!

After a few hours, or a day, when you have had a chance to relax and digest the information, go back and revisit what you wrote.

What can you learn from this experience? What will you do differently next time?

Rate your performance:-

On a scale ranging from one to ten (ten being high) how do you rate yourself?

• My overall feeling of satisfaction with this interview.

• Did I arrive on time?

• How was my introduction — was my greeting / handshake / posture up to the mark?

• Was I confident and professional at all times?

• How did I speak — did I speak calmly and clearly? Was I overly aggressive?

• How was my non-verbal communication (body language)?

• Did I handle the difficult questions with ease, or did I fumble?

• Did I build a good rapport with the interviewer?

• Did I talk about my strengths?

• Did I talk about my weakness in a positive manner?

Score card:
How did you do? Are you satisfied with your rating? If you’ve rated yourself in the five to 10 range for most of the questions, you’re probably doing all right.

Look carefully at the questions with lower ratings — what were the problems? You may want to consider practising with someone so that you can obtain a more objective feedback on your answers and style.

No matter how your ratings added up, remember that some of what goes on in an interview, and behind the scenes, is not in your control. So don’t be depressed if you don’t get that job despite doing well in the interview. Also, keep in mind that giving interviews is a matter of practiced skill.

If you didn’t do as well as you would have liked this time, work on your problem areas. Try scripting and practising difficult questions or issues.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

By looking objectively at your performance, and learning from your successes and mistakes, you are likely to be more prepared the next time. As a result, you will become more confident and accomplished at giving interviews. You will also become more objective in choosing whether the job is right for you — not just whether you are right for the job.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

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You can never be sure, on arriving for an interview, what techniques will be used to assess your suitability and this will very much depend on the interviewer. There are, however, some contributing factors which may give you an idea of what to expect.

Is this a first, second or third stage interview?

Make sure that you are aware of how many stages there are in the recruitment process. If there are two or three, then it is likely that the seniority of the interviewer will increase in each “round”. This will not always be the case, but in many instances, the first will be more informal, as you get to know the person you would be working with, or it could be a screening interview, conducted by an HR professional. This could be as informal as a chat over coffee or a tour around the office. The second and third stages may be more structured, conducted firstly by the individual you will be reporting to and finally the key decision maker.

Is this a small company or a multinational?

Smaller organisations tend to have a one stage process and the interview often centres around your ability to fit in with the current team, although this isn’t always the case.

Larger organisations may include a number of interview stages and even testing or group exercises and you may find these interviews more formal and structured.

So what can you expect when you attend an interview? There are three main types of interviews and you may find the interviewer uses all three to get a much broader picture of who you are. However, common to all three techniques are the group of questions which relate specifically to their organisation or industry.

These questions are almost always included and are intended to test that you’ve done your homework and not only understand what they do, but also understand the regulatory, industry and legislative landscape in which they operate. The more senior the position, the more in-depth and detailed the answers will need to be.

Competency-based interviews

This technique has become more and more popular and allows the interviewer to get a feel for how you would deal with specific instances and enables them to determine that you can do the job. These questions will centre on the skills looked for in the role, so by doing your homework, you should be able to determine what type of questions you will be asked.

The key to answering a competency-based question, is structure. The interviewer is looking for a very specific response and in order to provide this apply the STAR technique to your answer.

Situation (S) — Put the example in context. In most cases they will require an example that relates to the workplace.

Task (T) — Explain what the problem or situation was.

Action (A) — What did you do to resolve or address the situation and how did you approach this?

Result (R) — What was the result and how did this impact others or the organisation?

One key point to remember when using the STAR technique is to always refer to actions taken by you and not by a team.

The interviewer is not interested in what your previous company did in any given situation, but rather what your specific role was in any given example.

Stress interview

If you have ever watched The Apprentice, you will have seen this technique in action. It is a rather outdated interview style, but can be used to test a candidate’s strength of character and ability to function under pressure. The interviewer may fire questions in quick succession at you, often trying to see whether your answers differ from those previously given.

They may ask you difficult, embarrassing or even offensive questions to gauge your response or they may try techniques such as appearing bored or disinterested in your answers.

In this instance, you just need to remember that they are trying to get the same information as any other interviewer. Keep calm, answer the questions to the best of your ability and keep your answers consistent.

©The Daily Telegraph

They blame grade inflation — 57 per cent of students graduated with a first or 2:1 last year — and the wide variation in standards between universities.

Some firms and public services recruiting the highest number of graduates are also introducing verbal and numerical reasoning tests.

“Degree qualifications are not a reliable indicator of this aptitude, unfortunately” one recruiter told the annual Graduate Recruitment Summer Review.

More than nine in 10 employers said they believed psychometric testing of such attributes as logical thinking, ability under pressure and “emotional intelligence” was a useful way of assessing candidates. “Soft skills” such as leadership, communication and decision making are increasingly giving candidates the edge.

With an average of 29 applicants for every job, however, employers continue to use degree classifications as a way of selecting those they wish to take further.

Almost two thirds, 64.1 per cent, said they would only consider graduates with a 2:1 or above. A quarter said they required a 2:2 or above.

A third do not take the class of degree at face value but look back at what candidates achieved at A-level or its equivalent.

Carl Gilleard, the chief executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters, which conducted the survey of 200 leading companies, said employers were becoming more accepting of 2:2 degrees, realising that the days of academic criteria “as the be-all and end-all are long gone”.

“There is less faith in the ability of degree classes to accurately mirror the graduate competencies that matter.

“Research has shown that there is little consistency not only between the standard of degree awarded between universities but between subjects at the same university.”’

The blanket requirement for a good class of degree was under review at some companies because it failed to distinguish between someone with a 2:2 from Oxford or Cambridge and another candidate with a first from one of the newer universities, Gilleard said.

But the most significant change in recruitment policies was the use of psychometric tests to assess a candidate’s ability or personality by means of questions devised by psychologists. Above all, recruiters were seeking to assess numeracy, numerical reasoning and logic followed by literacy and verbal reasoning.

Employers are also looking for “soft skills” such as communication, leadership, time management and “emotional intelligence”, says the report.

Employers are looking more carefully at “the journey” towards the final degree, such as extracurricular activities and how motivated a student was at university.

“In this increasingly competitive global economy they want individuals who are going to grow within the organisation and make a difference and that is not always reflected in the class of degree,” Gilleard said.

Source:THE DAILY TELEGRAPH