During the conversation, the recruiter uses a number of methods to successfully match your professional and competence profile to the Clients’ expectations. They take into account not only typical professional skills that you have acquired as part of your past experience, but also the competences that you have been able to develop, the motivation to change your job and many other factors that will affect the mutual satisfaction of both parties — the prospective employee and the employer. It is a good match between the Candidate and the sought-out role, organisational culture of the company and values that is the most important objective of the recruitment process and that determines further development of both the company and the employee.
A professionally conducted job interview should consist of several stages. The first one is professional enquiry, during which you can expect typical substantive questions regarding your professional qualifications. Examples of professional questions:
- What was your role in your last job?
- Who did you report the results of your activities to?
- What were you accountable for?
The next stage of the job interview is competence (behavioural) enquiry, during which the recruiter focuses on the competences resulting from your experience and specific actions taken so far in your professional life. Depending on the job and the Clients’ expectations, the questions may pertain to leadership or social competences, your business awareness, decision-making and many others issues.
During the behavioural enquiry, it is important to focus not on what the Candidate has achieved, but on how they have achieved it; the questions typically concern specific situations that took place at work. Here are some examples of competence-related questions:
- Please tell me about a situation when you showed initiative.
- What did you do at the time? Why did you make this particular decision?
- What was the result?
Another very important element of the interview is the question about your professional plans for the future. What motivates you to act? What role would you like to pursue in the long term? This is important because it allows you to identify and match your expectations to the future employer’s offer.
Undoubtedly, a professional job interview nowadays is not only the time you allocate to presenting yourself before the recruiter, but also time during which you can learn a lot about yourself. The recruiter’s skilfully asked question offer an opportunity for you to learn about your competences, areas for future development, professional ambitions and motivation.