{"id":80788,"date":"2014-09-09T11:30:22","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T16:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80788"},"modified":"2014-09-08T20:18:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T01:18:34","slug":"practicing-for-the-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80788","title":{"rendered":"Practicing for the Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Clare Sobotka, Senior Assistant, INALJ Idaho<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Practicing for the Interview<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Clare<\/a>Very few people can eloquently wing an interview. For most of us, polishing our interview skills takes\u00a0repeated practice, usually with a good dose of failure before we can perform well enough to impress\u00a0a hiring committee. Official interviews are the best way to get experience, but practicing beforehand\u00a0allows you to take full advantage of your formal interview. My first piece of advice is: don\u2019t wait until\u00a0right before your first interview to prepare. Set aside some time early in your job hunt to practice\u00a0before you are ever offered a formal interview.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Selecting some questions to study is a starting point. There is quite a bit written on what questions\u00a0you are likely to be asked during an interview, for both library and non-library specific positions. It\u00a0is impossible to determine what exactly you will be asked, but pick ten or so questions that you see\u00a0repeated often online and think about ways to answer them. As an FYI, all but one of my interviews have\u00a0included a variation of the strengths question, such as \u201cwhat are three of your strengths that make you\u00a0uniquely suited for this position\u201d or \u201ctell us about two of your skills that relate to this recruitment.\u201d You\u00a0may or may not want to write out answers; I like to brainstorm by writing mine in paragraph format,\u00a0then summarizing that as bullet points to review later. Keep in mind that you will want to revisit these\u00a0questions before each interview, and that your answers may change over time. In addition to practicing\u00a0standard questions, I recommend writing down some examples to give in case you are asked behavioral\u00a0interview questions<\/a>. Was there a time you expertly handled a difficult patron or provided outstanding\u00a0customer service? Write down several examples for each scenario.<\/p>\n

Mulling over interview questions in your head is only half the preparation process. My second piece\u00a0of advice is that you should practice giving answers to interview questions out loud to another\u00a0human being, ideally multiple times.<\/strong> If you are still a student or have access to a career center, go to\u00a0it immediately and schedule a mock interview. If you attend professional conferences and have the\u00a0opportunity to do a mock interview, grab it.<\/p>\n

When a conference or career center is out of reach, do a mock interview with a friend or family\u00a0member. It might lack the authentic edge that an interview with a stranger can give, but any practice\u00a0you can get verbalizing your answers without notes in front of you will help you further organize what\u00a0you want to say. If you think interviewing in front of a group of people may be the worst part of the\u00a0interview process, you can have several friends act as your panel and ask you questions in turn.<\/p>\n

Ideally, for every mock interview you do you receive feedback. What did you do well? What did you\u00a0struggle with? Try to get answers for both, because sometimes the things you think you did poorly\u00a0actually impressed your interviewers, and the things you think you did well or didn\u2019t notice were a\u00a0problem. For me personally, I have learned from other people that I need to expand my answers as I\u00a0tend to give very short replies; while I think I\u2019m being succinct, my interviewers are left without a good\u00a0idea of what I am thinking or who I am as a person. Don\u2019t feel bad if you can\u2019t react to every point of\u00a0Blog Post\u00a0feedback you receive and prepare perfectly for your next interview. Interviewing well is a skill that must\u00a0be developed through experience.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that how well you interview may still not help you go further in the hiring process if the\u00a0hiring committee decides on someone with more experience or whose personality they feel fits the\u00a0organization better. But with interview preparation and experience under your belt, when a job comes\u00a0along that is the right fit, you will increase your chance of landing the position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Clare Sobotka, Senior Assistant, INALJ Idaho Practicing for the Interview Very few people can eloquently wing an interview. For most of us, polishing our interview skills takes\u00a0repeated practice, usually with a good dose of failure before we can perform well enough to impress\u00a0a hiring committee. Official interviews are the best way to get experience,…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":57046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[146,69,5965,3592,5878,3653,4514,5059,111],"class_list":["post-80788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-advice","tag-article","tag-being-interviewed","tag-blog","tag-clare-sobotka","tag-inalj-idaho","tag-interview-tips","tag-preparing-for-interview","tag-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Clare-Sobotka.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-l12","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}