1. Introduction
In today's world attending an interview is not simply a process of turning up, meeting the prospective employer and answering a few questions of yourself, experience to date and career aspirations. There is a vast array of interviewing tools and techniques available to employers and as candidate it is vital that you understand what technique you will experience at your next interview. Detailed below are some of the most common approaches used to recruit staff within the Office Support / Call Centre Industry.
2. Criteria Based Interviewing (CBI)
What is a CBI?
Criteria Based Interviewing focuses on your experiences from current or previous jobs, school / university or volunteer work, in fact just about anything you have done before. The principle of the CBI is that you're past behaviour and performance is the best indicator of your future behaviour and performance. Employers determine the criteria required for the role and ask their questions to gather specific information. Key criteria is varied and set for the required skills, knowledge and abilities of the individual to suit the role. Criteria can cover, Customer Care, Decision Making, Team Player, Problem Solving and Leadership. Answers to the CBI should be specific and not general, tell a story about the situation, what you did and what was the final outcome. The interviewer wants to hear specific examples about you, it can be a challenge thinking of specific examples but it is important to give as many details as you can about the situation.
Sample CBI Questions:
Tell me about a difficult problem that you have had to resolve in your current / past role.
Describe a time when you identified a problem that would otherwise have gone un-noticed?
What was the best idea that you have ever sold to your colleagues or a customer?
Remember the interviewer wants to hear about you and your actions - Situation Action Result
3. Biographical interviews
In biographical interviews, the interviewer reads your resume and talks to you about your history from your education though to your various jobs, discussing them in turn. A biographical interview can be a good opportunity to show the range of your talents and experience and to reveal your personality, but can mean that you are unable to focus on your skills and experience that are most relevant to the position for which you are `applying. It is important to manage the situation so that you communicate this important information.
Assessment Centres
An assessment centre is not a physical location. It describes an approach. Traditionally an assessment centre consists of a variety of exercises designed to assess a set of personal competencies against set criteria.
Assessment centres typically involve the candidates completing a range of exercises that simulate the activities carried out in the target job. Various combinations of these exercises and sometimes other assessment methods like psychometric testing and interviews are used to assess particular competencies in individuals. The theory behind this is that if one wishes to predict future job performance then the best way of doing this is to get the individual to carry out a set of tasks which accurately sample those required in the job and are as similar to them as possible. The particular competencies used will depend upon the target job but one will often find competencies such as relating to people; resistance to stress; planning and organising; motivation; adaptability and flexibility; problem solving; leadership; communication; decision making and initiative. There are numerous possible competencies and the ones that are relevant to a particular job are determined through job analysis.
Assessment Centres are objective and normally attended by a number of prospective candidates at the same time, the length of time spent at Assessment Centres can vary from a couple of hours to a full day.
