How I Never Failed A Job Interview

Albeit I’ve only ever had 3 interviews… but that still makes me 3 for 3.

Stop wasting time making the same mistakes over and over, just to get rejected again by every apprenticeship provider.

In this article you’ll find out how I got accepted to the first Degree Apprenticeship scheme I ever applied for.

And this isn’t gonna be some generic advice like: smile, shake hands, use names etc. Every competent candidate already knows that.

The first stage of the application process for my scheme was an online test. The questions were multiple choice but extremely cognitively demanding. It was testing for things like pattern recognition, memory retention, verbal reasoning and a bit of maths too.

You can find sample questions online if you think you might need to practise this style of assessment before the real thing.

I don’t really have anything clever to say about this stage apart from take as many as you can.

Although I was able to fluke my way through this at my company, technically I have failed at this stage before when applying for a part time job at ASDA during sixth form haha. But since I didn’t get through to the interview i’m not counting it towards my KD.

The second stage of the application process for my degree apprenticeship scheme was a telephone interview. This is always challenging because it’s harder to connect with someone over the phone since you can’t make eye contact or have your body language read.

To mitigate this lack of connection, you have to tell stories. I recently read Unleash The Power of Story Telling by Rob Biesenbach, and I highly recommend it for prospective candidates.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was using the tips in this book to connect with the interviewer, despite not being able to see each other.

I can’t remember exactly what the question was, but I remember telling the interviewer about the time that I had a safeguarding concern for a younger student, who I used to give 1-2-1 support for when I was at school.

Emotion fuels stories. If you want to trigger emotion, you have to show emotion.

I remember feeling hesitant to tell the story at the time because I wasn’t sure whether it would be TMI for a job interview, and I almost immediately regretted telling it because of the darker tone that the conversation naturally adopted.

But I must have done something right… I got an email a few days later to say I had got through to the next stage.

Whilst this approach worked for me, please don’t take this to extreme and trauma dump on the phone to some poor interviewer. Bro is a salaried employee, not your therapist.

Another tip is to use the interviewers name - a lot. I already admitted I can’t remember a single question he asked… but I do remember for a fact that his name was Ben.

A person’s name is their favourite word in the world.

The last stage of the process was an online virtual assessment centre. I was 1 of 9 candidates who made it all the way to the end and became apprentices. So how did I do it?

The assessment centre is structured into four parts: a video interview, a group activity, a practical exercise, and a role play.

The video interview is what it says on the tin. I knew they were probably going to ask me generic questions like ‘what do you know about the company’, so I prepared some answers on sticky notes and stuck them on the wall behind my laptop.

It’s not cheating, I just didn’t want to forget anything… and it’s not like you can’t use sticky notes in real life.

Stats really help here. I remember saying how many employees the company has and why that is beneficial for me seeking employment.

The group activity was slightly trickier, as you have to rely on the competence of your team as well as your own ability. You get given a problem of some kind to solve between you. I think we had a budget that we had to spend on some facilities or whatever.

The trick for this is to lead the discussion by bringing other people into the conversation. Let someone speak first and offer their view, which demonstrates you can be patient and listen to others.

Make sure to get the second contribution in.

Discuss your thoughts on the problem and build on the solution. You might explore a disagreement in perspective but emphasise that it’s a team decision in the end.

Now for the magic… before you stop speaking, say something like “what do you think (insert name here), we haven’t heard from you yet”

It’s an undefeated formula because the assertiveness of the instruction is balanced by the fact that you let someone else speak first. It doesn’t work if you speak first because of course the examiner hasn’t heard from anyone else except you.

Funnily enough, all three of us from that one group in one of many assessment centres got the job. So it’s not like you’re throwing anyone under the bus either.

I found the third stage to be by far the most difficult. Not that it was impossible, but just harder in comparison. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get to speak…

You get an hour to go through what felt like hundreds of papers. Email chains, letters, and other miscellaneous documents. When time is up, you have to summarise the content of the papers and explain the bigger picture, ignoring any irrelevant details.

I heard a lot of people were reading each item from top to bottom, but that is not how you’re supposed to complete this task.

I barely had enough time to skim read through everything, only stopping to highlight important parts. If I had read at my normal pace I wouldn’t have got close to halfway through everything.

Unfortunately there’s no magic to help with this task. It really is testing your ability to concentrate, read fast, and summarise without waffling. I never found out my score for this section but I can have a pretty good guess it wasn’t as high as the others.

I suppose that is a genuine strategy - be so good at the sections you thrive in that the mediocrity of your weaker tasks isn’t noticed.

The fourth and final part was a role play activity. You get about 40 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes for the role play scene.

The context is usually something like a minor conflict e.g. the role player isn’t doing his work on time, causing trouble with colleagues etc.

Something I’ve learned about myself recently is that I thrive in conflict management. There must be a switch in my brain that turns on when my relationships with others are at stake.

I don’t think its an ego thing (although I haven’t ruled it out), but I just go into a state of hyper-focus to try and de-escalate the situation.

For this reason I found the role play activity incredibly easy, and as embarrassed I am to admit - actually quite fun. So fun that I genuinely volunteered to trial the new assessment centre role play activity in my 1st year of the apprenticeship for the new wave of candidates.

My trick for this round is to read the brief intensely. Don’t let any details slide and extrapolate where you can. You can combine this with shock factor to set yourself apart from other candidates. Let me give you an example.

In my brief it said the guy role playing was a fairly close colleague and a middle-aged man.

So what? Well, I treated him like he was my actual colleague. I join the meeting and the very first thing I said was: “alright Dave, how’s the kids mate”.

Of course, the imaginary man might not have had kids, but since i’ve already taken control of the role play, the ball is in his court now to play along.

FYI the assessor will also be in the meeting room with their camera off. Just ignore them as if they weren’t there.

That’s pretty much it - all my secrets to never getting rejected from a job interview.

Would it matter if I did get rejected? Probably not. I’m confident in my ability that given a big enough sample size someone will take me, even if its not my first choice.

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