The devil's in the details

I attended a first round job interview on Tuesday of this week with a management consulting company. This stage came after I had successfully passed the online testing round (consisting of an SHL numerical test and Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal). The interview was around 45 minutes long, and was competency-based. This post is to share my thoughts with you about interview techniques, following my experience at this interview.

Details, details, details. Unfortunately for me, this position is not a graduate role. They are only seeking to fill one or two positions, which already puts me at a disadvantage with my lack of experience. The HR person that I had my interview with had a list of questions to ask me that circled around the following main areas:

1. Analytical ability and problem solving/dealing with complex situations or data
2. Teamworking ability and skills/Leadership
3. Building relationships

I managed to successfully prepare to answer these questions by conjuring up all the relevant experiences I had in these areas. However, what I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of detail I would need. Let me give you an example of what I mean:

Base Question: Give an example of a time when you successfully built a relationship with a client/customer?
Detail Question: How exactly do you think you managed to build the relationship, what did you do?

This is something that MUST be thought about before going into an interview, that I had not experienced until now. I had already known about having examples of where I had demonstrated a skill but I had not prepared to explain exactly how I carried out a task or my methodologies. The answer the interviewer is looking for is whether you have built up your own methodology for building relationships. Has your experience allowed you to make observations on what is and is not successful for building relationships. Another example:

Base Question: Give an example of a time you had to work under pressure.
Detail Question: How exactly do you think you managed to handle working under pressure?

I found myself being hesitant on such questions. Not because I was lying, because I wasn’t, but it is just something that is rarely spoken of. We can all make friends and build relationships but do we ever vocalise what exactly had to be done in order to build these relationships and make these friends? Now you have to.

The conclusion of this is that you have to know the details of every example you give and you have to know how you get things done. Therefore, you have to analyse your own behaviour, and also general human behaviour. For example you can build relationships by:

1. Listening to the customer/colleague
2. Using your  (excellent) memory to remember their preferences/dislikes for next time you speak to them
3. Remembering what you say to them so you don’t repeat yourself too much

These are general things that humans do when making friends or building relationships with people. So for every experience you have like time management, team work, leadership, start thinking of how you worked well in the team and how you led the team and how you managed that time. Just another thing to think about!