Job Interview Preparation for refugee professionals :
How and why to present your answers
Please find below some advice and some Youtube interview clips
Advice
An interview is an interpersonal communication exercise, exchanging questions and answers about professional skills and experience. Employers and Professionals with refugee background can sometimes miscommunicate. For example,
Common interview miscommunications:
- ¬ Employers may assume that they and the candidate share the same assumptions about promoting oneself at an interview
- ¬ In fact, many professionals who are refugees are uncomfortable with this, preferring to remain modest and unassuming
- ¬ Refugees often don’t directly answer the question but appear to employers to go around it, in a general way, or talk about things that are not what the employer is expecting
- ¬ The employer is expecting an answer that directly addresses the relevant criteria in the person specification that the question is drawn from
- ¬ The candidate often doesn’t make that connection clear in their answer
- ¬ The employer may also be unclear about why the candidate is applying for this job. Especially if their overseas experience is at a higher level. It is the job of the candidate to explain why they want this job in a way that persuades the employer.
- ¬ Otherwise, the employer may wrongly decide that the candidate isn’t motivated enough or interested enough in this position and selects someone else.
It is rarely a case of ‘discrimination’. More often, it is a case of miscommunication. The candidate must take responsibility for preparing ahead and for persuading the employer of their motivations. The employer should have trained the interviewers in how to interview fairly. Most employers would not spend time and money on interviewing a candidate if they had no intention of seriously assessing them at that interview. Make the most of the opportunity to compete.
Preparation for the interview:
You have to be fully prepared about:
a) The requirements of the job. You should be so familiar with the person specification and job description that you can almost remember them both. Of course, you remember what you wrote on your application! You can either rephrase what you wrote on your application or you can prepare additional examples. All the interview questions should be prepared from the Person Specification so you can predict and practice most of the questions that should come up. eg
Person Specification: We require someone who has project management experience
Likely Interview question: Tell us about a time when you successfully managed a project.
b) Aims and activities and ‘personality’ of the organisation. You should arrive with information and attitudes that are as relevant and targeted as possible to the job and organisation. For example, if they are a public or not for profit service (eg a credit union, local government or a housing association, then you must talk about your experience in terms of commitment to an efficient public service. If they are a large, private engineering company, then you must talk about your experience in terms of contributing to the profitability of a business.
Presentation
Promote yourself ! It’s not about showing off. It’s about demonstrating that you are the most suitable candidate in a competitive application process. Your message is that you are the best candidate because your profile best matches the person specification. Your answers systematically talk about that. You have prepared – by predicting the questions from the person specification. Watch the Youbute clips for more about that.
Youtube clips
Virtual Practice Job interview. There are 10 questions. Go through the 10 questions (by clicking next – you may need to play around with the tool to keep finding ‘next’. Try opening it in 2 tabs so that you can keep going to the next question easily) It’s worth doing all 10 questions and listening to/reading their insights about the range of possible answers. It gives you a real insight into what many UK interviewers are expecting, in terms of their competency based selection systems. They have a set of skills and experience and attitudes that they are ticking off, either on paper or in their heads. It’s your responsibility to answer the questions so that you give them the kind of information they are looking for.
Look at the links under the youtube clips. They are very useful. For example:
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