The 3 'P's of interview success

PageGroup celebrates its 40th birthday this year and over the last 10 years, we have arranged almost 1.5 million interviews for candidates.

Whilst many things have changed – we used to send CVs by post, kept contact details in a rolodex and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t yet a twinkle in his daddy’s eye – one of the constants is that the majority of candidates don’t know how to adequately prepare for an interview.

The first mistake many people make is not setting aside ample time to prepare or even fail to do any preparation. The next challenge is figuring out what to prepare, but how can you possibly prepare when you don’t know what you are going to be asked? This can lead long pauses before answering questions, or irrelevant waffling that doesn’t answer the questions, neither of which makes a good impression on the interviewer.

While there are an infinite number of questions you could be asked at interview, after analysing feedback from interviews from the last decade of my career, I have come to the unscientific conclusion that around 90 per cent of what you will be asked will fall into three main groups – past, people and personal.

Past

Past simply refers to your previous experience. This includes examples of your achievements, qualifications and responsibilities that are relevant to the role, sector or organisation you’re applying to.

People

People should include examples of how you influence and build relationships with superiors, peers, subordinates, customers or external stakeholders. Include some difficult situations in this section.

Personal

Personal attributes should include the things that make you unique; what are your values, qualities and drivers, and reasons they should hire you? Again, have specific examples that demonstrate these.

For each of these categories, think of six specific examples that demonstrates your ability in those areas — six examples will give you enough range to vary your answers.

Now that you have 18 examples in total, structure them in your mind using S.T.A.R.

Situation: where and who with?

Task: What did you have to do?

Action: What specific actions did you take over what time?

Result:  What were the qualitative and quantitative results?

The S.T.A.R. structure helps you give a completed answer that is detailed enough but also concise so prevents you being verbose. When asked a question all you have to do is decided whether it is predominantly related to your previous experience, influencing people or your personal attributes.

At times, the question may require you to overlap your answers — for example, how a personal trait helped to influence the people around you — so you would need to consider how some of your 18 examples can be related to each other.

Doing research

Now, research the company and the person(s) you are meeting. information is easy to obtain so there is no excuse not to know about the company. Look at their website, news stories, and financial accounts, the LinkedIn profiles of who you are meeting and other employees and company history.  Look at their company and values if published and check that some of your examples demonstrate these.

Prepare questions for them, again I would have at least six, so if some are answered in the course of the interview you will still have more to ask.  Use open questions that relate to strategy, challenges and culture. Avoid asking about salary and benefits as this can be done outside of the interview process. 

Finally you should practise. Use someone you trust to ask you questions and give you honest feedback on delivery, confidence, body language and eye contact.

So once you have done all of the above you will be able to picture 18 examples that can be used to answer a variety of questions, make you feel more confident as you have prepared and cut down thinking time and silence gaps in interview; five seconds can seem like a long time when someone is staring at you waiting for an answer.  

What we discussed above covers 90 per cent of what you may be asked, if you are asked more random questions about what animal you would be just go with what comes to mind.  If you are interviewing for a role that requires a particular ability e.g. analytical, creativity or sales, then you may be asked to solve a problem or come up with an idea that demonstrated these. Try to speak with someone that works in the company or your recruitment consultant to find out what style of interview that interviewer may use so you can prepare.  

Related articles you may find interesting

• Common interview questions
• Tell me about yourself: How to answer one of the most dreaded interview questions
• Tell me about yourself: How to answer one of the most dreaded interview questions
• What to expect in your second interview

This article was contributed by Mark Beacom, director of housing recruitment at Michael Page UK.