Parvana Strategic Sourcing

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 IT Industry.

What is 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.

• "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?"

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.

• Do arrive a little early and allow adequate time to find parking, traffic jams etc
• Do turn off your cell phone
• Do dress up a little - chinos and a shirt with a collar is pretty standard for men. Knee length skirts or dresses or smart trousers are usual for women. Jeans, shorts, tshirts, sandals etc are frowned upon in a few companies (even in this day and age)
• Do have a firm handshake
• Do make eye contact throughout the interview and try not fidget too much
• Do find out as much as you can about the position, the company and it's needs. This is good information to have in order to show how your background meets their needs. Google is always a useful tool for this.
• Always know who will be interviewing you and get the correct pronunciation of their name/s
• Do try where possible to get as much information about the actual role they will be talking to you about before your interview, it is a good idea to know team size, management structure and where you'd potentially fit in.
• Do read through your cv before your interview - dates become fuzzy after a while.
• Do speak clearly about your achievements and roles in the past as well as what your aspirations are and the value will can add
• Don't slag off your current or previous employers no matter how bad they were.
• Once the interviewer has finished, do feel free to ask your own questions should you have any
• And do thank the interviewer for the time they have given to your meeting.