Interview Skills 2

Objective: 

Participants will be able to understand and practise talking about their skills,experience and interests in interview

Total Time: 90 Minutes

Material required: NA

Instructor Note:

After practising greetings, introductions and basic etiquette for effective participation in interviews, participants will now practise talking about their skills, experiences, interests and hobbies in the interview setting. This session should make them more confident and ready for interviews.

Opening Protocol:

• Greet the participants

• Take attendance

• In pairs, ask participants to share with each other how they are feeling

• Recap the previous session by asking 1-2 participants to share with the class, what they learnt and did in the previous session

5 Minutes

Opening Activity:

• Ask the participants, “During an interview when you are asked questions about your skills, interests and experience what is the interviewer looking for?”

• Take 2-3 responses

• Tell the learners that in this session they will be practicing how to answer questions about their skills, experience and interests during an interview. 

5 Minutes

Activity 1: An ideal candidate

• Make groups of 4 through a number drill and ask learners to sit with their groups.

• Each group will create a list of skills, interests and experience for an ideal candidate and a candidate who is not suitable for the placement. They can use any group member’s handbook for making this list. They will need to go to activity named “an ideal candidate” for this

• Each box should have a maximum of four points listed.  

• Give them 10 minutes to complete the activity

• Signal the start of the activity and assist struggling candidates 

• Make a note of any common errors encountered 

• Signal the end of the activity after 10 minutes 

• Ask group representatives to sit together for 5 minutes and make a common list on the board

• Relate this common list from the participants with 21st century skills that they are practicing in this course like communication, collaboration, adaptability, learning agility, self management etc.

15 Minutes

Concept discussion:

• Divide the entire class in 2 groups and ask them to open their handbooks

• Ask group 1 to read the section “how to respond to questions about hobbies and interests” and  group 2 to read “how to respond to questions about experience/project/internship”

• Give them 10 minutes to go through the reading material and discuss internally. Tell them that after 10 minutes one representative from each group will summarise the discussion in front of the class

• Get the representatives to summarize one by one and end the activity. When representatives summarise the concept, involve other students by asking questions to check for understanding

15 minutes

Activity 2:

• Divide students in groups of 4

• Give the following instructions for the activity:

• Each group is going to create a panel of interviewers for each other

• The panel will call one interviewee at a time and they will have to introduce themselves followed by talking about their skills, interests and work experience/internship(if applicable).

• Each interviewee will spend 5 minutes for interview

• After a person is done with the interview, the panel will spend 2 minutes in giving him/her feedback

• The groups will swap roles internally and restart the activity till everyone has had a chance to play the roles of an interviewer and interviewee. 

• The panel will score each candidate on the following points from 1-5.

• Confidence

• Body Language 

• Greeting and introduction

• Relevance of Skills to the Job

• Relevance of Interests/hobbies to the Job

• Relevance of Experience to the Job

• Connection established between Skills, interests and experience.

• Signal the start of the activity  

• Make a note of any common errors encountered 

• Signal the end of the activity after all groups have completed the simulation 

35 Minutes

Debrief:

• Have all the students back at a place and ask them to share their experience and common mistakes that they or their group members made. 

• Share your observations and suggestions as well.

• Suggest students to think about their hobbies, interests and past work experience(if any) and articulate that well in the handbook

10 minutes

Closing Protocol: 

• Thank the participants for their time

• Announce the next time you will be visiting them

• Share the topic of the next session

• Collect 1-2 most interesting activity sheets/artefacts from students and show to Nodal officer and institution head after session

• Click pictures of the artefacts for documentation

5 Minutes