Simulated Interviews: A Pointless Exercise?

Simulated Interviews = Hell.

When I first heard that I would be expected to do simulated interviews as part of my course, I panicked. I thought, this will be a nightmare, what could be worse than simulated interviews with your peers?! I felt they would be a pointless exercise just causing unnecessary stress and would result in a very awkward couple of hours, for something that would ultimately be useless.  Therefore, I didn’t prepare as I should’ve, or taken it quite as seriously as others. But, following Boud’s Model of Reflection, I am going to reflect on my experience and analyse whether it was a pointless exercise, or if it was beneficial.

Experience

My preparation was very minimal because I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I did start off by choosing my job description, settling on this English Teacher position in Darling, County Durham, however, I didn’t give much thought to this choice, choosing it for no particular reason other than it was in the field I wanted to focus on and it was different to the others in my group. Looking back I probably would have chosen one that involved some drama aspects as it would have given me more opportunities to talk about my experience in that field. I also would have analysed the description, possibly following this article on ‘How to prepare for an interview’, looking particularly at their idea of ‘reverse thinking,’ by thinking;

• “What are the employers looking for?”
• “How will they assess you?”
• “What questions are they most likely to ask to help them judge these things?”
• “How can you convince them that you are the best fit for the job and organisation?”
• “What evidence have you got to support that?”

I should have taken this and applied evidence for each answer because during my interview I found it difficult to remember different examples off the top of my head, which impacted my answers significantly. But in reality I spent around five or ten minutes having a think about questions I could ask my peers, using a few googles of “English Teaching Job Interview Questions,” as my prompt, and just wondered briefly about how I might answer these.

On the day, things were a lot more casual than I expected, but I found that my peers had spent significantly more time preparing than I had, so while the environment was relaxed and even fun in some ways, I wasn’t able to enjoy it. I had to catch up, so I began to brainstorm (and write down), the examples I could draw from for any questions they may ask me, dreading and praying they wouldn’t ask me anything specific to the school I was ‘applying’ for because that was another area in which my preparation was lacking.

Reflection

Reflecting back on this experience now, I’m frustrated with myself that I didn’t avail of this opportunity fully and that I wasted so much of my own time. But I feel despite this I have come out with some new skills, a better understanding of the process as well as some newfound confidence.

At the time, to add to my stress we were encouraged to submit anonymous feedback on each interviewee, including ourselves (what could be worse), which I thought would amount to nothing and would just result in overly positive feedback rather than any constructive criticism. But it surprised me in being a really useful reflective activity and is one of the main things I’ve taken from this experience, particularly because of my personal feedback;

“I think I answered the questions relatively well, but I feel I was repeating myself a little too much.”

This turned out to align directly with what the others had to say, giving me the confidence in knowing that I wasn’t alone in thinking that, and this also encouraged me to work directly on that issue. Furthermore, I got some constructive feedback that I wasn’t expecting, as one of my classmates pointed out that I often kept eye contact with the person asking the question rather than answering to the whole panel, which was something I didn’t notice I was doing and have since been working on.

Outcomes

A few days after the simulated interviews I was invited to a real interview!! Yay me! And this time I learned from my mistakes and prepared, looking at online videos for advice and studying the job description scrutinously to deduce what exactly they were looking for in a candidate;

• Enthusiasm,
• Approachability,
• Experience in customer service,
• Knowledge of politics,
• Familiarity with the company,
• And an understanding of targets.

So I took my time and thought of a multitude of different experiences to draw from to prove this; looking at moments in my work experience that I can spin, both positive and negative interactions I’ve had with customers and how I tackled them, and some other general examples I felt confident I could squeeze into any question the interviewer may have. I also looked up possible interview questions within customer service and planned some answers for these. Specifically, I found that in many customer service interviews the question; “What does customer service mean to you?” often comes up, so I made sure to have a very eloquent answer for this, and I was actually asked it! I was also asked how I would respond to criticism, to which I responded about this exact experience and how I was able to evaluate my own feedback and that of my peers and use it to prepare better for this interview. 

So, was this a ‘Pointless Exercise?’

I would now argue that it wasn’t and that it was actually extremely helpful in preparing for real-world interviews, having forced me to realize, through trial and error just how important this preparation was and helping me to learn just how to prepare. And finally giving me the tools and confidence to analyse and evolve my abilities so that through time and practice I can continue to better my interview skills.

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Bibliography

Boud, David, et al. Reflection, Turning Experience into Learning. Kogan Page, 1985.

“How to prepare for a job interview.” Youtube, uploaded by Utrecht University, 19/9/2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enD8mK9Zvwo&ab_channel=UtrechtUniversity

Indeed Editorial Team. “Top Customer Service Interview Questions (With Sample Answers).” Indeed, 6/5/2021, https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/customer-service-interview-questions.

Jobserve. Available at: https://education.jobserve.com/job-in-Darlington-County-Durham-GBR/ENGLISH-TEACHER-8b12ec43fc798cd8e1/v3/

Hardavella, Georgia et al. “How To Prepare For An Interview”. NCBI, 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5298161/.