Simulated Interviews

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been delving into some research on future employment opportunities alongside my peers. This has been a great educational experience overall as I feel like I have a much better understanding of where my degree and experience can take me in the future, and I’ve also gained an insight into the future careers of those around me, which has been a rewarding experience in itself. In this blog update, I’ll be using Borton’s Model to reflect on this experience, which involved carrying out and sharing job research with my classmates and coming up with a mock interview session where we asked and answered questions related to our chosen career path.

At the beginning of this process, I did some research into jobs related to audio engineering, as this is my main focus in terms of starting my post-graduate career path. I discovered a job posting for an in-house sound engineer at the recording studio and music production house Black Lodge, whose clients have included Mabel and Johnny Depp, as well as working with industry clients like Universal and Sony. This job really called out to me as not only has the studio worked with incredibly successful artists and media industries, but it required skills in production as well as sound engineering, which would allow me to apply my own experience in a range of different ways, rather than strictly the engineering side of things. The job demands a ten-hour working day and fluency in Logic Pro X. As someone with extensive experience using Logic Pro X and who has already spent over a year working ten-hour shifts through my job at the SSE Covid Testing site, this seemed perfect for me in every aspect. I was excited to have a chat about this job with my peers, as it helped build my confidence through understanding that there are valuable career opportunities out there which need people that fit my exact description, which is a really heartening thing for someone in a career path where jobs are often viewed as precarious and hard to come by. This is definitely going to influence my decisions going forward in my career, as I won’t be afraid to reach out and put myself forward for a range of job opportunities around the UK or even beyond, as I have all the experience needed to begin a starting position in many of these high-end recording studios.

When it came to the mock interview session, everybody was calm and prepared, so we were able to have a lot of fun with the whole process and really challenge each other with the questions we prepared. We would nominate one person at a time to sit for the interview process, and this person would leave the room for five minutes as the rest of us prepared our questions and had a chance to discuss how we would tackle the interview. We divided out our pre-prepared questions in a way that would allow us to ask a diverse range of questions and get the absolute most out of the interviewee. This worked exceptionally well. Due to the relaxed and supportive environment, the quality of the prepared questions and the willingness of everybody to take part, Abbey, Peter, Conor, Ross, Emma and I all felt that the process was really rewarding and allowed us to get an idea of what a future interview process would be like. I felt that I prepared some challenging questions, such as asking Ross, who was being interviewed for a sound engineering position, how he likes to start off when developing a song for a client, and asking Emma, who was being interviewed as a roadie sound engineer, if she had any experience working outdoor events. For Ross, this allowed him to delve into the process of mixing music for a client and share both his passion and expertise with the interviewers. For Emma, my question allowed her to show off her flexibility in terms of being experienced in dealing with the challenges of both indoor and outdoor events. I feel that this prepared me for my own set of questions as I understood the importance of expressing my flexibility, expertise, past experience and overall passion and enthusiasm for my chosen career path. This will be a huge help going forward when I face real life interviews.

When facing my own mock interview, Peter asked me how I would set up for a rock recording session versus a jazz recording session, a question which took me by surprise as it would require me to provide both detailed knowledge of recording various genres and also share my own past experiences. This was a great question to be asked due to how much it challenged me, and I was able to give a thorough answer in which I described my decision to record in larger rooms for rock music recordings, and smaller, more intimate settings for jazz recordings, as the quality and size of the room has a big impact on the sound. Emma asked me if I had any experience working in a team for sound recordings, which allowed me to share my experience working with both clients and other engineers and producers in both my work placement and personal projects. I feel like I answered this question with confidence and was able to share not only my experience working with a team, but also describe how working with a team can impact on the recording session through both the advantages and challenges that teamwork can pose. I spoke about how I believe every recording session involves teamwork, as I am always working side by side with a client to create the sound that they’re after and make sure that they’re feeling confident and happy with the process. Overall, I learned a lot from this process as my peers gave me really thorough and detailed feedback about my answers, making me feel confident and prepared in my ability to answer interview questions in a real-life interview situation.

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