How did the interview go?

How did the interview go?

Words by Francis Kahihu (the author is an Organisational Development Practitioner)

kahihucareers@gmail.com

We get very excited when we receive the call inviting us for an interview. Out of the excitement, we seek for anyone who cares to hear us out on the great news we carry until the day of the interview. After the interview, people ask us how the interview was as they seek to encourage us as we await the results.

In most cases however, we are unable to respond with confidence how we thought the interviews went. Here are some tips on how you can tell if an interview went on well.

Were the panelists smiling and nodding as you spoke? This is one of the cues to tell whether there was a level of positive impression with your interview. Body language speaks volumes about the panelists’ perception about you. Think through the body communication of the panelists to tell whether your session may have been exciting to them.

Did you interview last more than 25 minutes? Ideally, the length of time that an interview takes can be used to determine a level of interest that the panel could have had on you. Interview panels have been known to take slightly longer time engaging with candidates with whom they have extra interest in. They follow through some of the issues you speak at the interview alongside what you have indicated in your CV. In such cases, they even require you to narrate how you would handle certain situations if they were presented your way. For candidates that the panelists have little interest in, they rush through the processes so as to create time for the next potential employee.

Did you feel a real connection? There are interviews that you attend and feel like your responses were hitting a hard wall. You leave the interview room feeling like you had been in a quarry extracting hard rock. You actually wondered why the interview took so long. This could be an indication of a lack of a real connection. If you attend an interview and you feel like there was seamless and natural flow between yourself and the panelists, it could just be that your responses might have impressed them and they naturally opened themselves up to you to interact with as real potential colleague. The panel gets real in terms of the questions they ask, making enquiries aimed at supporting you to say more about yourself as opposed to seeking to trick you into dead ends.

However, it does not necessarily flow that if you have had a bomb with an interview panel you will get the job. Recruitment as a process depends on various other factors other than your impression. Remember that the panel would have had to engage several other candidates some of whom may have better skills sets compared to yours. In such cases, failure to clinch the job should not reflect a failure on you since it could be that the panel just found a better match. As you leave the interview room with confidence, stick to your confidence even if the panel does not contact you within the indicated notice period. Keep up your job search until you land the real job. Landing great interviews should not be your end goal, signing the contract should be your joy.