Interview Exercise This exercise, which involves each of you conducting a 10-minute mock interview with one of your classmates, has three parts: • Formulate questions for the interview • Participate in two interviews both as the interviewer and the interviewee • Write a memo to the person whom you interviewed, offering feedback on his/her interview style Formulate Questions Exchange resumes. Each person should spend a few minutes discussing the kind of job he/she would interview for. (You might want to describe the job for which you wrote your cover letter.) Come up with a list of 8 to 12 questions you want to ask the person whom you will interview. Use the suggestions found in the handout, “Some Tips for Successful Interviews,” in your course packet (p. 185). Those questions are divided into education, other activities, work history, information about the person; plan on questions from each of those categories. Think about whether you want to do a resume-based or behavioral interview, and create questions accordingly. Conduct the Interview Each interview should be 10 minutes. When you are the interviewer, observe the interviewee’s performance so that you can give him/her feedback. Here are some things you should look for: • Did the person appear confident, enthusiastic and energetic? • Did the person answer questions succinctly and clearly? • Did he/she provide enough detail to make his/her answers persuasive? • Was there evidence the person did his/her “homework” about the company and the position? • Did the interviewee attempt to control the process at any time? • If you gave the person a chance to ask questions about the position, were those questions reasonable, intelligent and well informed? After the interview is complete, each person should take a minute or two to record his/her impressions. Write a Memo
Each person should write a short (no more than one handwritten page) memo to his/her interviewee offering him/her feedback on his/her performance. Use the questions above to serve as a guide for the memo. Organize the memo using direct structure and provide specific details to back up the observations you made. Remember the guidelines for feedback; it should be descriptive, concrete and usable.
