IS THERE SUCH THING AS THE PERFECT INTERVIEW? ALLISON PLAGER FINDS OUT
Right – how do I look? New suit, or at least freshly laundered, polished shoes, tights without holes, make-up but not too much, dry palms. Or at least they are at the moment. Job interviews are without doubt a nerve-racking experience, you always want to do your best, but somehow rarely feel that it went as well as you hoped.
Top advice
With regard to interview technique, Brewer Morris’s Sally McIntyre-Brown and Jon Williams suggest a number of significant areas that will help give you the best chance possible of beating the competition.
Looking first at flexibility, Sally says that some clients ‘are seeing over 50 CVs for each role so they have a lot of choice when deciding who they want to see. If they decide they want to interview you, you will need to fit around them in terms of interview times. If you can’t see them when they want, there are plenty of other strong candidates who can.’
Moving on to suitability for the role, Sally says ‘clients are more cost conscious than ever and want to ensure they get the best possible return on their investment. Consequently they want someone who not only fits the role on a technical level, but offers a much broader skill set’.
When it comes to preparing for this kind of interview, she recommends that you ‘know your CV inside out and back to front, be able to talk in depth about all aspects of your roles and thoroughly research the organisation with which you are interviewing’.
She says that you also ‘need to give plenty of thought to skills and attributes that set you apart from the crowd.
For example, your business development skills: can you demonstrate a knowledge and awareness of cross selling and that you will be able to bring in additional fees? In terms of client handling skills, can you give an example of when you have had to manage an exceptionally difficult client situation?’
In the commercial market, preparation is key and can make all the difference to a prospective employer, says Jon. ‘Developing a clear understanding of what your target company does is vital in allowing you to contextualise your experience to make it as relevant as possible for the interviewer.
This approach will also help you to think about some issues affecting tax within the group’s specific industry sector which you can raise and discuss during your meeting.
Displaying this sector knowledge, along with an appreciation of the recent performance of the group itself, will help to convince an interviewer that you are genuinely focused on getting this job, rather than any other’.
Finally, Sally and Jon say ‘there are no guarantees in the current, highly competitive market, but if you can focus on these three areas in the build up to your interview, you will afford yourself the best chance of landing that elusive new role’.
Best laid plans
There are occasions, of course, when not everything goes to plan.
Grant Thornton’s head of tax Francesca Lagerberg recalls an interview she once went for ‘where the interviewer spent the whole 45 minutes with his feet on the desk, chain-smoking and with his chair tilted back at an alarming angle.
However, when he went to get up he managed to fall backwards off his chair almost lodging his head in the waste paper bin. It was a “Mr Bean” type moment.’
Mark Lee says he has never forgotten attending an interview many years ago when the interviewer paused and pointed at Mark’s chin saying: ‘Your nose is bleeding’.
The blood had run down my face, says Mark, so ‘she passed me a tissue and guided me to the gents loo where I mopped myself up. By then I also had blood on my otherwise pristine white shirt. When I went in to meet the partner I kept my jacket done up so the bloody mess on my shirt didn’t show. I probably seemed a bit of a weirdo as there was a heatwave at the time. I didn’t get the job.’
Former chairman of the Tax Faculty and partner with AC Mole, Paul Aplin describes his worst interview moment as follows: ‘If you join us you’ll need to be able to deal with a wide variety of clients, from oily mechanics to millionaires’. Interviewee: ‘Should be easy, my dad owns several garages’.
Oddly enough, says Paul, she decided not to join us.
His biggest regret is not offering the job to the guy who’d worked on a crocodile farm.
More seriously though...
Adding to our top advice from Brewer Morris, Mark Lee remembers the first time that someone he was interviewing asked if he could make notes. Mark agreed and says he ‘was impressed both that he was evidently prepared, had asked my permission and noted down only key facts.
His notebook also contained prompts for questions he asked me later in the interview’. So this is Mark’s top tip: ‘remember that an interview is not like an exam question. You’re not cheating if you need to check your notes before asking a question’.
Another tip from Mark, and something he says he would do if he were ever again an interviewee, is to ‘look up the interviewer on the web’. Check the firm’s website, and also Google and LinkedIn, and note down a couple of salient facts.
You could refer to these during the interview. But, says Mark, ‘do be careful when you do this. Not everyone is net savvy and it’s all too easy to freak someone out by revealing how much information you have found out about them online’.
As for Paul’s interview advice, he finds generic CVs that begin ‘A hardworking and highly motivated individual with...’ a complete turn off.
‘Write something that makes me think “I’d like to meet this person” because I want to employ people my clients will want to meet. At interview I’m looking for the same thing: how would my clients react to this person?’
Be prepared
My advice? Heed the old girl guide adage ‘be prepared’ when going for interviews. Knowledge is key – you may not need to show how much you know, but it is always sensible to have done your homework so that you can present yourself in the best light possible.
