Interview Secrets: Understanding the Irish Interview structure and employers mind (24

This post is for all job seekers who want to convert their first interview offer into a job offer. In the pandemic, you can’t afford to miss any interview as you don’t know when you’re going to get next

All the good companies train the hiring managers with the interview structure, parameters of evaluations, judgment criteria, and rate the interviewees. More or less there is always a pattern and a style to follow The interview typically follows the 6 stages ;

1. Discovery stage
2. Probing stage
3. Validation Stage
4. Stress Stage (Optional)
5. Delight stage
6. Curiosity stage

Discovery stage:

In this stage interviews ask basic questions to know your core responsibilities, Motivations to join their company or the reasons to leave your current job. The idea behind asking these questions is simply to see how much you relate with the Job role and see if the new job will meet your expectations or not.

Common Questions in this stage –

• What are your motivations to join this company
• Walk us through your career journey so far
• Why are you making a move now?

Probing stage :

This is where the real interview will start. Interviewers will ask you the real probing questions to judge your knowledge , your ability to perform the job duties, the quality of your past experience, and whether you can fit into their team structure. They would ask you to share examples and specific situations to make your point. Depending upon the quality of your answers they will create a rough idea of whether you’re fit for the role or not. Common questions in this stage could be the following –

• Questions from the responsibilities mentioned in your CV
• Questions from the work they want you to do
• Questions on your strengths and weakness
• Questions around your skills and core knowledge areas

Validation Stage :
Now that the interviewers have the rough idea that whether they want to take you for the next round or drop you over, they would like to validate their idea but asking you few twisted questions where you may face difficulty in answering. This is also a stage where you can expect a lot of unexpected questions. At this stage, they would just go deep into the competency and behaviors. Common questions in this stage could be the following –

• Carry forward questions from the last stage
• Cross questions from your answer provided in the previous questions
• Questions about your achievements
• Unrealistic objects or achievements mentioned in your CV related to work

Stress Stage :
At this interviewers have a fair idea about your skills and abilities in their mind and they would like to see your intellectualness and ability to perform in tough conditions. So they will ask you questions about difficulties, problems you faced, conflicts you have at your workplace. At times they would also show that they do not agree with you or they are not impressed but actually, they would just like to see how you perform in stressful conditions be it provided by customers, Boss or difficult team members. Here you have to show that you’re an unstoppable force. Common Questions at this stage.

• If there is a career switch then it will be a talking point here
• Questions regarding your past decisions, projects you worked on , stakeholders you communicated with
• Questions regarding your weakness
• Scenario-based questions on various problems at work

Delight Stage :
If you’re successful all the previous stage they this is the time when interviews are impressed with you and would like to know more about your success and abilities so, they would like to know more about how you may help them beyond the normal job responsibilities. Common questions at this stage are –

• How you moved beyond your regular KPI and contributed to your company’s success
• How you’re helped your customer by going an extra mile
• How good are you as a team member
• How do you participate in the organizational initiative

Curiosity Stage : This is the winding-up stage and people would like to see how curious are you about the job role and they would just ask you if you have any questions for them. You may ask the below questions

• What will be key priorities at this role all of all others?
• Should you join this role, then what requisites you need to complete beforehand
• What are the key stakeholders involved in the job role
• What kind of induction or training will be provided before actually hitting the ground zero

Never ask the following at this stage

• Questions about Salary and work permit sponsorship
• Avoid mentioning any stamp issues (this can be figured out later with different stakeholder)

Wish you all the best for your upcoming interview, even if they are not lined up you still need to prep in advance because there may not be that much time available to prepare when you real interview is scheduled.

Feel free to reach out to us, if you have any scheduled interviews and you need to nail it into a job offer. We will help you doing the same.