086 – The 2020 Occupied Guide to Job Interviews

You asked for it, so here it is! The 2020 Occupied guide to job interviews. With the assistance of the awesome Erin Jeffords we give you the extent of our knowledge and experience to best prepare you for your first or next job interview. If you’re a student, a newgrad or an OT looking to brush up on their job-hunting skills then tune in and learn how you can give yourself the best shot at landing that job! We explore tips for everything from the preparation right through to what to do post interview. How to nail down your preparation How to practice for your interview What to research prior to your interview Being self-aware and open to feedback How to present your 100% authentic self in the best way Types of interviews Followup post-interview Keep Occupied Brock @brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.com Transcript of Episode 086 The 2020 Occupied Guide to Job Interviews 00:00:01 – 00:05:02 I am excited about this one. This is hopefully going to be the start of a brand new thing. We’re going to try and update this like annually so that it’s always the latest information for you guys. You guys told me that you wanted an episode about how to prepare for a job interview how to get ready give yourself the best opportunity to nail down that job. So here it is the 2020 occupied guide to job interviews i So a little while ago. I threw out a message on the instead of asking what people were wanted to hear about. I got quite a few really amazing topics this being probably the biggest one and that’s how do I interview? How do I get a job? What is this process? And how can I be better at it off? So this is the occupied 20/20 guide to interviewing and trying to get a job. Obviously. I have some experience in that but yep. Definitely not all-encompassing in that experience. I’ve brought along the lovely orange efforts to give me a hand with this episode. So thanks for coming in and helping out with the this you have a myriad of experience throughout your your career and your family apparently with regards to interviewing. So I’m hoping this is this is going to be a bagger and really useful. That’s what we want to do is try and create a really useful resource for not just new grads going for their first interview, but anyone really that’s prepping for a job change on, you know going for a promotion or any way that you’re going to find yourself sitting in interview. So I think one of the first things Is I guess firstly to kind of recognize that yeah interviews stressful. That’s probably one of the first things it’s normal for you to be stressed going into a job interview. It’s normal. It’s it’s usually going to bring about some kind of large change in your life in your career. It may even been precipitated by a change in your life or your career. You may have other things going on that may have led to you applying for this job or going for this change or moving or anything like that. So there’s usually all the stresses that can accompany this additional stress of going for an interview. So, I think the first thing to acknowledge is that yeah, it’s it’s normal what you’re feeling is normal when you’re coming up to this situations, but there are definitely things that you can do to better process and better manage them and we’re going to have a look wage. I guess some of the preparation stuff. So one of the things that Aaron mentioned to me before we recorded this is some of the stuff that you can prepare for with regards to your normal routine or kinds of things can can people do for their normal routine with regards to getting ready for an interview error. I I think personally when I think about like when I have gone interviews in the past or things that I recommend that my students who are just like think about the routine of the day before the interview or the day of the interview, you know, making sure you know, you get enough rest possibly like for me, I’m not a breakfast person but you know, I am a coffee person. So making sure you know, I have some time to have my cup of coffee and you know, making sure that you know, I do whatever I can to manage my stress for the day, you know, just kind of setting I hate to say it sounds kind of cliche but set yourself up for Success. So like doing all those things that you would do in a if you’re going to any important meeting or presentation or or in this case an interview, so making sure you know, you’re getting enough rep rust possibly, you know, whatever you need if you need to eat breakfast or not put any laying out. This is like a I’m treating it. Like I was my my children laying your clothes out the night before, you know, but really knowing what you want to wear for the interview, you know, don’t just wake up and grab the you know shirt out of the laundry basket kind of thing, you know, you need to to actually treat it you need to make sure that you treat it that it is the important event that it is, you know, you are you’re going to place you want to make that great first impression. 00:05:02 – 00:10:14 So what can you do, you know that day or the day before to kind of prepare for that interview so that those are kind of the things that I was talking about the rules of making sure that you’re giving yourself enough time, you know, and not you know rushing to get there and knowing the parking situation as well, you know, just kind of the planning the whole planning of the day is something that I think will really help make you feel more confident when you get there because you’re not going to be worried birth. That your day didn’t start off on the right foot, you know, just making sure you kind of do everything. You can’t now sometimes it’s unavoidable. You know, you you might sleep through your alarm or and there might be an accident on the way to the meeting and I mean the interview and you might be 5 minutes late, you know, so don’t let those things, you know really creeped in as far as like yourself doubt. But if you can do things to avoid those things like setting a second alarm or leaving extra early. So if there is an accident, you know that that’s what I’m talking about. Just trying to implement some extra steps to make that routine as smooth as possible on that day. I think I think times of massive one especially for for me personally am so like you said like getting yourself organized so there’s less things that you have to put mental energy into on the day, but another thing with regards to time is you can give yourself too much time off. A really bad this so for job interviews if I have say an interview in the middle of a workday, it’s not uncommon. I have done it in the past where I’ve taken the day off just so that I can prepare myself and I’m not running around nothing comes up at work that is going to make me late or stressed or anxious or anything like that but in doing that because I’ve got everything prepped the night before. I’m just sitting there all morning just going over things in my head and to me that I can always suck myself out of it. So being self-aware about that and we will get onto self-awareness in a little bit, but knowing how much time you need and then just adding a little bit extra like if you are going to take all morning and you know that you’re not going to have a lot on then maybe you can leave some of that sort of getting a warning these colors and that sort of stuff to the morning as long as you leave plenty of time. So knowing how much time you need adding a little bit extra not going completely overboard. Otherwise, yep. It is a potential there to to stress yourself out and kind of has the opposite effect, unfortunately. What about actually practicing for the interview? How how can we do that? Cuz one of the questions and the one of the reasons actually we’re connected was answered the question. I’m trying to bring this up now because I think it’s one of the funniest. So I just go ahead and on Instagram around the same time as what do you want me to talk about about what interview questions people have had recently found Aaron came back that one of the interview questions. You were given were what was it? What chocolate bar are you? It was what candy bar, you know, we’re shopping. Okay. Yeah, you have to you if you were a candy bar or what candy bar would you be and why and I was so I had probably I have eleven years of experience. Now. This was a few years ago. So I think I had nine years of experience at this point and you know, I was not expecting this interview question at all, you know, and and I I tried to I think I probably did laugh cuz it was just kind of awkward, you know, I didn’t know what to say. And and I told you I responded cuz you you came back and said well, what did you say and I said a crunch Nestle Crunch bar because I think that was honestly I think that was the lack of candy bar I had eaten so that was the first thing that came to my mind and then I had to make it work and I said well, you know, it’s smooth on the outside but it has texture, you know, you don’t know what they’re getting you know, and and and so the girl you know, she kind of laughed and and then I asked her. Well, what what would you what what’s your answer and I can’t even remember what hers was off. But yeah, that was definitely by far the most out-there interview question I’ve ever been asked and it’s I did get some interesting ones in a lot of them typical ones like tell me about a time you had conflict and how you managed it that kind of stuff. But sometimes I I have heard quite regularly questions like that, which is So seemingly weird. When I think a lot