Job Interview Skills

John McCluskey, & James Bletcher, 
from Whizdom Recruitment

Greetings from the ANU Techlauncher job skills workshop. Staff from ANU Careers and Employability are going through interview skills. I was surprised to see that few of the students have ever been to a job interview. Some of the tips which careers advisers give, such as how to  read the job ad, might seem obvious, but they aren't. One surprise what research shows that body language and tone of voice have more impact in a job interview than what the interviewees actually say. This can be a problem for someone from a different culture. 

Something that hadn't occurred to me were tips for team exercises during job selection. With this a small group of about a half dozen applicants have to work together, while being observed. This is to see how potential staff will work with others. I flippantly suggested I would undermine the rest of the team to get the job, and the flippant reply was I would be good at the Defence Department (I actually worked there nine years). ;-)

Staff from Whizdom Recruitment talked about hot job areas. One obvious area is AI, but less obvious is nuclear submarines, which don't just need physicists, but computer people as well. One suggestion which surprised me was to attend industry conferences such as MilCIS.