Introduction

Applying for a new role, and going through the recruitment process can be a daunting task for even the most experienced professional.

Interview nerves affect most people, but they can make the recruitment process more stressful than it needs to be for you, the candidate.

Your next job might be the start of something amazing – so naturally, you will want to impress the hiring manager.

If you are preparing for an upcoming Building Envelope interview, we have created this guide to help you boost your confidence to help land you your next role.

Role Play Interview Practice

We all know that preparation is the key to success – and anyone who has ever had a job interview will have been told to practice their answers beforehand.

But very few candidates ever actually go to the lengths of practising a role-play style interview with someone, and yet doing this can help you significantly.

Practising your answers while you are alone, or even writing down specific answers or themes are great ways to prepare – but nothing beats a real-life run-through beforehand.

So get someone, a friend or a family member, to act as the interviewer and get them to ask role-specific or general interview questions – be prepared for both – and practice giving your answers.

You will not know until you rehearse in this way that you might want to add something into one of your answers, or that you need some extra practice when talking about a specific subject.

Boosting Your Confidence Before the Interview

Immediately before the interview is when candidates are at their most nervous.

So it is during this time that the most crucial confidence-boosting techniques are needed.

The following are great simple tips to help you in the hour up to the interview. Find somewhere private, either in your car or a private hallway to take a few minutes to practice the following:

• Picture yourself succeeding – visualisation techniques are shown to be effective at helping reduce nerves and focus the mind.
• Breathing techniques – take slow, deep breaths to help calm any nervous jitters you may be having.
• Say some positive affirmations to yourself – saying 'I will succeed', 'I deserve this job' and 'I am going to be successful in this interview' will help you foster a positive mindset, which can significantly improve your confidence.

Once you are in the interview, let's look at how some simple body language techniques can help you relax and be your most confident self.

Body Language During the Interview

The way you hold yourself will make you feel more confident so that you are able to give a better interview, plus it will also signal to the interviewer that you are relaxed and professional.

First impressions count, so smile when you say hello.

Try not to perch nervously on the edge of your seat – sit all the way back in your chair, with a straight back, not slouching.

When you give your answers, talk with your hands as this will allow you to communicate your ideas more effectively. But also be careful with the way you use your hands – don't gesticulate too wildly, and when you are listening rather than talking, try not to fidget or keep touching your hair or your face, which people tend to do when they are nervous.

Remember to carry on breathing deeply, and always say yes to a glass of water – you can take a sip to compose yourself before you give your answers, or if you need a moment to pause.

Make eye contact with the interviewer, but not too much. And finally – smile during the interview - you want to look like you are happy to be there!

Be a Great Listener

There will be time during the interview when the interviewer is asking the questions or explaining about the company. During these times, remember to employ excellent listening skills.

A Building Envelope interview is about listening as much as it is about talking.

Nod when the interviewer is speaking and always make sure they have finished before you give your answer.

The interviewer will be looking for someone they can guarantee will get on with the rest of the team – so an overconfident candidate who spends the entire interview singing their own praises can be a turn-off.

Remember that not every answer you give has to be perfect – but listen to what the interviewer is asking, and you can always ask them to repeat themselves or clarify if you aren't sure what they meant.

Interviewers are human, and they don't always give perfect interview questions.

Look to Connect, Not Impress

And finally, a great tip to boost your confidence is to not think about the interview as an interview – but a conversation.

Aim to connect with the interview, not to flat-out impress them with everything you say.

Building rapport with an interviewer is a great way to be a memorable candidate, and striking a meaningful conversation rather than stressing while trying to appear superhuman will allow you to naturally ease into the interview and will make the whole experience much more enjoyable.

Confidence is about being honest and transparent; it is obvious when someone is trying to be somebody they're not.

Finally

Are you preparing for an upcoming interview? Or maybe you're not quite there yet, and you're still looking for a new Building Envelope role.

If so, we can help.

We're specialist Building Envelope recruiters, and we can help you will all aspects of your new job search, from CV help to arranging interviews, and of course – helping you prepare for your all-important interview. 

To find out how Metis can help you in your new Building Envelope job search – get in touch with us on 01522 424145 or contact us here.

Image by katemangostar on Freepik

When it's time to interview the shortlist of candidates for your vacancy, you need all the help you can get to ensure you eventually make the 'right' hire.

Interviewing is a skill, and just because you are in a managerial position, that doesn't mean that interviewing comes naturally to you.

Likewise, just because you've been interviewing for years, this doesn't mean that your technique doesn't need honing.

Today, we share 6 clever tips for interviewers to help you make the best possible hire from your shortlist of Building Envelope applicants.

1. Review Your Company Mission and Vision

Companies with the strongest culture attract the best candidates; it's a fact.

Reviewing your company vision and mission might be a case of refreshing your memory of the values and attributes that your business aspires to, but it could also be a case of rewriting them entirely.

Since the pandemic and the shake-up to businesses that this caused, many companies are finding that their mission and vision has changed – is this true in your business?

For example, in some Building Envelope organisations, communication between employees in the form of weekly in-person meetings might have once been an essential part of their business strategy. But since the role of remote working, this is no longer the case.

Does your Building Envelope Organisation recognise and appreciate the need for flexibility to allow for remote working, which is more vital than ever?

The first thing to do before the interview process starts is to review your company vision and mission statement for our post-pandemic world.

2. Get Familiar with the Job description

In an ideal world, you will have written the job description yourself and inherently understand what you need from your new hire, but this is not always the case.

In larger companies, there can be several people involved in the recruitment process, so it is essential that everyone involved is aware of what you are looking for in your new Building Envelope role and that this is communicated to candidates at every stage.

Especially now in our ever-changing world, the position that you are hiring for might be an entirely new role for the company – do you know the exact skills and attributes that you are looking for?

3. Work to a Method

Interviewing candidates can be an emotionally-charged experience for both the employee and the employer.

Many interviewers by-pass red flags in the interview and go with their 'gut feeling' – but this is not the best way to hire the right talent for your Building Envelope business.

For every interview to have the best outcome, you must work to a method and stick to it. This means:

• Choose your questions carefully and don't deviate. You can ask extra questions that might crop up in your mind at the end of the planned questions – this gives all candidates a fair interview.
• Practice your note-taking – taking accurate notes is an essential quality for all interviewers to have.
• Use a scale to rate candidate answers – you can give a score out of 10, or use 'excellent' to 'poor' at the end of each answer to remind you when you are looking back over your notes.

4. Be Compassionate

Interviews can be daunting, and this is something that interviewers and hiring managers can become desensitised to, especially if they have a lot of experience conducting interviews.

Showing compassion and consideration instead of the stony managerial tone some interviewers adopt will benefit both the employee and yourself.

Candidates perform much better in interviews when they feel at ease, and so making sure they feel relaxed is a great way of seeing the real candidate and allowing their best self to shine through.

So, don't be continually testing the candidate or focusing on negativity and flaws to try and 'catch them out'. Keep it positive, even if you plan on asking the dreaded 'what's your greatest weakness?' question (we will look at interview questions in the next section).

Take your time, and allow the candidate to take theirs – allow enough time for a good conversation, don't aim to get them in and out in 20 minutes.

And finally – smile!

5. Get Your Questions Right

There are certain interview question stereotypes, which it is best to avoid if you want better interview outcomes.

There are standard questions that many interviewers ask, such as 'what will you bring to the role', 'tell us what you know about our company' and of course, 'what is your greatest weakness'.

But for an outstanding interview, there are some questions to introduce, which can give impressive results.

Try asking the candidate to explain a passion of theirs to you – it can be work-related or not. As this will allow them to demonstrate their communication skills and their passion – it brings them out of their shell and shows you how effective they are at communicating ideas to a layperson.

Additionally, aim to curate an interview environment which feels like a conversation rather than an interrogation – this will put candidates at ease and makes the interview experience more pleasant and productive for everyone involved.

6. Candidate Aftercare

Ensure that you treat each candidate, even unsuccessful ones, as you would treat a customer, even after the interview process is over.

This is a great way of looking after your talent pipeline – candidates who are suitable but unsuccessful on this occasion will be inclined to apply again if they come out of the experience with a positive view of your company.

Respond to candidates in a timely manner – this goes for successful and unsuccessful candidates both during and after the interview process.

Encourage unsuccessful candidates to apply again, and you can even keep in touch on LinkedIn, where you can share Building Envelope information and updates about your business.

As for the successful candidate – congratulations on your new hire; now it's time to get them onboarded successfully.

Finally

If you are looking to employ new talent into your Building Envelope organisation and you need help attracting the right talent – we can help.

For more information on how we can help you recruit the high-performing individuals you need, get in touch with us on 01522 424145 or email us here.

Where's your career going? Do you have a defined plan of where you want to be in one, five or even ten years' time? If not, you're not alone. We speak to lots of candidates who come to us when they realise that their career is drifting along without any true direction.

Focussing on work, family and other priorities they have taken their eye off the ball and find themselves going nowhere, stuck in a rut with the outcome being their career has stalled.

The first action to take to get out of the rut is to ask yourself a few probing questions. In today's post, we have shared our favourite three.

Where do you WANT your career to go?

Just saying that you want to progress or that you want to earn a better salary isn't good enough. You need to know in which direction you want to develop your career. As a specialist commercial recruiter, it's a question we ask people a lot because it underpins what we can do to help them.

One of the biggest decisions that people may take is whether to stay 'at the sharp end', or to climb the ladder to management or leadership position. For instance, to go the more strategic route and go for a management role that looks at things from a wider perspective and has less day-to-day interaction with the finer details of the business?

There's no right or wrong answer, but you do need to ask yourself this question and provide an answer. Once you've done this, the way is clear to plan on how to get there.

Can your current employer facilitate this?

Now that you've decided on the direction that you want your career to go in, it's time to decide whether your current employer can facilitate this.

There may be signs that they can, but you need to ask yourself these questions.

• If I am capable and performing well, why haven't they done it before?

• If you are in a stalled position, going nowhere so do you really think that they have marked you out as someone they want to develop?

We see this so often, good candidates with great skills going to waste and it's a reflection of the company's lack of training and development procedures rather than the candidate's skills.
Be bold, be proactive and look outside of your current employer and see the exciting destinations your career could take you.

What do you want from an employer?

Now that you've decided to look at opportunities elsewhere, you need to find an employer that can match your ambitions. However, it's not that simple. You need to find an employer that can facilitate your ambitions and one where you feel you can fit into their culture.

Two similar companies may have a very different 'feel' to you. For example, some companies can be big on developing team camaraderie and love nothing better than seeing employees celebrating a good week by having a few drinks after work on a Friday. Other companies may have a more restrained, corporate culture. There's no right or wrong; it's just a case of finding a company that you like the feel of. But how do you do that?

Don't go it alone

So why not place your career in the hands of a specialist recruiter? Your career is crucial to your overall quality of life, so why risk making poor career choices?

Here at Metis, we help hundreds of candidates every year take the next step in their career. We know the roofing and building envelope sector inside out and can help you find the right role at the right company.

Our connections are so good; we place many people in roles that haven't even been advertised, such is the trust some of the major construction employers place in us.

Call us today and let one of our specialist consultants drive your career onwards and upwards.

About Metis Recruitment

We are Metis, a recruitment company that loves to find you a fulfilling job or the right staff to compliment your organisation and propel your business forward. You can email us on info@metisrecruitment.co.uk or speak to one of our friendly staff on 01522 424145.