Welcome back to the final part of how to pass your placement interviews. The last essential thing that you need to do is to practice as much as you can; this will boost your confidence and show the employer that you mean business!
There is an old saying that says practice makes perfect and I believe it is very true. There are useful echniques you can use and learn when answering interview questions to give you that edge. One of these techniques is called STAR which stands for situation, task, action and result. I remember that I used this technique in my interview and I think it is very efficient because it allows employers to understand your specific experience and how you have demonstrated certain skills, which can benefit the company. This is particularly important for behavioral based questions. I would suggest that you practice with your friends, family and the King’s College careers guidance team to answer interview questions. I used to practice with my sister and my brother in-law as they had a lot more experience in both how to answer the questions, but also how to make it specific to the company values and goals. I also went to the King’s careers team and scheduled an interview which I found to be really helpful. I got to practice around 5 questions with the STAR method and then got detailed feedback to improve both my technique and content of my answers. If you feel unsure, book that interview appointment so that you can get feedback and improve on your technique.
During my preparation, I also used a website called ‘GraduatesFirst’ which King’s College has a subscription to. I found this website very useful to practice different aptitude tests including numerical and judgment situational tests (SJT). At the end of every test, you get a score as a percentile percentage. This is not like a normal percentage score that shows how much you have received out of the total, but how well you have done as a percentage of all the students who have taken the test. Initially, when I started the numerical tests, I got really low scores of around 38 percentile. However, with more practice I got familiar with the questions and what calculations were expected of me to do. Therefore, I highly recommend using resources such as this website. These were the three pieces of advice I wanted to share with you that I believe will help you in your interview preparation.
Thank you for taking your time to read and remember that with practice, you can pass your interviews! Good luck!