Preparing for the interview

If there are a lot of candidates, companies tend to organise pre-selections or tests. For key posi­tions or management jobs, assessment centres are often used.

Employers are looking for candidates who match the profile described as closely as pos­sible. They expect applicants to show how their qualifications and experiences fit with this pro­file, talk about their professional and personal strengths and weaknesses, and answer ques­tions about their motivation, social skills and prospects as an employee. You also have to be prepared for questions about your CV (e.g. if you have changed jobs a lot).

You can generally expect employers to be look­ing for a dialogue in which they can learn more about you, your qualifications and your expec­tations of the job. There will also be room for your questions about working hours and days, activities and job content. The atmosphere is friendly, but objective and impartial.

Candidates should be well-informed about the company: what it does or produces, its size, whether it is centralised or decentralised and whether it is based abroad, as well as about its image and philosophy.

Verbal communication is important, notably articulation and presentation in line with the job applied for (clear motivation for the job, social skills, teamwork skills, authority and leadership skills, stress resistance, flexibility). Pay atten­tion too to non-verbal communication: punctu­ality, attitude, eye contact, gestures and facial expressions.

If the employer is interested in your profile, one or more interviews might be arranged, as well as assessments and skill and psycholog­ical testing.

Prepare well by researching the company, reflecting on why you want to work for this employer and in this sector, and practising answers to questions in another language.

An interview can be seen as a form of nego­tiation, rather than as a question and answer session. For the employer, your attitude, asser­tiveness, politeness and the way you present yourself are crucial. You will be a representa­tive for the company and you have to fit in with the team.

Recruiters expect applicants to be informed about the company (structure, scope of activ­ities) and about the details of the position on offer. They will ask the applicant why they want to work in that company in particu­lar. The candidate must also be prepared to answer questions related to his or her expert knowledge and any other qualifications (per­sonal qualities, ability to work individually or in a team, reliability, adaptability and previous experience). To verify an applicant's personality, some employers also require that they take psycho-diagnostic tests.

The most common type of interview is in per­son. However, the first round of interviews may be carried out by e-mail. New media resources are just starting to be used for interviews.

Being punctual at the interview is highly rec­ommended. Delay without a valid reason is not permissible. You should arrive a few minutes early; this will show your punctuality and inter­est in the vacant position.

The employer pays a great deal of attention to the way you present yourself, including your clothing, hairstyle and jewellery, your attitude, body language, eye contact and the way you express yourself Be prepared to persuade the interviewer that you are very motivated to get the job and prove this by asking questions dur­ing the interview.

Always try to find out in advance what the company specialises in and what products it makes, an estimate of the number of employ­ees and their national and foreign locations, in case the interviewers test your knowledge of their company.

Candidates may be invited for an exploratory interview, possibly with an intermediate organ­isation. This is more like an opportunity to get to know each other. The atmosphere is some­where between formal and informal, and based on equality among the discussion partners.

The employer will want you to show that you know about the job conditions, the company and its activities. You will have the opportu­nity to ask questions too. Use this opportunity to show your motivation and interest in the job, not to ask about the salary.

Questions are mainly related to your experi­ence and your skills. As a result of this inter­view, your application will either be rejected or you will be invited for a second interview.

A lack of basic information about the com­pany is often one of the main reasons Dutch employers do not invite candidates for a second inter-view or offer them the job. Consult the company's website, read its annual report and try to get a good idea of the sector the com­pany operates in, its latest news and likely changes. This will help to prove your motivation.

The follow-up interviews are in-depth inter­views about the context of the position, your problem-solving skills and your experience. Assessments may be used after the first or second interview.

In most cases, you will be informed whether or not you are hired very shortly after the interview.

The recruiter will focus on experience, motivation and interpersonal social skills. Psychological, intelligence, aptitude and psycho­metric tests are widely used, especially for jobs requiring a high level of education.

Candidates should: prepare a list of their achievements; have an understanding of what the employer does in significant detail; speak about competences and practical experience gained through work elsewhere; identify a real­istic working ambition; and be able to commu­nicate the above mentioned ideas clearly and effectively.

Candidates should prepare for questions about their medium- and long-term career aims. Having a clear plan about your own self-de­velopment is key. Some Slovenian recruiters also expect you to say what your pay expec­tations are.

Research the company in advance: find out about the composition of the management board, the number of employees, the economic sector in which it operates, its competitors and its customers. Look up its environmental pol­icy, its attitude to fair trade and the existence of a social or ethical charter. Be aware of its image overall, and as an employer.

The most topical questions you can expect about your personal competence are questions about your strengths and weaknesses, your flexibility and geographical mobility, your avail­ability and pay expectations.

It is important to give specific examples of situations that refer to the answers required and prove that you really do have experience of these situations. For job offers that require knowledge of different languages, the inter­viewers might switch to one of these lan­guages during the interview, so be honest when you indicate your level of proficiency in a lan­guage on your CV.

Recruiters expect applicants to be available for interview at short notice. They will expect the applicant to be motivated and to have good enough English to enable effective communi­cation (with the exception of some low-skilled jobs, for example fruit picking, where the inter­view may be conducted in the applicant's native language, particularly if it takes place in their own country). Applicants should be polite, punctual, smartly presented and capable of expressing themselves clearly.

Employers and recruiters have a legal require­ment to check the identity of every applicant before they are offered a job. The applicant must bring their original passport or national identity card to the interview to prove that they are an EEA (or Swiss) national or family member.