Interviews are always a nervous ordeal but more often than not a well prepared candidate will always rise above the rest of the pack and successfully take the job. That said, many candidates make the mistake of preparing for a video conference interview in the same way as a face to face interview which can leave an interviewer unimpressed. Here are my top 5 tips to help you beat a video conferencing interview:
1. Remove all distractions
If your video conferencing interview is taking place at your home then make sure you deal with any possible interruptions before the interview. If Fido has a tendency to barge into the room every now and again I am sure he wouldn’t mind playing in the garage for a while until the interview is over. Similarly if you have kids who tend to be quite loud, it will make you and your interviewer lose concentration as well as making you look much less professional. Get hold of a baby sitter or have them spend the day at your parents or friends. Whatever you do, just try to be home alone when the interview takes place.
2. Look at the camera
Just about every interview guru will tell you to make regular eye contact with your interview and a video conferencing interview is no different. This can catch out many interviewees since it is a common habit to look at the computer monitor instead of the actual camera. The camera is transmitting the picture and therefore if you don’t look at the camera it will look like you are looking away from the interviewer thus giving the impression that you are not interested in the interview. If you find this particularly difficult to do then try putting a picture behind your camera which will make it feel like you are talking to an actual person when you are looking at the camera.
3. Proper grooming
When doing a video conferencing interview it is easy to forget that you are being interviewed for a potential job offer. You may be at home but that does not mean that you can take part in the interview in your favourite carrot fit jeans with a T-shirt that has some a funny comment on it. Make sure you dress like you would if you were participating in a face to face interview as it will make you look more professional as well as making you feel more confident.
4. Set the scene
When carrying out a face to face interview, you go to the interviewer which means that the interviewer will make his decision based on you and you alone but on a video conferencing interview, the interviewer will be able to see you and your room therefore your room should also give a professional feel. I am not saying that you should completely redecorate but make sure all dirt has been cleaned and the room looks well organised. In addition to this, temporarily remove any posters which may embarrass you during the interview although sensible pictures and paintings can help create a more sophisticated atmosphere. This will help to give a positive first impression and will start the interview on a good note.
5. Practice makes perfect
Rehearsing your answers to popular interview questions as well as general interview techniques is essential for a successful interview but a video conferencing interview brings with it its own challenges and therefore more factors need to be added to the mix when rehearsing. You will need to get into the habit of talking out aloud when nobody else is in the room so set up your own video conference system prior to the interview and ask your friend to interview you. After the interview ask your friend to give you some feedback.
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Reading Marketing magazine last month, I spotted a former client of mine, Crayon, had won the website marketing work from BT.com
And so I've decided to run an occasional feature on marketing agencies and how they have won their client instructions. If you have something you'd like to Shout! about on this blog. Please get in touch.
Why we won BT.com – an interview with Simone Sulsh, Client Services Director, Crayon
We worked with BT.com previously on a project basis and they worked out what their needs were across the whole bt.com business. The remit changed and became a new pitch.
Two pitches were arranged, one for marketing communications and one for back-end techhy work. We pitched for the marcomms work.
We won it because of our flexibility – BT.com had been used to working with much bigger agencies – we were doing just as good a job if not better than them.
We have pitched against their other agencies on other occasions and always won. We believe that Crayon offered all they could get from a bigger agencies but better and quicker. For example during the project work earlier in the year, we did a strategic piece on broadband. It took us 6 weeks and would have taken others 3 months to deliver.
The key to winning this pitch were our relationships, our flexibility. And we blew their socks off at the pitch!
We gave a rigorous response – the whole agency got behind the pitch. It took about 6 weeks from start to finish. We weren't doing anyting else, in fact we turned down other pitches to concentrate on this. The pitch was led by Richard French, our MD.
Advice to another agency facing a similar pitch against larger firms – belive you can get it. Show this by your passion and energy.
For examples of Crayon's work go to BT.com – everything there is stuff we have worked on.
]]>Thanks to Nico Macdonald for inviting me to chair two sessions at his Media Futures Conference next week.
I am going to be up there with Alex McKie and the guys from Plot…. Wicked!
11.00: Research in the real world – Alex McKie11:30: Meet the people formerly known as… users – Gill Wildman and Nick Durrant, Plot
He twittered it here
Really looking forward to this.
]]>I met Tim at SXSW earlier this month. He has written a seminal book called the Four Hour Work Week and it's being launched in London next week.
Tim has set up a pub sessio for any Uk blogger / social media types who fancy hooking up with him. Wednesday 2nd April in the Chandos pub on St Martin's Lane, London WC2
Sign up here .
If you are a girl geek – keep checking the site as we may have organised an exclusive breakfast with Tim…… my brilliant idea [thanks Sarah for the support!]
]]>Jonny just published the video he did of me on YouTube.
He's going to do a mash-up map showing where his interviewees came from to SXSW in Austin.
]]>I have been “lurking” on Skillfair for a year or so now. It’s a website that matches small businesses and freelance consultants to projects.
[Backstory: I first found Skillfair.com about a year ago because they advertised a job creating a micro-site for the River and Rowing Museum. And my sport is rowing, so I picked it up on an alert service for key words. I watched the site from a visitor registration for a while and found jobs that suited some of my clients listed there. My interest built and so I emailed Gill asking if she’d be available for an interview which I could publish. Here it is.]
So how did you start the website?
The Skillfair story began was I went freelance 7-8 years ago when children were young. My background is in IT and I got a contract from former employer, and then another from a mate…. I do specialist work and was on an internet directory and got a third contract from an enquiry off the directory. This led me to the thought that we needed one of those directories for everyone.
Sounds logical.
So how do you get consultants and work opportunities onto Skillfair?
It is hard work doing marketing and sales, when you are a freelancer or independent consultant. And it isn’t most people’s core specialism and so it gets put aside and you end up with the ‘feast or famine’ problem of work. So I created a marketplace for independent consultants in a range of disciplines. To give them a feed into the marketing system that keeps going in the background while they are working with clients.
Skillfair went live early 2002 which was an interesting time then. I had had no work for 6-8 months and got a job shortly after the site went live. The business ticked along for a couple of years. I discovered when you build a website if you don’t spend a lot of money on it you get what you pay for. We needed more behind the scenes in admin – and decided to systemise everything.
This was a key finding. You have to be systematic for all stuff, if you find yourself doing something manually more than 3 times…. like sending customer service emails and enquiry replies ask yourself how can I make it happen without me doing it?
Building a scalable business requires a system to do this for you. This is key to Skillfair’s success to date.
And so what’s happened since then?
We have experienced gradual and organic growth since then. We have not had massive financial investment. The UK economy is at the point where lots of people are going freelance and seeing this as a career option and a positive step. Some of the reasons are work:life balance and not wanting to commute.
And also companies and government want highly skilled people but don’t want to commit to employing them permanently because of financial and legal aspects of permanent employment. The coming together of these two movements is making a wave that didn’t exist before.
How do consultants and freelancers find Skillfair?
Consultants find us though search engines. We use Google ads and have found that placement is important. We do telemarketing as well. We call up people who we think are consultants and ask if they want to be registered for new work. We do the initial work to register them and then leave it up to them to decide to participate further by sending them weekly information.
We also buy lists for the telemarketing. And referrals from other consultants are another very key source of new registrants. Of course, that is how you passed Skillfair’s details onto your clients.
We have worked hard to make it easier to get people to refer their contacts through the website, as they trust what Skillfair is doing. We get about 100 – 200 referrals per week. And 30-40% of paying new joiners come from referrals.
So where do you find the work opportunities?
We use a public sector tender alert service for a lot of client work and we search 6-700 websites per week and OJEU to find the lower value tenders. We have a system for this (of course) to make it less time consuming. (Gill wrote some of the code herself and sourced some of it elsewhere). Skillfair also pays for some services to support this.
The private sector projects come from Google adverts in the main. Search engines are very accurate ‘help with marketing’ means that’s what clients are looking for and / or are a marketing consultant. We find that we get clients precisely when they are looking for advise and support and not at other times.
We now have a database of past clients and we send them newsletters and details of new consultants joining the system and we can send them a regular feed of consultant names for specific skills if they want that.
It is more of a challenge getting clients to say what they want… it is the interim management agencies who are interested in this and more able to say what they want. And we serve them too.
So what are your future plans for Skillfair?
We have worked hard to make a successful business and as I said before, we want it to be scalable. We’ve been working on offering Skillfair as a white label service for professional bodies and trade associations whose membership includes independent consultants. Our service will allow them to provide opportunities to these members without getting involved in admin or commission arrangements and will boost their revenue at relatively low risk. Our goal is to have at least one of these organisations operational by the end of 2008.
Thank you very much for your time, Gill.
And anyone wanting to know more should take a look at Skillfair.com (and please mention that you found it from a link at Creative Agency Secrets!
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