I’m applying to a number of radiology technician programs and many of them require an interview as part of the application process. I’ve already had 5 interviews, 3 of which were just me and either 1 or 2 interviewers. However the other 2 interviews were me and at least 4 interviewers, and the panel interviews didn’t go nearly as well as the other ones.
I have another interview this Thursday and it’s going to be a panel type of deal.
Part of it is the idea of facing more then one person at a time, 'cause I got the feeling that they would start asking me questions all at once, which was a foolish thing to think, but since 98% of my thought process involves stupid and utterly foolish things, it’s not unexpected.
Does anybody have any tips or ideas about how I should present myself? Tips? I know that it is not a good idea to start picking your nose in the middle of answering a question, and falling asleep isn’t a good idea either.
After a good deal of debate I decided that I will in fact, wear pants.
Waits for people to clean off their monitors:p *
Seriously, any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated
The only advice I have is to make sure to keep making eye-contact with ALL of the interviewers. I was in such a situation once and, because of nervousness, I kind of focused in on only one of the interviewers. Each of them asked me questions, but when I answered I tended to look at the interviewer straight ahead of me. I lost big points for this. (This was in an academic competition kind of thing.)
I had a panel interview once (academic job). I started by making some joking comment about facing down five people at once (it was incredibly witty, naturally, but kind of specific to the situation [academic joke, I don’t remember exactly what I said]). Owning my nervousness kind of broke the ice. Didn’t get the job but also didn’t feel like I’d made a complete botch of the interview.
As mentioned, be sure to make periodic eye contact with everyone on the panel. Always pause before responding to questions. This will give you an air (however false) of being cool, calm and collected. I suggest bringing along printed copies of your resume for distribution to all present. Even if everybody already has one it remains a thoughtful and professional gesture. One or two letters of recommendation might be good as well. This will give the pack of wolves … er, I mean interviewers, something to keep them occupied so they’re not all focused on your jugular vein.
Eye contact again! Talk to and at all of them, irrespective of who asked the question. And yes, take a pause. Sometimes they might hassle try to hassle you, and it’s better if you can control the pace of the interview.
In my experience, panel interviews were used as part of stress-testing, not just so that a bunch of busy people could work you into their schedule. They were designed to come at you from 20 different angles to see if you could make the mind-leaps from topic to topic. So don’t be surprised if they ask you about your college, then your last job, then a situation in which you failed, then your strong points, then where you live, then ??? They might jumble things to see how you react. The best way to deal with that is to take a second to consider their question and/or repeat the question back to them “So you want me to tell you about…?” or “You are asking me to explain my…?” That helps your brain re-adjust every question. Focus on the person who asked the question, but do make eye-contact with the other people during your answer.
If you get asked a real stumper, don’t make them wait too long. If you can’t anwer it after 20-30 seconds, then you might want to ask them if you can get back to that question, or if you can get some more contextual information that would help you answer it. And if you don’t know an answer at all, don’t BS it, say you don’t know or that you haven’t really thought about that before, can you get back to them on it?