The Art of Entry-Level Interview Coaching
Historically, junior and entry-level job applicants have shied away from engaging with interview coaches. Interview coaching has been unfortunately pigeonholed as a service useful only for executive-level applicants, leaving young candidates with little awareness of its benefits. But hiring an interview coach won’t just help junior applicants maximize their actual interview ability, it will empower them to understand the nuances of their position within the job market and find themselves in better, more satisfying roles.
It’s important to note that providing advice on someone’s interview performance, traditionally considered an interview coach’s main role, is actually a massive minimization of what a coach does. A talented coach can not only provide advice for candidates, but diagnose problems in an applicant’s interviewing they did not know previously existed.
In only a few hours, a talented interview coach can identify conversational quirks which might be coming across as detrimental, or note previously-unconsidered weaknesses. There may be issues of experience or presentation or overconfidence (or one of countless other possibilities), but a coach will both identify these issues and offer solutions. And it’s easy to see the added importance this can have for inexperienced candidates who don’t have years of interviewing experience behind them.
But outside of specific interviewing skills, a coach can also help post-grads, junior applicants, or the otherwise inexperienced become familiar with the intricacies of their job markets. Young applicants, even those who may be perfect technical interviewers, who are equipped with the right internships, network, and personality --considered competitive for any position-- might still not understand the necessity of asking questions like “What is my day-to-day?” or “How will I be evaluated?” or “What is my career track?”, nevermind inquiring about benefits, vacations, bonuses, etc.
These young applicants are becoming increasingly aware that interview coaching isn’t just about landing a given position, but landing the right position. And that represents a sizable paradigm shift. Until now, if young candidates graduated college with offers, in the excitement of having secured a job, they likely haven’t paused to examine that position’s nuances, or compare it to other opportunities elsewhere.
Naturally, this creates unhappy or disillusioned employees, and might help explain why, according to Forbes, “Employers expect 45% of their newly-hired college grads would remain with the company for under two years.” There are countless other factors involved, of course, but via conversations with young people who had recently made career changes, it became clear that certain unrealistic expectations about the job market remain rampant and widely unchallenged. Even in the afterglow of an offer, applicants must know to ask the right questions, have realistic expectations, and thus steer themselves towards long-term success. For all that, an interview coach can be a boon.
In fact, an interview coach can be a boon in most every aspect of the job search. Coaches come equipped with enormous technical knowledge about interviewing, job markets, employer-employee relationships, and fair-market value. Whether junior applicants want to tap into their expertise, rectify or maximize their own interviewing abilities, or learn what questions we need to ask in interviews, a coach offers a suite of practical, tangible benefits that last far into one’s career.