The Truth about TEFL Part 3: Selling yourself via Skype

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TEFL job interviews are all about one thing: Skype. Occasionally employers may be in the UK during their recruiting period but for the most part your opportunity to impress them with your

There are a few things it’s important to remember however, if you want to become a Skype interview pro.

personality and suitability for the job will be a virtual one. Many people dread Skype interviews, unsure of how they should behave comparably to face-to-face interviews, but once you’ve gotten a few under your belt they’re an easy and effective way to connect with potential employers with little cost to either party.

1.       It’s still an interview so don’t get lazy. You still need to dress like you would for an interview and take care with your appearance – no top half only, no ‘smart casual’ wear. This is your only chance to make an impression and you don’t want to blow the deal before you even open your mouth.

2.       Do your preparation. When an interview is going to take place in your house, it often feels like the urgency is removed. Do not trust this feeling – you need to isolate a block of time before the interview to read up on the role and refresh yourself on what you wrote in your application. Remember that you won’t have the travel time and the pre-interview coffee shop time that you would with a traditional interview. It’s possible to have notes by your laptop for a Skype interview but you don’t want to be obviously fact checking every few minutes.

3.       Think about your body language. Even over a video link the way you present yourself can say a lot about you to an interviewer so it’s as important to consider your body language in a Skype interview as it is for a face to face meeting. Make sure you centre yourself on the screen and sit a sensible distance from the camera – you don’t want to be overly close but you need to be in range of the microphone. Most importantly make sure you look directly at the camera rather than the picture of the interviewer or of yourself, to maintain good eye contact.

4.       Be aware of the pitfalls of the internet. A lot of places that hire TEFL teachers aren’t renowned for their strong internet connections or good wifi coverage so it is quite likely that there will be a problem with the connection at some point in the interview. Obviously if you have prepared your setup properly this won’t be your problem but there are a couple of things you can do to minimise the damage; firstly, make sure you speak slowly and clearly to ensure you remain audible even if the connection becomes faulty and secondly try and minimise the amount of moving you do – the less work the system has to do to maintain a clear picture the better.

5.       Act natural. Lastly, behave as you normally would in an interview. Try to resist the urge to reference or joke about the nature of the process – it might be novel to you but they do it everyday. Trying to keep yourself in a normal interview mindset will also hopefully stop you being too nervous about the different format and should help you to come across well to the interviewer.

Had a good or bad interview experience on Skype? Let me know below. If you missed the first two parts of my series on TEFL you can find them here.

Interview danger zones: where does it all go wrong?

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So you’re a veteran of the job hunt: you’ve mastered the CV and got your cover letters primed to perfection. Invitations to interview are coming thick and fast but for some reason you’re just not managing to seal the deal. Even when you think it’s gone well things don’t work out and you start to ask yourself where am I going wrong? Feedback from the interviewers is seldom revealing: unsurprisingly they’d have you believe that you were perfect but somebody else was just a bit more perfect – nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news, after all. In reality, few interviews go without a hitch and all we can do is focus on smoothing out as many of the hitches as possible. One of the ways to do this is to identify your interview danger zones.

BEFORE THE INTERVIEW

How do you prepare for an interview? If you are an under-preparer then this could be a potential danger zone. Doing your research is an expected part of the interview process these days – you need to know your stuff not only when it comes to the company and your interviewer but also the field in which they work and current market trends. You don’t have to become an expert overnight but you need to sound confident and familiar with the business if you want to work for them!

During a skype interview once, for which I had done fairly cursory research, the interviewer said “if you read the profile on me…” I was forced to admit that I hadn’t and it was clear that that didn’t go over well.

Alternatively you might be an over-preparer, which can be an equally problematic danger zone. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with doing your research, keep in mind that the information you’re busy memorising is stuff that they already know. You’re not going to impress if you simply recite information about their company – if you have a chance to mention any of it at all. A better technique is to read up on some of the more recent developments in the company or one or two areas you find particularly interesting and think of a way to link it to your personal interests or experience. That way not only is it easier to bring up in the interview, you will come across as much more analytical and prepared than you would do simply reciting facts.

DURING THE INTERVIEW

Although you can never predict the direction an interview will take, there are certain questions that are the bedrock upon which such meetings are built. These are the big questions, the broad questions and for many people (myself included) these are where you fall down. Even though it seems like you can prepare for these questions, when they arrive it’s always an unpleasant shock. A lot of interview preparation guides provide ‘slick, professional’ techniques for dealing with this situation but I find that in such moments I can barely remember what I wrote on my CV let alone what I read in a book three days before. My advice would be to recap the progression of your CV (people assume this is redundant but you’d be surprised how little attention it receives from the interviewer once they’ve made the decision to ask you in) and give clear reasons for your decisions in each situation. If you’re feeling brave you can also give some details about your duties in each post and how it contributed to the skill set you’re presenting to them.

More than once I have had an interviewer recapping my CV to me and have had to correct them because they have gotten the timeline completely wrong, despite my helpful dating alongside each position or have failed to take in how my education and experience overlap. It is up to you to direct them to the information you want them to remember.

If broad questions don’t faze you and you are happy to chatter on about yourself ad nauseam then it may be the more specific questions that trip you up. After all, if the worst comes to the worst you can always say something about yourself but if you don’t know how you would deal with a specific situation or the answer to a technical question then you’re in trouble. The important thing to remember in these situatio

ns is that you need to give some kind of answer – any answer – rather than remaining silent. If you think you have an inkling it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for further clarification which may then help you answer the question but if you genuinely have no idea pull a classic politicians move and deliberately misinterpret the question into one you can answer – then talk at length and hope they’ll move on. It might not fool them but it will show them that you can think on your feet and have a good knowledge of topics relating to the one they’re interested in.

AT THE END OF THE INTERVIEW

The final question in every interview – and I do mean every – is the one that strikes dread into the hearts of many “do you have any questions?” The answer by the way is yes you do if you want to have any chance of getting this job. Think of some questions – preferably intelligent and preferably prepared in advance. I intend to write more about developing good stock interview questions in a later post but for now will just content myself with two pieces of advice – make them relevant or interesting and capable of stimulating discussion but don’t overdo. When they ask “is that everything?” they are not questioning the brevity of your inquiries they are simply making sure you have the time to say everything you want to. Do not get sucked into the black hole of trailing out increasingly weaker questions every time that sentence is uttered. Decide on your questions and stick to them.

Hopefully this will be helpful to anybody heading off to interview this week – let me know in the comments if you have any different danger zones or advice to offer for this situation. You can also check out our general tips for interview success here.

How to Cope With Rejection

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It’s been a difficult couple of weeks- I’ve been balancing finishing my thesis with applying for jobs and going for interviews- all of which have been unsuccessful.

Rejection is not a nice feeling as I’m sure you all know; it makes you feel worthless, it saps your motivation and it makes the future seem hopeless.

However, life goes on past these rejections and if you’re going to make the most of it and not waste your opportunities, then being able to cope with rejection is a skill you are going to have to develop. If you don’t, it will begin to prey on your mind, affecting your attitude at other interviews which will decrease your chances of doing well and create a downwards spiral of rejections that will eventually lead to you losing all hope and doing something stupid like jumping off a bridge/ doing amateur porn/ working at McDonalds/ marrying for money- depending on your inclinations.

I kid (mostly) but the fact remains that dwelling on rejection, much like dwelling on past mistakes, will only build a self-replicating pattern and get you nowhere.

Success means looking forward not backwards: below are the most important things I have learnt about dealing with rejection.

1. Don’t lie to yourself but don’t take things too personally

By Stefano Principato via Flickr

Obviously it isn’t a good idea to make excuses for next getting a job- it makes you feel like you’re lying to yourself and it stops you learning valuable lessons from the mistakes you’re afraid to admit to.

However, quite often rejection is simply a numbers game- sometimes you don’t make the cut for a completely arbitrary reason, and beating yourself up over it or overanalysing your performance won’t make any difference.

For example, I recently went for a job that required references to be submitted in advance; one of my referees was having a really busy week and failed to meet the deadline. What was more likely- that my qualifications and background weren’t good enough or that I was screened out simply for not meeting their requirements?

Similarly, sometimes the employers will have a certain type of person in mind for the job- rightly or wrongly- and if you aren’t what they want then it doesn’t matter how talented, dedicated or fabulous you are, you probably won’t get the job.

So next time you get a rejection be honest with yourself- did you do things wrong? If so, you can work to correct them. If it seems likely that you were just a victim of circumstance though, then just shrug it off- fate is a fickle mistress and the next job could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

2. Remember success can be measured in many ways

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This is a difficult lesson to learn but an important one; our society increasingly values specific academic qualifications and financial security as the most important measures of success. Are they important? Of course! But there are many, many ways to measure success in life that have nothing to do with what university you attended or how much money you’ve made.

Some people consider success to be raising a large, happy family and supporting them to follow their dreams, and some people measure success through the strength and number of their personal relationships:

Remember that quote from the Christmas movie ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’? “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends”. Corny, but true.

Still others consider success to be leaving a legacy of work- art, literature, a disease cure, architecture, research… what’s important is making their mark.

Some people measure their success through the number of lives they touch and change for the better.

The important thing to remember is that they can all be right: success is entirely subjective. If you feel like a failure, make sure you are measuring yourself by your criteria- not your parents’, your friends’ or society’s.

Set your own criteria but be prepared for it to change as you grow: don’t judge thirty year old you harshly by the criteria you set out when you were just graduating, realise that as you adapt to life, so too must your criteria.

By Subharnab via Flickr

3. Statistics are your friend and the world is your oyster

Yes the current job climate sucks and yes we all want a job; one of the advantages of the recession job hunt though is that the stigma attached to not being able to find a job is greatly reduced. People don’t assume that rejections are due to your inadequacies, they simply see you as a victim of the economy or the government: you don’t have a job because there are no jobs to get.

So statistics are your friend- they tell you that you’re not alone: 

2.45 million people are currently unemployed in the UK and 144.000 people were made redundant in the period from March to May alone this year. 

This means that the market has been flooded by experienced individuals looking for work, effectively blocking the attempts of graduates trying to get into more specialised skill based industries such as media and heritage.

Its also important to remember that every time you DON’T get a job a world of infinite opportunities still awaits you- you could do anything. Further, the market being what it is now is as good a time as any to follow your dreams. Competition is tough everywhere so you might as well do battle on a field of your choice.

The important thing is to take advantage of the opportunities that are open to you and to recognise that 2011 is a tough year to be applying for jobs. The odds are against you and the market is against you and more often than not, rejections will reflect the market pressures in play than the person you show yourself to be on your CV.