For a recruiter, there are three items on the agenda for every interview.

whether you can do the job
if you will do it effectively
if you are likely to work well within their culture

Your agenda should be to demonstrate how your past performance and achievements prove that you have the competence to do the job well. In your preparation for your interview, you ought to have identified the skills and experience sought for the position.

Also, you should have reviewed your career history for evidence of these skills and experiences. Re-read your CV thoroughly, an interviewer will often use your CV to direct or focus the interview. You should be aware of potential trouble spots on your CV (e.g. career gaps or very short periods of time in jobs). These can prompt awkward questions, make sure you have prepared honest and objective answers.

Questions you may be asked

Interview questions are developed to determine whether you possess the skills and personality the organisation is seeking. Your answers should demonstrate this by describing your actions and their outcome. The interviewer could ask a wide variety of questions but, essentially, they will be looking to find out

what motivates you?
why are you looking to leave your current employer?
what are your career goals? Do they match the potential of the role?
what have you achieved? How did you achieve it?
how have you demonstrated success?
how has this success been measured?
have you learnt from past experiences - both good and bad?
are you flexible enough to cope with new situations?
how well developed are your interpersonal skills?
how do you influence people and their decisions?
how do you react under pressure?
how could you add value to the role?
do you have the potential to develop within the role?
what makes you better than other qualified interviewees?

The interviewer should not let you be vague. Be specific and concise in your answers. It is legitimate to ask if there is anything else they would like to know. Avoid the use of the word ‘we’ - they are interviewing you, and want to know what you did which impacted the results.

Competency-based Interviews

Competency-based interviews aim at establishing a candidate’s suitability for a role by a) breaking down the role’s function into a number of key competencies, and b) collecting behavioural evidence of (and analysing) the candidate’s track-record against each of those competencies. As a consequence, it is possible to predict a candidate’s performance in a role (or function) in which they have never previously worked.

‘Perfect’ answers adhere to the following convention - the situation faced; the specific task (or tasks) for which you were responsible; the actions you took in order to realise the objectives; the results achieved and how those results were measured. The mnemonic to use for situation, task, action, results is STAR!

We’re not trying to help you cheat the process, but it would be frustrating not to use your best examples, wouldn’t it? Or worse still, imagine if you couldn’t think (in the heat of the interview situation) of a relevant example to give. Therefore, it’s worth considering which competencies are required to fulfil the role you are applying for, and which situations you will describe to best evidence your ability against each of these competencies. For example, the competencies used to assess project management capability are:

Planning & Estimating Risk Management
Project Organisation Monitoring & Control
Decisiveness Influencing
Information Gathering Leadership
Change Control Implementation
Problem Solving Team Working
Managing Continuous Improvement Communication - Oral, Presentation & Written

Your questions

At some point the interviewer will give you the opportunity to ask questions. You could fail an interview if you do not ask incisive and relevant questions.

This is where you have the chance to show your interest in the role and organisation, as well as demonstrate some of the knowledge that you have gained through your experience and/or preparation for the interview. You could ask:

why are they recruiting for the role?
how is the position currently being dealt with?
what are their priorities and how do they see the role developing?

To help you see the big picture ask questions that are forward thinking

what are the future objectives of the organisation?
how do they see their market developing over the next five years?
what challenges do they expect to face in the near future?
how does the person who fills the job fit in with the big picture and how will they be expected to (and enabled to) make a difference?

These are just some of the things you might like to explore, obviously each job vacancy in each organisation will prompt different questions, the key is in making yours stand out above the usual banal and totally expected questions that candidates ask.

Salary

As a rule of thumb, do not discuss salary at a first interview unless the interviewer brings the subject up first. You do not want to come across as purely money orientated. If you are the right person for the job then salary and package will be discussed fully at a later stage when you have decided that you wish to proceed with the recruitment process.

and finally…

Interviews are meant to be challenging but, with careful preparation, you should enjoy the experience. Remember, you are exploring whether the job and organisation are right for you, as well as vice versa.

Be honest, natural, objective and positive and anticipate tough questioning.