Reflection on Mock Interview and Application

Assignment three of the Leicester Ambassador Award required us to complete a mock application, attend a mock interview and then reflect on this process. I applied for the Trainee Investigator role because from studying criminology I’ve become more interested in crime and have considered this role as a career choice based on my experience with people and knowledge of crime. I had little time to complete the application because I replied late when requesting it, which relates to my careers reflection post that I should apply early when looking for a job to give me plenty of time to consider the role, conduct further research, then draft and redraft my application. I was however quite early for the interview and fully prepared for any questions with plenty of examples. In relation to my course and reflecting on my organization skills, I believe this shows that although I can be indecisive, when I’ve made a decision I become quite organised and prepared to follow through with that decision. 

I made the same mistakes during the interview as I did for my application. I either didn’t give enough detail or rambled on too much and didn’t answer the question. This wasn’t helped by the surprise question that I was not expecting. So although I thought I had plenty of examples, I actually only had a significant number of examples for the type of questions I was expecting. From now on I’ll consider any unexpected questions or any unexpected ways an expected question might be worded differently, depending on the skills the employer requires. I swapped my application with the ambassador who was also applying for that role and also had knowledge of crime from working with victim support.  I learnt from her application to give more concise and specific answers, her application seemed to show more confidence in her facts than mine. The feedback I was given proved this and was similar to the feedback gained for my interview. 

To summarise, I’ve learnt to be more prepared to answer a range of questions, to remember to breathe rather than ramble, to include an official covering letter with my application and I should find more ways of turning negatives into positives by focussing on the skills I developed and not the reasons I quit a job in the past. To build on this I will make a database of all the skills I’ve developed and make sure to reflect on this process when I next apply for a job role. To build on my skills to become a trainee investigator I’m keeping in touch with the ambassador volunteering with victim support. I hope to apply and volunteer myself to put my academic knowledge of criminal behaviour into practice by helping those who have been victims of crime. This should give me more relevant examples of my skills when applying to become an investigator.  

Matthew the Presenter: A Critical Reflection

Last week the enthusiastic ambassadors were tasked with the immense challenge of presenting the following topic, ‘How do my experiences to date relate to my future career plans?’ and this was certainly an immense task for me because I believe everything you experience affects everything else in your life, including your career. And I have a lot of experiences. 

With the challenge accepted and task defined I’ll first let you know how I plan to reflect on this experience. First I’ll cover my preparation for the presentation, the slides themselves, my presentation style and my need to smile more! I’ll then conclude by summarising the good and bad experiences of my presentation. 

To prepare for the presentation I made some notes on word that covered what turned out to be almost the story of my life and so I managed to summarise these notes into brief points for my power point presentation. In reflection I realised that this actually meant that I spent most of the time talking about the things I actually wanted to cut out by summarising the presentation in the first place! In the past years as a student I’ve learnt that cue cards are not for me as I tend to think too fast to bother reading them, the downside to this is that my mind tends to wonder or dwell on a topic for too long. Normally I deal with this by keeping a few specific points at the forefront of my mind and then using a timer, I allow myself 1 minute or more (depending on the time) to cover each specific point.  This presentation ended two minutes over time which shows that In the future in need to practice more before I present. 

My first thought was that blue is a friendly colour and I hoped this would quell any severe criticisms that I expected because I was and always am nervous for a presentation. I received good feedback for adding a personal touch and showing my honesty, but this would have been improved if I’d remembered to introduce myself. The content was wide ranging with an introduction, story and conclusion. This was the plan except that I never finished the last slides and was still two minutes over my time. My main problem with presenting and even when talking about a topic with a friend is that I tend to dwell too much on the details, but this is because I believe that ‘it’s all in the details’ and without details anything can be shown as false. To reflect on this I will take on quality over quantity by presenting all the necessary information in the time allowed and to practice this I’ve now remade the presentation by focussing my skills on project management. 

My style feels generic, though I try authentic made, I present like a grenade, explode with thought but fall flat like a spade. That is how my thoughts feel when I attempt to present and become shocked that I didn’t fail, though not failing isn’t exactly achieving. I’ve always had a problem of talking fast since I was able to talk and beg for sweets from my mum, but since coming to university nerves of presenting have put my voice box in fast forward again. I could see when delivering this presentation that my audience was considering my points, which delighted me because at least they weren’t bored! Then at the same time it made me more nervous because I realised just how much I’d thrown at them to consider when the timer went and I still had two slides to go. In reflection I intend on practising pacing myself when I speak so that everything I say can have more of an impact, I’ll practice this when I work with volunteers and when I’m just talking about work or politics with friends. If I attach pins to my face then I might remember to smile more! And life would be easier for me and my audience. 

To conclude this tour of my presentation failures and personality traits; my content was broad, lacked focus and could of used the STAR technique more, but my honesty can win people over if combined with quality of content. Less animation and more use of the arrow keys would have been less noisy, and while my body language is open and my voice projection effective; my smile needs to catch up and shine.