‘Skills for Success at Job Interviews – a Guide for the Interviewee and the Interviewer’
View(s):Author: Dorothy Abeywickrama, Consultant in Management and Career Development
Reviewed by Eric J. de Silva (former Secretary, Ministry of Education and UNDP, UNESCO, ESCAP Consultant)
Publisher : Kandy Books. Available for sale at Sarasavi Bookshops, Nugegoda and Kandy. Price: Rs. 450
It was indeed a great pleasure for me to read the recent publication ‘Skills for Success at Job Interviews – a Guide for the Interviewee and the Interviewer’ written by Ms. Dorothy Abeywickrema, one of our foremost experts in counselling and career guidance with a number of publications (some of which are in Sinhala) to her credit. Written with both the interviewee and the interviewer in mind, the publication contains a wealth of material encapsulated into its 108 pages which would help not only the interviewee to prepare for and face a job interview with confidence but also the interviewer and those who do the preparatory work for the interview to get their act together to be able to make the best possible selection/s for the job/s advertised.
Part 1 of the book contains four chapters which cover the entire terrain from preparing the job application to the skills required to face an interview with confidence. These chapters go well beyond the run-of-the mill advice that is commonly available to job applicants, and provide interviewees with very specific and clear guidelines that flow from the pen of someone who has to her credit a M.Sc in Counsellor Education obtained from one of top universities in USA, enhanced by decades of experience working as a personnel manager in a leading private sector firm and thereafter as a Consultant in Management and Career Development for several multinational companies.
The author highlights the fact that, when writing the book, she had in mind not only “first entry job seekers” but also “job seekers covering a wide range of job hunting categories”. It is well-known that not all the applicants are summoned for interview in certain instances where applications are called, and the preliminary selection is made on the basis of the content and quality of the job application. This makes it absolutely necessary to prepare the application “methodically and carefully, paying meticulous attention to all details” to quote her words, and a detailed set of instructions as to how to get about the task is provided. Similarly, a very useful set of instructions is provided in regard to the matters that should receive the attention of the interviewee during the period preceding a job interview which make me echo the words of Bradman Weerakoon, my senior colleague in the Ceylon Civil Service (and later the SLAS), who has said as follows in the foreword he has written to Dorothy’s book: “I could not help thinking how useful this very practical advice would have been in my own amateur attempts at facing interview boards in some distant past”.
The interview itself gets very detailed attention of a type that only an expert who has given her attention to the minutest detail of what should actually happen at a job interview from the point of view of making the best selection/s possible is capable of giving, as against what often happens in practice. It is here that the interviewers’ role becomes important, and the author deals with this aspect with characteristic dexterity in the two chapters contained in Part 11 of her book. The author says in plain and simple language that “poor job selection is invariably the result of poor-quality interviewing conducted without much preparation and has therefore been based on hunches and on instinct rather than by a process of a thorough assessment.” Dorothy has devoted an entire chapter for “Interviewing Skills for the Interviewer” which should be compulsory reading for those entrusted with the task of selecting the best for the jobs advertised.
In Part 111, she goes beyond the confines of job selection and proceeds to deal with interviewing skills that are required for what she calls “other employment settings” and in employee counselling (her field of specialization) which require a totally different set of skills. This section, I have no doubt, will be of considerable use to training institutions in both the public and private sectors.
Having said all that, it must be pointed out that the main focus of Dorothy’s publication (as stated in her introduction) is on the interviewee reflecting her life-long interest in developing young people, and she is in no doubt that even the section dealing with the interviewer would help the interviewee to “understand and appreciate better the perspective from which the interviewer (representing the employer) studies the job application, does the preliminary screening, and thereafter prepares the short-list of those to be summoned for the interview”. The publication is amply supported by diagrams, charts and even a mock interview underlining the author’s attention to detail. I have no hesitation in recommending it as compulsory reading not only by interviewees and interviewers but also by others interested in raising the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the organizations they belong to. It goes without saying that it merits being used as a handbook in training institutions in both the private and public sectors.