Which interview awaits me?
They did it! The preselection is successfully passed and the next round is rung.
Depending on the skills and experience of the interviewee - that's what the professional interviewees call themselves - you can get to know different types of job interviews.
Unstructured interview
The interviewee is unprepared and asks questions as they happen to be. Often more is told than asked. Sometimes there are awkward pauses in silence because the interviewee doesn't know what to ask next. This rather unprofessional form of interview can often be found in smaller companies that rarely hire and where management personally conducts the interviews.
Semi-structured interview
The interviewee knows which questions they definitely want to clarify in the conversation. These questions have been prepared and will be incorporated into the otherwise largely unstructured conversation
Structured interview
Nothing is left to chance here. All questions and their order are prepared and sometimes verbatim. The interviewee often uses a prepared questionnaire (“interview guide”) and makes notes on an evaluation form. This interview technique may seem a bit stiff at times, but it is quite professional. The results of structured interviews enable better comparability with a high number of job interviews and different interviewers. And you can assume that when you worked out the interview guide, you carefully thought about what is important for the position.
Multimodal interview
Interview guidelines derived from the job-related requirement profiles are also used with this technique. The interviewee, however, has the freedom to discuss individual characteristics and work them out before returning to the guideline as a “red thread”. Self-reflective questions are often used (“How did you feel?” Etc.) in order to be able to look below the surface. This interview technique belongs to the top class - here you are dealing with full professionals.
And then there are the notorious as well as the feared
stress interviews
In many cases, an interview that was experienced as a stressful interview was actually not one at all, but rather you had to deal with insecure interlocutors who wanted to hide their insecurity behind their formal position of power in the interview.
A pair of real stress interview is usually not stressful over the entire duration of the conversation, but only in very specific, individual moments. Imagine a job interview like a game. The one side is trying to play something, to gloss over the truth and to hide negative facts. The other side tries to recognize the little deceptions and to bring the truth to light. The unexpected moment of stress serves this purpose.
If the applicant succeeds in getting the applicant into an acute stressful situation through an unpleasant question or a targeted provocation (ringing in the ears), the physiological processes that set in prevent the applicant from being able to form clear, well-considered thoughts for several seconds. Immediately after the stressful situation triggered, the question is asked whose truthful answer is actually important for the interviewee and which would not trigger any stress itself. But the applicant's brain is still flooded with stress hormones. In the next few seconds he or she will hardly be able to come up with a plausible disguise of the truth and then to present it credibly.
The interviewee receives the truth and has won! Or?!
From the description of the process you can see the only correct reaction for you as an applicant: Take your time! Bridge the seconds of the stressful moment by not answering the subsequent question immediately. Think calmly for a few seconds before answering slowly and carefully. Ask the person you are speaking to to repeat his or her last (!) Question or summarize the last question slowly and inquiringly: "... I understood you correctly that you want to know about me ...". In this way you can safely get out of the dangerous moments of stress, regain your clear mind and can answer thoughtfully and perhaps even deliberately. The stress trick quickly loses its effect and the interviewee will probably do without their technology, which has meanwhile become useless, in the further conversation.
Regardless of which interview comes your way - don't let yourself be unsettled! There is a reason you were invited, be yourself and you will win!
