Esade Alumni conference led by Paloma Villafranca, how to approach a job interview

Yesterday we had the opportunity to participate in the conference organized by Esade Alumni Virtual Coffee Drop-in: Job interview, led by Paloma Villafranca.

Before the session, the participants received a series of documents to prepare, in which some volunteers had the opportunity to practicein real time the agility evaluation.  Specifically, 2 participants volunteered, and practiced live how to respond in an interview to critical incident questions, which is usually one of the most complicated parts to address by an interview.

Agilities, taking the Learning Agility model as a reference, are divided into 5 major categories: agility with people, agility to change, agility to results, mental agility, and self-knowledge. Understanding in which situations a person is agile helps us to approximate how they will react to a specific situation.

During the session, aspects such as prior preparation before an interview were also discussed. To summarize, our recommendations were as follows:

1) Know well the profile of the person who is going to interview us

2) Study the company (moment, culture, etc.)

3) Be clear about our technical strengths

4) Review previous experiences and relevant achievements,

5) Make a review of mistakes and learnings obtained from them,

6) Show interest and ask questions beyond the function itself.

The participants, towards the end of the session, had the opportunity to askquestions in a brief Q&A, some of the most relevant being:

1) Examples of difficult interview questions?

2) How to justify professional changes? Are they frowned upon?

3) How headhunters perceive candidate’s work life balance search?

4) What do candidates often fail at in interviews?

Finally, we end the session with a quick analysis of the market situation, with the following conclusions:

– 2022 was a busy year in the labor market, due to an obvious rebound of the economy after the pandemic.

– In 2023, the market looks somewhat more conservative, although there is still movement.

– We are in an environment of strong talent war: aggressive counteroffers and high volume of rejected offers, in addition to a strong competitionbetween companies at the level of benefits (teleworking, conciliation, etc.)