During the practice interview I had with Glen, asking questions suddenly felt more difficult to do than I thought. Since these questions weren’t related to eminent, I just asked questions about his personal life and him as a learner. I didn’t feel too nervous with Glen, although based on the last time I did an interview, I assume that I will be during the real one. To overcome this nervousness, I will try my best to start a comfortable connection by asking personal questions first. I tried my best to make Glen feel comfortable, but right off the bat, I noticed that my tone was not the best. Feeling tired made me sound tired and monotone which made the interview less engaging for Glen. For the real interview, I imagine not being as tired. I think practicing asking myself these questions will allow me to get used to asking in a friendlier tone. One thing that was successful was asking basic greeting questions, such as “how are you?”. This made the situation a little less uncomfortable and sparked up a conversation that I used to lead into my next question. Stretches to work on are my responses and segues. I think being a little underprepared made it harder for me to try and connect responses to questions, and often made the interview feel rushed by my interruptions. I made more interruptions than I thought as I got confused as to whether Glen was done answering or not. I think leaving more time or waiting to respond until it is clear that the question has been fully answered is something I should work on. That way, I won’t make the interviewee feel like they’re being rushed, or cut them off mid-answer. I learned that open-ended questions were not actually the best for interviewing, as rather than receiving a detailed answer, it just made the interviewee confused and not know how to answer. One of the strengths I received from Annie was: “respects interviewee’s opinions and answers”. Even though it was listed as a strength, I think working on making it sound like I’m listening more is something I can improve. I could tell at times that combined with my tone and the way I was responding, it could sound a little condescending. Almost like I was blindly listening. Going into the real interview, I hope to have extra questions prepared and try to predict answers so that the flow of the interview is better. That way, there will hopefully be no awkward pauses and the interviewee will feel comfortable to answer however they would like.
Eminent Practice Interview Reflection