Mock Interview Improvement Indicators

After completing a mock interview, we provide a number of indicators to help you identify areas of strength and areas of improvement. We explain why those indicators are important and relevant and how you leverage them to improve how you come across in an interview. As you will see below, the indicators should not be interpreted as absolute truths but as tips to focus on for your improvement.

Passive vs Active Voice

We detect the use of passive voice because it tends to be ‘too wordy’ and overly-complicated.

The main reason we advise against its usage is because the active form helps interviewers clearly understand what your contribution was to a specific task. You want to tell the interviewer that you were responsible or accountable for doing something and then tell them what the outcomes were.

Example:

Interviewer: “Can you tell me about a project you worked on that delighted your customer?”

Interviewee: "Project Zen was being commissioned by ACME Corporation. I was appointed as Project Manager. The customer trusted us because we were dependable and consistent.The project was delivered on time by a team of 4. In addition, the customer was delighted because the solution was handed over with high quality documentation and the internal maintenance team trained".

You can see how difficult it is for the interviewer to understand who was responsible for what and what your contribution actually was. If the interviewer is not able to identify your contribution, she might assume there wasn’t any. Using the active voice your contribution is clear and the story easier to follow:

Interviewee: “ACME Corporation commissioned Project Zen. My manager appointed me as ProjectManager. I quickly built trust with all stakeholders being dependable and consistent. I managed a team of 4 and we delivered the project on time. In addition, we delighted the customer because I handed over the solution with high quality documentation and training an internal team dedicated to maintainthe solution.”

Filler Words

Filler words are short words or sounds (i.e.: “eh”, “um”, “ah”, “basically”, “like” …) which are used by speakers to pause or take time while preparing what to say next. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in using them and everybody, to different extents, uses them. The issue comes from their excessive use which usually indicates poor familiarity with the subject you are talking about. Filler words can also convey a tone which is too informal.

If this indicator is red, try to review your preparation notes for the specific question and repeat aloud a few times the concepts you want to express. You will notice that while you gain familiarity with the topic, the use of filler words tends to go down.

Example:

Interviewer :“Can you tell me how the solution you delivered to ACME Corporation works?”

Interviewee: “Ehm, ok so essentially the solution we delivered to ACME allowed them to basically collect and analyse daily employee sentiment on things like work-life balance, engagement and sick leaves, you know what I mean? Um, you see data is stored in the cloud using like, seriously strong safety measures, processed through an automatic er, sentiment analyser and actually shared with the leadership via a report.”

This example makes the interviewee sound too informal and not very confident.

Below is the same answer, cleared of filler words:

Interviewee: “The solution we delivered to ACME allowed them to collect and analyse daily employee sentiment on key job satisfaction metrics such as work-life balance, engagement and sick leave. Data is stored in the cloud using strong encryption, processed through an automatic sentiment analyser and shared with the leadership via a report.”

Vague Terms

Vague terms are colloquial terms used to avoid being forthright. They are usually an attempt to give a clear answer to a question while in reality they make you sound vague and inconclusive. They are words such as “often”, “probably” and “some”. Ambiguous words can raise suspicions about the veracity of your story.They can make it difficult to assess the impact and magnitude of your work and make you sound less sure of yourself. If this indicator is red, it probably means you are overusing such terms and you should try to be more precise and ideally quantify your claims. Be as specific as possible and use strong, active language.

Example:

Interviewer: “Can you tell me the outcome of the solution you delivered to ACME Corporation?”

Interviewee: “The solution we delivered could drastically reduce ACME employee turnover. Initial observations indicate a dramatic improvement in job satisfaction and some would say overall employee happiness. I am pretty sure the company as a whole could benefit a lot from it in terms of reduced hiring and training expenses.”

Now removing the ambiguous words:

Interviewee: “The solution reduced ACME employee turnover by 40%. From the first 6 months of data, we increased the job satisfaction score from 30% to 50%”. The employee happiness score went from 5.5 to 7.2. As a result, ACME Corporation is saving 1.2M $ per year on hiring and training expenses.”

Pace

The pace indicator gives you an insight into how quickly or slowly you speak. A typical conversational rate ranges between 140 and 170 words per minute. You risk sending your interviewer to sleep if your pace is significantly slower! Likewise, your interviewer could have a hard time understanding all you say if you are significantly faster. If your pace is out of range, one of the best ways to adjust it is to rehearse using a metronome App.

Duration

The duration of an answer is often an overlooked but critical aspect of a well performed interview. If you speak for too long you risk losing the interviewer’s attention or becoming draining. If you speak too little, you can give the impression of not having anything to say and that will force the interviewer to ask several follow-up questions in an attempt to get the complete picture. You may then give the impression that you lack energy and proactivity. We suggest keeping answers no shorter than 1 minute and no longer than 2 minutes.

Divisive Words

There are ahandful of common English words which should be avoided in favour of more inclusive ones. The words we check for are: blacklist, whitelist, black days, white days, brown bags, master, slave, open the kimono, cake walk, grandfathering, policeman, serviceman and some of their variations.