This is a guest post by 2nd year YIB student Ellie, who is studying BSc Management with Human Resources at Royal Holloway and has just secured an HR placement. She shares details of the recruitment process she encountered and offers tips to fellow students.
Hi! My name is Ellie and I have just secured my 3rd year
placement with Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) as HR Talent Intern. In this post I’m
going to offer my tips and advice to help you succeed in finding the right
placement for you.
I applied for several placement opportunities before
securing the one at JDE and all application processes varied slightly. Some
asked for video interviews whereas others asked for a phone call. My first tip
would be DON’T GIVE UP. I faced plenty of rejections before receiving the phone
call from JDE to say I had been offered the job – trust me, the feeling of
being offered that placement made all of the rejections and being disheartened
worth it.
CVs
My advice when it comes to your CV is to definitely book a
CV appointment via the careers@ portal. They have some really great documents
that helped me to make my CV more concise! I took a gap year and gained some
experience in HR and therefore my CV was about 4 pages long! With the help from
Katharine (Placement team) and the Careers team, I managed to pinpoint the most important
aspects of my experience and halved my CV to 2 pages.
Cover Letter
When it comes to cover letters, I found it was great to have
a rough template that I would come back to and edit it with the skills to match
the specific job application I was applying for. It isn’t a great idea to just
send out the same cover letter to all applications as employers are looking for
the relevant skills in your cover letter which should be addressed to THEM (or
Sir/Madam if you don’t have a specific name to address it to). Tailoring your
cover letter to the application will make you stand out from those who may have
sent out a generic letter.
Application Processes
In this section I’m going to talk about my specific process
with JDE. This included a video interview, teams interview, a phone call, teams
meeting, final interview and then a call – I am aware that some processes ask
to go to assessment centres and/or present a presentation on a topic however I
didn’t experience this so can’t offer any advice other than to dress
professionally!!
Video interview
So, after I sent off my application I received an email from
Sanctuary Graduates who are the recruitment agency that JDE uses for
applications to cut hundreds of applications down to the final 4 or 5. This
email was a link to a video interview in which I had to open the link and
answer some questions in my own time.
Top
tips for video interviews would be to research the company first and plan
potential answers, dress professionally, speak clearly, find a quiet, non
distracting environment and don’t sit moving around too often as this can
distract from your answers. The questions would come up on my screen and I had
a set amount of time to think of an answer (I think about 2 minutes), then
another 2-3 minutes to click ‘record’ and film my answer (once you hit record
there's no going back so if you mess up on a word, carry on – don't hesitate
looking for a way to restart because very often there isn't a way!!).
There
were 4-5 questions to answer and this process took about 20-30 minutes before
it was submitted and I awaited further updates.
MS Teams Interview
Next, I was sent an invite to a teams interview with a representative from Sanctuary Graduates. Again, my tips for a teams interview would be the
same as the video interview in as far as dressing professionally, being in a
quiet environment and having a background that isn't distracting (try to find a
blank wall or somewhere in front of a blind/curtains that can be shut). If this
isn't possible, you can use the blur effect on teams that blurs out everything
around you! During the interview, I was asked questions that dug deeper into my
experience. I was also asked some competency questions that require you to
answer is STAR format which is where you explain the:
Situation that
you were in,
the Task you were
doing,
the Action you
took
and the Result.
When answering any questions, it is important to use “I” and
not “we” as the interview is only interested in yourself – if it's a situation
that didn’t have a positive outcome, that is fine as long as you acknowledge
how you learnt from it and do not lay
blame on anyone else.
Phone Call
I won’t go into too much detail here but after the teams
interview, I heard back to say I had been shortlisted and would be getting
an invite to an informal meeting over teams in which I would meet the current
intern (whose job I would be taking over), as well as the other 3 candidates
who were shortlisted.
This meeting was more of an informal chat with a cup of
coffee (JDE are of course a coffee company!!). The current intern went
through a presentation explaining in depth who JDE were, what the job would
entail, and gave us an opportunity to ask any questions ahead of the final
interview.
Final Interview
The all important final interview. I’ve made it this far, to
fall at the last hurdle would have been gut wrenching! The informal meeting was
on Friday and the final interview on Monday, so I spent the ENTIRE weekend
doing some research, preparations, more research and more prep. By Monday, I
felt fairly confident that I had done all I possibly could, and whatever the
outcome I’d be proud of my efforts. The interview was with the current intern and the placement manager (the person I will go to for everything next year!). They both
made the interview process less daunting and pretty enjoyable. It was a formal
interview in as far as again, dressing appropriately, having a plain
background, quiet place etc.. but they made it nice and chatty so there weren’t
any awkward silences. We spoke about the job I would be doing, my HR
experience, and then I was asked both competency and situational questions.
After the interview which lasted an hour, I felt confident with how it all went
and was told that if it was a clear decision, I would hear back tomorrow but if
not I would be made aware of another interview with “The Big Bosses”!!
call me with some news. 20 minutes later he called with the good news to say I
really stood out in the interviews and he would be delighted to have me as the
newest intern for 2023/2024, and just like that I had secured my placement!
To sum up, here’s a list of my top tips and advice:
–
Research the company you are applying for
–
Dress professionally (no hoodies lol, I love a hoodie
but opted for a plain black top and jeans) – even though on a teams meeting
they can’t see your bottom half, I suggest still wearing something smarter than
pj bottoms as it helps you get in professional mode!
–
Plain background or use blurring effect on teams
–
Use headphones/airpods as this limits the amount of
background noise
–
Try not to fidget too much! If you are nervous, it may
be useful to have something off camera you can subtly fidget with but don’t make
it obvious (wobbling or constantly playing with hair etc will be distracting to
your interviewer)
–
Eye contact – obviously don’t spend the entire
interview staring into the interviewers soul, but equally don’t spend it
staring in the complete wrong direction
I hope this helps, feel free to email me or message on
LinkedIn with any questions or extra advice!! www.linkedin.com/in/ellie-graziano-6470a7177
