GR-1.6 The HR round, and speaking clearly

Work through these

• Watch the IIT Palakkad lectures on how interviews work and on STAR interview preparation

  What an interview is measuring and the situation, task, action, result shape that turns a true story into an answer. The shape is the whole method; everything after this item applies it.

  NPTEL: Complete guide for campus interviews · Course

• Write your own answer to tell me about yourself, from your actual record, spoken in under ninety seconds

  The one question every interview opens with, and the one most candidates answer with a biography. Ninety seconds forces a choice about what matters, which is the answer they are listening for.

• Prepare six true stories from projects, labs or work, each in STAR shape, covering teamwork, failure, conflict and initiative

  Six stories cover nearly every behavioural question there is, because the questions are variations on four themes. True stories are the point: a borrowed one falls apart on the first follow-up.

• Watch the lecture on tough technical and HR questions, then write your honest line on salary and on relocation

  The questions students dread, and the honest answer to each is short. Writing your line in advance means the dread does not write it for you in the room.

  NPTEL: Complete guide for campus interviews · Course

• Watch lecture 41 of the IIT Kanpur course, on body language for interviews

  How to sit, where to look, what to do with your hands, from the side of the person across the table. The lecture is short and the habits it names take a week of practice to keep.

  NPTEL: Developing Soft Skills and Personality · Course

• Read the interview primer: what to do in the days before, the hour before, and the hour after

  A career office's checklist for the logistics of an interview, from research the night before to the note you send afterwards. Written for a different country and true almost everywhere.

  MIT CAPD: Interview primer · Reference

• Watch How to Speak once, for how to open and how to end

  An hour on giving a talk, of which the opening and the ending transfer directly to a self-introduction and to the last thing you say in an interview. The middle is for later.

  How to Speak (Patrick Winston) · Video

• Record two mock interviews with a friend asking the standard questions, and listen for filler words and for length

  The recording is the teacher here, as it is for the group discussion. Filler words and answers that run long are invisible from the inside and unmistakable on playback.