MD

Before my recent interview training with Patricia, I had only gone through formal interviews once, and that was in order to obtain an entry-level graduate position after university, which was now six/ seven years ago. At that time, I also attended Patricia’s interview prep and some mock interviews, so this time around I already knew it was well worth the investment, so I reached out immediately once I knew I had interviews lined up.

In addition to doing the interview prep, I really wanted to get Patricia’s insights into which of my experiences were best to share in response to the competency-based questions. I wanted to do extra mock interviews to focus on this to ensure I was putting my best experiences forward. I also sought help with how best to structure my career history and how to justify my decisions/ motivations for a career choice going forward. I also had taken a significant career break of approximately one year and was nervous about how best to explain this use of my time to a prospective employer. None of this was a problem for Patricia and she was able to help me explain all of this in a way that sounded very impressive.

The training was necessary to secure the role, in my opinion. I don’t think I would have secured an offer without Patricia’s help. I have previously struggled a lot with interviews.

I have a tendency to downplay my achievements. Patricia has excellent judgment in how to get across your experience in the best light. She really pays attention to each word in your response to a question, she analyses your response and she is able to translate the wording and language of what you are trying to portray into something that sounds so much better than what I had said every time. She is very talented and to observe her doing this process is like an art. I knew Patricia had experience in HR conducting interviews before her consulting, so it was amazing to get that insight.

The supplementary material was helpful. Based on the job description provided, Patricia posed some further questions which might be asked specifically for this role, which was of course very useful. I felt like I had a huge advantage with Patricia’s help in preparation when compared with the candidates I was interviewing against.

During the past year, I did do two interviews without preparing with Patricia and I failed to get through the first round on both. This time around after interviewing with three companies and after Patricia’s help, I reached the third round interview in all and secured my first choice of offer.

I think that thanks to Patricia’s help with preparation, I was prepared for an overwhelming majority of the questions asked. Because I knew I was prepared well, my confidence increased throughout the various stages, and this lead me to be more relaxed.

I am a lot more confident and feel that my interview skills have been developed well. The feedback from all the interviews I did with the companies was very positive.

As well as Patricia’s skills on the technical side, she is also a lovely person and very pleasant to deal with. I can tell that she really cares about her clients. She was incredibly flexible. I had contacted her on short notice in advance of the interviews and she was able to move her schedule around to accommodate me in advance of the interviews and sometimes outside of her normal working hours. She also checked in with me a lot outside of the interviews to wish me well and to see if I had any last-minute questions!

I think what stood out most was Patricia’s attention to detail. I could really tell that Patricia was analysing each word I used and was able to help me with rephrasing what I was saying to get it across in a better light.

In addition, I appreciated her honesty. If something didn’t sound impressive to Patricia, instead of just staying silent or nodding along, she would identify it as being an answer to work on and would help me use another example to better express my competencies. I have a feeling that some people would let it slide or move on but Patricia was a perfectionist and upfront about where my answers were weaker.

Patricia has an excellent style of working. She is very flexible, gentle, relaxed and calm style of working.  She was always punctual. She was happy to direct the training where I wanted. She is a true expert in this field and Patricia would be a huge asset to any candidate interviewing for jobs.

I would encourage people to do more mock interviews following the interview prep as the normal standard.  I think it should be treated as more of a long-term development of skills over a few weeks/ months than a once-off appointment. It was very helpful to do mock interviews in between the real interviews so that I could get Patricia’s insights into questions that had already been asked during the process and get her opinion of how things appeared to be going.