Equipped Interview

Unleashing the Power of AI with ChatGPT & Google's Interview Warmup

Joshua Tinkey & Lynda Commale

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Can AI revolutionize your interview prep?

Today we covered how you can use ChatGPT and Google Interview Warmup to build your confidence and help you stand out.

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Join hosts Joshua Tinkey and Lynda Commale on this eye-opening episode of the Equipped Interview Podcast as we uncover the transformative power of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Interview Warmup to boost your interview success. Learn how AI is reshaping the landscape of job preparation, from simulating realistic interview scenarios to refining responses tailored to your industry. Lynda shares a story about AI's unexpected role at a college graduation, proving that its efficiency knows no bounds.

Dive deep with us as we explore how ChatGPT can become your ultimate interview coach. We'll guide you on how to simulate interview questions, customize responses, and even align your skill sets with what hiring managers are looking for. We also touch on the critical issue of high interview anxiety and how mock interviews with ChatGPT can ease your nerves. Discover how this AI can assist in crafting polished resumes and cover letters, giving you a head start in your job applications despite its occasional generic advice.

We also tackle the nuances of behavioral assessments and their increasing importance in the interview process. Using ChatGPT, you can gain insightful feedback on personality traits and values that align with job requirements. We’ll also introduce you to Google's Interview Warmup tool, which provides analytical feedback to enhance self-awareness and improve your verbal habits. Plus, we offer strategies to gracefully navigate the tricky waters of requests for free labor during interviews. With our combined expertise, you're equipped to elevate your interview prep to new heights.

Don’t spend any more time searching through articles, lists, or websites.

Check out Equipped Essentials for your all-in-one, 35-page digital book that offers examples, tips, memory hooks, and easy to follow advice.

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Don’t spend any more time searching through articles, lists, or websites.

Check out Equipped Essentials for your all-in-one, 35-page digital book that offers examples, tips, memory hooks, and easy to follow advice.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone and welcome to the Equipped Interview Podcast. With a combined 30 plus years of being interviewed and interviewing thousands of others, we're here to build your confidence, help you stand out and get your dream job. Your hosts are Joshua Tinkey and Linda Kamali. Let's get you equipped. So, linda, are you real?

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, let's keep going then. So you never know. But you can't really go anywhere without seeing AI pop up. So I thought I'd ask if this was you or some other version of you, linda.

Speaker 2:

But whether you're online.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps it is, perhaps it's not Online social media, the news wherever Everyone's talking about it. But anyway, much of AI is really in its infancy stage, but we want you to stand out in any way you can, so we thought we'd dive into figuring out a way to help you out with this. So today we're going to share our thinking and some of the basics very, very basics. This is just going to skim the surface. There's so much we could talk about here, but we want you to find ways to take advantage of AI and all of its opportunities to help you improve and also speed up your interview prep, and that's what our show is going to be about today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean and honestly, Josh, just in these past few weeks playing around on some of the platforms that are available to us. There's just so much and, like you said, we're really just skimming it, but there's absolutely some resources out there that will help you and support you as a resource to prep, so we're really looking forward to sharing some of this. I wanted to give a shout out to one of our listeners that recently reached out. Her name is Jessica. Jessica is real. I promise she's not AI, but she reached out a few weeks ago, sharing with both Josh and I. She said thank you, thank you, thank you. The podcast is so amazing and has really been helping me prep for a new role. We cannot thank you enough, jessica. We're so thrilled that what we're sharing is helping you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing that. We're helping you.

Speaker 2:

To give everyone an update, jessica has gotten through round one. She feels great. She's preparing for round two. We're super pumped for you, jessica. You've so got this. Keep us posted and continue to keep up the wonderful interview prep. We're so excited for you. And to everyone else out there listening, you know if this podcast is helpful for you, please share it. You know this is. This is all about sharing, josh, and I do this because we just believe that interview prep is so important and we feel that we have so many wonderful tips to be able to share. So we would love for you to share and forward podcasts to your friends or folks that are out there looking for a job, and, if you also want to, we would love for you to give us a rating, and we do love five stars, don't we? Josh?

Speaker 1:

They're my favorite personally, your favorite yeah, All right, Josh.

Speaker 2:

so what's ahead today?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we're going to focus on, obviously, AI, and you know, chat GPT is a big part of that, but we're going to share some of our initial thoughts. Number one Second, today we're going to dive into a couple of specific tools, one of them being chat GPT and another is Google's interview warmup. I learned a few things about that. And then, third, we're going to continue something we started last episode, which is just give you a tip from a recent article that we found that you might be pretty common questions that you might find helpful. So the one today. So stay tuned to the end of the episode, which is going to be how to handle things when your interview interviewer asks you to do work for free as part of the interview process that comes up. I've definitely spoken to a few folks that get asked to do work as part of the interview. How do you handle requests for free labor?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that definitely does come up and I've been hearing it actually more and more, which is very interesting. It's like almost like a trial run Before we dive in. I wanted to share this with you. So over the weekend my daughter graduated from college, so very exciting weekend. But I had made a comment to her afterwards that I was so impressed with the speaker who announced all the names and how everything just felt so consistent. It was going really well. I didn't feel like names were mispronounced and she said Mom, that wasn't a person, that was AI. We had to say our name into a system and it recorded it and an AI system said the names. I was floored. I was floored.

Speaker 2:

It was, I thought it was brilliant, I was floored. I was floored, it was, I thought it was brilliant. And my son reacted that it was a very Terminator type of feeling that you know that that was happening. But I just was really floored and I just thought that was really brilliant, because we all have different types of names and diversity and and it was I just thought it was a really efficient way to do things. There were a couple apparently hiccups I didn't hear them where something repeated and someone had to click a button to kind of get it to go back. But pretty powerful, this AI stuff.

Speaker 1:

That's right. Well, until we can fully replicate you in voice and video replication of you, where you don't even have to go to your own interview, you will have to show up to your own interview and we're going to help with that today and how to get ready. One of the things that is, I think, important before we get into any specific tools to know is using AI, whether it's chat, gpt or anything else. It is a tool, it's something that's available to you. It's at your disposal. It's certainly more advanced than something like Google itself, google search.

Speaker 1:

I know they're working on their own AI tools, but it's not. It's a tool nonetheless. So it doesn't know you and it can't handle the interview for you. So you still need to put in the time. You still need to know yourself, learn what's important to talk about. You need to put in the time by practicing. You need to know how to speed things up, but one of the things it can do is it can help speed things up for you if you know what to ask, and that's an important part of things. It's, lastly, not a substitute for practice Using any type of tool, whether it's online, such as an AI tool or any other kind of research that you do. It doesn't replace practice.

Speaker 2:

No dependency. Yeah, I think about the. You do not want to depend on this. This is a tool in your tool belt that should be supplementing, enhancing, enriching how you're preparing, and there's such wonderful opportunities within ChatGPT and some of the tools that we're going to talk about. But I think about the word dependency. You do not want to depend on this solely, definitely.

Speaker 1:

And actually, linda, I was thinking about like which, as we talk about each topic we think about hey, where does this fall? Or most closely aligned to any of our seven prep steps that we talk about? And I think it really could fall under almost all of them. So there's not any one that I'm going to a target today and focus on, it's just any. Any part of your prep, as you'll see, as we talk through these can you can really speed things up and just get your juices flowing, get the brain moving a little bit, to give you some ideas on how you can more easily prep. So those are my just initial opening thoughts. You still need to put in the work, but there are ways to help speed you up a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yep. So I think about I've been playing around lately on ChatGPT for the past few weeks and, as I've shared, I have two college kids, one recent graduate, and so they've been. I have, you know, two college kids, one recent graduate, and so they've been, you know, starting to play around a little bit and I have to say, josh, I have been blown away by what these tools can do. Some of the things that I've done so far, I've just thrown in just some basic interview questions, the ones that we all struggle with. You know, how do I best prepare for my introductory question? How do I answer the question about my strengths and weaknesses?

Speaker 2:

I have definitely found that, in my experience, the more specific information you can give, the more personalized the information coming back at me has been. But even putting in something as simple as how do I answer my weakness question, what I was so impressed with with the system was it was giving which we really try to do in this podcast a lot, josh, is what are they looking for? When you were thinking about that question and every single interview question that I was putting in through ChatGPT, that was one of the first sentences that came back to. What they're looking for in this question is this, and these are some of the ways that you could answer it. And then it gave examples, and I thought that was so important because, at the end of the day, each question that's being asked, there's a reason. They're looking for a competency, they're looking for a skill. What is it that they're looking for? And then you're using your personalization and your experiences to answer that question.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. Let's jump into chat GPT, yeah, yeah. So there are a couple specific tools we're going to talk about, one of which is the one that pretty much everyone, at least starts with there's there's several out there, but this is the big one that most people will be most familiar with and is probably using. So, chat gpt, um. The way we're going to do this is give you again it's more like a skim the surface situation, but it gives you some ideas of some ways among almost infinite, but some ways you can use the um, the platform, to be able to speed up your interview prep, give you new ideas that you might've not thought of and a few practical tips along the way. So we'll start with chat GTP, then we'll move on to Google's interview prep software.

Speaker 1:

So, number one, one of the we have a list here, but the first one is pretty simple, but you can practice interview questions with it. So you, lenny, already shared some of those examples that you did, but a lot of candidates can use chat GPT to really simulate interview questions and common scenarios, but by asking common interview questions. So you can even you can even put something in, like you said. You give me an example not only of how to answer that. But what are, what are the common questions? Number one and number two, like how do I answer that? And then I think the important part is you can give it parameters. You can say, hey, I'm in this industry, I, I wants to stay away from this phrase, or I want to specifically use this phrase. Build that into my question and you can tweak and tailor it and keep going. Don't just start, don't just accept the first answer that it spits out.

Speaker 2:

Keep tweaking, customize it, continue to add more information.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and you can be as generic as asking something like what are some effective strategies to answer behavior-based interview questions. So that's kind of general, like it might give you some more generic feedback. Or how do I give me two, three examples, three different examples of how I can answer.

Speaker 1:

Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflict with a coworker right, you can be more specific there and ask for three separate examples and then tweak the one that most resonates with you and your life experiences and then use some of the other advice we have around. Make sure that you're tying your skills to that specific question.

Speaker 2:

And you can even you know put in the type of role that you're applying for, the type of industry. Giving the system as much information as possible is really going to help you kind of refine how you think about the answer that it's providing, that ChatGPT is providing, and then marrying it up with your own skill set and experiences.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that you hear us talk about. If you've listened to any episode, you've probably heard this. We talk about making sure you know the top three to five skills that you know or think that the hiring manager is looking for, and what you bring to the table should match at least most of those skills. And so I practiced with this in chat, GPT, and I said, okay, here are the five skills that I want to highlight during my interview. Please use at least one in every answer you give me. You know one to all of these skills that you highlight in your responses that you give me, and so you can build this right into the cake. Right, Give it the skills you want it to tell you and it'll tell them to you and phrase it. And this is just to give you again ideas. You're not going to use this as a verbatim, is my guess. You're not going to memorize these, but it gives you an example of how to start thinking about some of these and maybe ways that you didn't think about before.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we encourage you if you're getting ready for an interview, play around, throw some questions in there and as you prep, I think you'll be really surprised at what a great tool it could be. Josh, I love the second one here with ChatGPT allowing you to do a mock interview session. I have not played around with a mock interview perhaps, but I've done some work around case studies to see how it could help prep you. I think this is powerful where you can engage in a mock interview session with chat GPT and it will ask you questions that you could literally sit there at your you know home desk and and do it a little mock interview. That's crazy.

Speaker 1:

Exactly so there's. It's not the same as interacting with a person and getting real and real feedback and you know sensing behavior or facial recognition, you know things like that. But it's a really good start where and you have to put in the right prompt. It's not going to just do this, but you can put in the prompter. I'm going for this role, I'm going in this industry and you have to tell it to to engage in a mock interview asking me, ask me five questions and provide feedback on my responses and on my performance, and you're going to have to type that in. So, in that way too, it's not not like a standard interview right, where you're verbalizing things back and forth with the interviewer, but it's a really good start. You won't know what question is coming.

Speaker 2:

You're gonna have to think, think through it and type it out. You know where I think, Josh, I would recommend this. As someone that has really high stress levels when it comes to interviews, where they have some anxiety about maybe some public speaking, this would be something that I would probably recommend for someone to do at home by themselves on their own, just to start hearing their voice out loud and kind of building that confidence. Maybe start with one or two questions just to kind of play around with. I think this could be really helpful for some folks that have that deeper anxiety around interviewing.

Speaker 1:

Definitely it's a great start, great starting point and if someone does need additional, if you're out there listening and you need some additional mock interview type help, maybe we can help with that. You can talk to a coworker or a colleague. Doing it in person is the next step, obviously after that, but this is a really, really good start.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Number three resume and cover letter review, Josh. What have we learned about this so far?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I think there's pros and cons with this one. I think it's a good start. So if you're trying to figure out what to put, if you're trying to edit or I guess I'll back up If you're trying to start a resume or to refine it a little bit, this is a good place to a really good place to start, because it's going to give you a lot of somewhat generic in my opinion, somewhat generic advice, tips what to put in a resume, common traps to avoid things like that, which is great. If you already have your resume largely designed and you're just looking for really tailored advice. I don't think it's quite there yet, at least at GPT. I think it does a better job with a cover letter. It does better with writing and kind of more prose than it does the resume itself.

Speaker 1:

I threw my resume in there it was a couple of years old, the resume just to see what it would do and I think two out of the 20 bullet points that it gave advice on were tailored to my actual resume that I pasted in there, where the rest of them were just generic responses that it gives everybody like hey, if you're trying to, um, if you're trying to get tips on how to write a strong resume, that's what it put out is just generic tips. So I think there's pros and cons with this one, but I didn't play with it that long. So I think the more and more specific prompts or direction you give it, I think the more specific advice you're going to get back. It's my guess.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do think, like if you're just getting started and you haven't created a resume, you know building a very foundational resume, but then you're going to have to continue to build it out. You know it may be helpful there as well. But I agree, like anything that I've seen so far hasn't been hasn't greatly wowed me, but I think it's just the beginning. I think it's we're going to probably get there with this. But, like you said, josh, the cover letter, anything writing wise, any type of cover letters or thank you letters, boy, you don't have to give it much information and it really spits out some beautiful paragraphs. I have been really impressed with this piece and I mean we're in a time, you know place, where cover letters are not as common as they used to be.

Speaker 2:

That was something that I always had to do, but they do. They are required or even to summarizing some of your skills. That's something you can do, but cover letters, and especially thank yous, really produce some beautiful writing.

Speaker 1:

All right, the fourth of how many do we have for this Six, Fourth of six, for best ways that you can use ChatGPT For this. You can research the company, Research the organization that you're going for. I mean, you can do that almost anywhere, right? But there's an additional way that you can think through how to best be prepared around what's going on in their organization where you're interviewing whether you work there or not, it's still good to see what is, I guess, common out there, commonly known about the organization you're going for.

Speaker 1:

You can pose certain questions like what are the recent accomplishments of company XYZ? Or provide me insights on the culture at the company or the organization, but really it's really only thing going to be as good as the questions you ask and how public the information is. But it's a good starting point, just like anything else.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like like using chat, gpt as opposed to just your basic google search, this, this may give you a little bit more refinement, um, to which I think is interesting, where you could say like, yeah, what is the? You know the top three accomplishments that this company you know accomplished this year? Or, um, you know who is having an impact in the financial industry? I think that, like, like you said, the specifics too, but this is going to be interesting. I think it's just going to refine it a little more than your basic Google search.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's all about trying to speed things up and that's maybe it'll speed things up by a few minutes, but hey, those are minutes that you have back, so yeah absolutely Number five kind of blends in a little bit where you could start doing a little bit of research on industry, job-specific insights, any type of tips.

Speaker 2:

I think you could, as a candidate, ask for advice on any type of industry trends or challenges or best practices around that particular role. In the last one, just grabbing one or two additional nuggets may really be that make it or break it during that interview, especially as you're creating your questions and your conversation pieces to go back and forth with the person interviewing you.

Speaker 1:

That's exactly where I was going to go next, linda, so prep step seven.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're thinking just like we didn't even prep that, no pun intended. The prep. Step seven is where we want you to stand out in the interview process with conversation starting questions using what we call the show method, which that's an acronym S-H-O-W. So that's just as a reminder if you haven't seen that before. That's the S stands for share, share something that you've read, you've learned, you've watched, you've experienced. H is have an opinion on it, o is opinion get theirs this time. And W is to write things down and pay attention and wonder about and be curious about their answer. So you continue the conversation.

Speaker 1:

So the S is often the hardest part, the share what am I supposed to share in that question? Josh, is what I get, and so this is where you can get that information. This is huge. I really like this option.

Speaker 1:

So if you, as a prompt, put into chat GPT like what are, what are some of the, what are the top three trends in this industry or challenges or biggest piece of news that I should know about in this from this organization or this industry, and how can I be more informed around the trends in this industry, that's a really good starting spot because that's what you want to showcase when your questions at the end of the interview, when they say hey Josh, what questions do you have for us?

Speaker 1:

You want to be wildly prepared to start a conversation and have them see you as a, as a potential colleague or someone that is knowledgeable about the industry. And this is a really good primer for you to figure out where do I get that content, where do I get that knowledge if you don't have it already? Right, and so this can give you so many good options for you to start building out your conversation. Starting question and I love it because I would often refer people to Google or LinkedIn and find some of that. I think this can really speed up that process along the way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I think so too. Good one. And our last one here is behavioral assessments. So some of these platforms, chatgpt included, are offering behavioral assessment tools that can help you analyze some personality traits and values and work styles. This is something I'm a really big fan of, just in general. I love when I learn about a new system or quiz or assessment. You know, often done through universities where you can work individually or with quiz or assessment. You know, often done through universities where you can work individually or with a team to you know better understand who you are and what works well for you. What's so great is that you can actually do some of these right through chat GPT. They just provide so many valuable insights about yourself, how you can articulate. You know kind of who you are from a, from a um, a skilled worker perspective, and and it may very, very much help you during your interview process.

Speaker 1:

Definitely, and one of the things that I regularly say is, when you're trying to talk about your strengths, you can talk about it and you can be very persuasive about it, but there's something to adding a layer of credibility to what, to something beyond yourself telling, telling the interviewer that, oh, you know one of my strengths, if you're going for a leadership role, one of my strengths is is developing other people. Actually, when I took the you know, the strengths finder assessment, one of my top five strengths came back as a developer.

Speaker 1:

And so that's. That's actually a real life example for me. That was one of my top five strengths and consistently, when I took that particular assessment. But I used that a lot in interviews to back up what I was saying, adding some objective third-party assessments into my own. It's not just my opinion that I'm good at X, y or Z. Someone else determined that too. So you can use that for any assessment, anything that you want to back up and add some credibility to what you're saying in an interview. This is a great way to do it, and you can have any one of these AI platforms help you speed that up. I actually don't know I'd have to do some more research as to what are some of the other options that do offer this, but yeah, I'm sure you could just type it right in the chat GPT, I could tell you, or Google it and find out, but that's a way you can use one of these platforms to help speed up your interview prep.

Speaker 2:

Love it. So Google interview warmup. Tell me more.

Speaker 1:

Josh, yeah, so this actually is not apparently not that new, but it is new-ish and so I haven't talked. We haven't talked about this on the podcast at all, but Google has Definitely not getting as much talk as compared to ChatGPT either.

Speaker 1:

No, and I think it's because it's a one trick pony, but it's one that happens to be relevant to our conversation. So I know Google is working. I forget what they named it, but they're working on their own competition at JetGPT. Separate from this. This is unique to whatever what all of you were listening for interview prep, so they call theirs interview warmup. I want to say it's maybe two years old. I'm sure they've improved it, but how they describe it, they self-describe it as a quick way to prepare for your next interview.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, okay, that sounds pretty good, so I did a little research on it. It really helps you practice key questions, get insights about your answers and get more comfortable interviewing. That's also some of their. You know their talk track is what they want to do to help you get ready. So essentially how it works is you can get prompted for common questions. So far sounds a lot like chat GPT, but you can get prompted for common questions like tell me about yourself or tell me about a time you made a mistake. How did you communicate that mistake? And this one is really nice because you can just start talking. You just start talking.

Speaker 1:

The tool records and fully transcribes your answer. So it provides then insights about what you just said. It'll analyze it and spit kind of spit back out to you highlights, and those highlights include job related keywords that you just used. It'll go over, go over your most commonly used words and the main talking points that you covered. So it really does some pretty quick analysis you, because it can transcribe quickly what you just said. So this could be really helpful to see in writing. One use that I thought this could be helpful for is simply to see in writing how often you might use filler words like uh, um or you know. You start seeing that right in front of your face when you have 37 uhs, 29 ums and 16 you knows, in front of you during a one-minute response. You might want to check yourself on that a little bit. So I think it's a really great tool. I actually did not test it yet. I went through a couple of the prompts but I did not test the full recording test.

Speaker 1:

So full disclosure there, but it looks great. I mean Google, it's not brand new, so I think they've probably tweaked it enough that it works pretty well. It's a very simple tool, but it's a great free option. If you don't have access to a person or mock interviews where you want to get a person's insight, this could be a really good way to speed up your interview prep.

Speaker 2:

That's my favorite part of it, Josh, is that the kind of the recording aspect of it, especially for those filler words. I mean that's just something that we see so commonly that the word like. For some reason, folks right out of college like to use the word like. I once had someone who used the word dude after every sentence that he said that was a great one. He would have really benefited from this, but it's so powerful to be able to see it in writing and so, yeah, give us a try. I mean, there's definitely still a downside you don't get the human part of it, but this is one tool in your tool belt. Hopefully you'll be able to get the human side as well, but this offers a really, really good alternative.

Speaker 1:

Linda, I told you not to bring up how many times I said dude.

Speaker 2:

I still hired you right.

Speaker 1:

It does sound like something I would have done, and he said it with such an inflection, like dude. It was great I loved it, it's passionate, it made me giggle almost every time.

Speaker 2:

No, he did not get the role.

Speaker 1:

There you go. See, maybe if he had used Google. And just a reminder, I think we said it earlier, but I'll say it again it's Interview Warm-Up is the full name, google's Interview Warm-Up. If you want to look that, we'll link to it in the show notes too, just so you find it. See, there you go. And I'm going to count one more.

Speaker 1:

Um repeating, you still don't get the human connection, the human insights, the interpretation of some of that, whether they're verbal or visual cues, and the one downside this is an important one too you might not have thought about there are no follow-up questions. Google will ask you a question, it'll display it on the screen and you'll respond, but you don't get any practice getting any follow-ups, any probing, any kind of questions that are a level deeper and that's really common in interviews. It's not a Q&A, it is an interview Interviewers. You know, linda, I mean we both dive deeper into what someone just said. So this is a start, just like anything else. It scratches the surface, but it's a good start, but it doesn't take the place of practicing with a real live person, all right.

Speaker 2:

So that answer our question here for folks that stayed with us till the end.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. So. That covered both chat, GPT and Google interview warmup. Now I just want to briefly touch on if you get asked to do some free work during the interview process. How do you handle that? Like, what do you, what do you want to do?

Speaker 2:

And so I don't want to do it, Josh.

Speaker 1:

That's, that's my gut inclination, right? Uh, what I don't want to do free work, especially time elements, and like what if they take it and use it and just or? It always goes through your head Like are they just interviewing people, me included, just to get free work, and then we're not actually going to hire anybody? So like there you go Now. Now I'm super self-conscious of saying, like I just said, like I said I'm a second ago, I'm going to just edit all of those out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can't believe I did it no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

All right, linda. So here here's some thoughts, and it kind of boils down to one thing If you get asked to do some, what you see as free work and it largely is to provide a sample of something or work on a project and give it your best presentation, things like that I think.

Speaker 1:

I think we. I agree and I I'm guessing you will too, linda with the author of this article where they say if a job interview requests me to complete any sort of free work, the first thing I ask is if the work is paid. If it isn't, the only way I'll do it is if it requires a maximum of one hour of my time.

Speaker 2:

I think that's fair.

Speaker 1:

I think it is. I think it is too. I mean, if you, if you're in any way in your job, requires writing and you're asked to give a writing sample, great, those are already done, you send away your sample. But an hour of new time, I mean you're, you're spending time prepping for the interview. That's free right. You free right. You're spending time prepping for maybe a case study or some other type of work. So it is.

Speaker 1:

It can be valuable to invest time from a time sake into the interview process to try to get a job, but I think it is fair to have a limit on some of this work. I definitely known and worked with a couple of folks who just flat out said, no, I don't, I don't think it's right to do this level of work for an interview, whether it's because they were already in the same industry and it was a competitor or something like that, that's one that I've handled. And then they were fine with that. The interviewer said I get that, I respect that, and they moved them along in the process anyway. So I think it just depends on your situation. But I think it's good to have to go in with a guideline in your head that hey, there's a maximum amount of work I'll do for free.

Speaker 2:

Especially if it's true work we often see with case studies or certain type of interview prep, where it's hypothetical, it's not real. They're wanting to see how you think, how you strategize, how you problem solve. I've spent hours and hours on case studies in round two, round three of roles that I've gone for and have earned wouldn't change a thing. Did I love spending hours on it? No, but it was situational because they want to see how I think and how I get through things. This is different. This is true work that they're potentially going to be using, you know, in some sort of publication piece. And I think that's where you have to really ask yourself, you know, do I really want this role? Do you know, am I adding value? Do I want to take this moment to shine? And and for some an hour may be the max, for others they may be more comfortable with two or three, depending on, you know, if they really really wanted it.

Speaker 2:

I often see in companies where companies will offer, like internal, internal internships, where you're essentially, I mean, you're just, you're still getting a paycheck, but you're doing new work for free because they're test driving you. At the end of the day, this is what's happening here they're getting you to work for free because they're test driving you. They want to see the skillset in action and see if you're going to be a right fit. So you do have to really reflect on you know, do you really want this role? And we've seen through this article that we've read that you know, for some folks, absolutely, they're willing to put in and get the roll up those sleeves, but for others like, nah, I didn't want this as much and I'm not going to spend that time.

Speaker 2:

Great about, like the early days of prepping for an interview with your good old fashioned typewriter and cover letter and resume. And here we are with all of these amazing, you know tools that we have in our tool belt and chat, gpt and and the Google interview prep. I mean it's just pretty amazing and we really hope to all of our listeners that you enjoyed hearing about how you can speed up and improve your interview process with these new tools available to you. But at the end of the day, as we shared, this is a tool in your tool belt. You always have to be true to yourself, enjoy the interview process, be your genuine self, and this is really truly all about your opportunity to grow and your time to shine.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and if you have any questions on this topic or really anything you want us to have a conversation about a topic, about a question you want to ask, us love to help you out here. Send us a question or any comments to questions at equippedinterviewcom. All right, well, that is all for today, but let's keep the conversation going. So go ahead and check out equippedinterviewcom.

Speaker 2:

Tune in next time as we talk all about how to master prep steps two and three. Thanks so much for listening. Remember you've got this.

Speaker 1:

Be intentional, do the work and build your confidence to stand out in your next job interview. Thank you.

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