Having woken at some unearthly hour to get ready, I walked into the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Nottingham to see if my cab had arrived. It hadn’t, so I took a seat and asked the only other person there if he was attending an interview with the same company as me. You can always spot other undergraduates going for interviews: young people who look ever so smartly dressed but who undoubtedly feel slightly uneasy wearing their new suit. He confirmed that he was and so we shared the taxi when it arrived.

Meeting people at interviews is reminiscent of Freshers week at university with all the obvious questions being asked over and over again: ‘What uni do you go to? What are you studying? Where are you from originally?’ It brought the memories flooding back of my start at Salford University (where I was studying for a BEng in Video and Audio Engineering). Since that time I had reassessed my career path and decided that an IT based job was for me.

I soon discovered that my new friend had travelled up from an interview in London the night before and was racing off to another part of the country that evening for a further interview on the following day. I had to admire his stamina; I thought I had a lot on my plate with an interview every couple of weeks.

We were the first interviewees to turn up at the Forte Posthouse Hotel (the venue for our selection day) and got to see all the undergraduates arriving one by one until everyone was there. We were all early so we chatted amongst ourselves which certainly broke the ice.

At 9:30 the assessment began with an ice breaking exercise! It wasn’t really required anymore but I guess it was fun, in a kind of masochistic way. This one involved representing your name and interests by drawing pictures on large sheets of paper and then presenting your feeble attempts to the rest of the group. I think we all wished we were doing a fine art degree at that point although it was obvious that none of us were.

Subsequently the serious stuff began. First up, the team exercise. A group of six of us were sat around a table, given a ‘business problem’ and told to come up with a solution and present our ideas to the imaginary chairman. This all had to be done in an hour and a quarter under the close scrutiny of three assessors. It seems that this type of situation is usually a cue for everyone to try and talk as loudly as possible for as long as possible. Fortunately I remembered the advice of my management lecturer who had explained that there were six key communication skills:

• Speaking
• Listening
• Questioning
• Clarifying
• Summarising
• Involving

If you try and dominate a conversation too forcefully you only really demonstrate the first of these. I did my best to indicate all of the skills by, for example, asking another team member what he thought in order to ‘involve’ him after he had hardly said a word throughout the session. Sometimes I was less subtle. I would just say ‘…so to clarify that point…’ to show my super-duper clarifying skills. I got some immensely positive feedback on that session but I couldn’t help thinking that anyone who made an effort to demonstrate the above skills would come across well.

After this, someone who was clearly quite senior in the company made a presentation to us explaining the history and structure of the organisation and where we would fit in. Following this came the buffet lunch at which stage graduates who had recently joined the company were present so that we could ask them what it was like and they could dutifully tell us it was great.

The interview seemed to go smoothly. I was asked what problems faced the IT industry (which seems to be a standard question for every computer related vacancy) and a few formality questions regarding health, start date and my marital status. The rest of the interview seemed just like a casual chat.

We ended with another group exercise of a somewhat more fun nature: we had to build a bridge out of straws. That concluded the day on a high note after which we all shook hands and said our goodbyes.

After several weeks of getting up ridiculously early to check the post a parcel arrived and it was a job offer. It made me realise that you know that you are opening a rejection if it is a letter rather than a package.

In total I attended about twelve interviews for various different jobs and over that time job hunting changed from being a scary prospect to an alluring pastime. When else do you get all expenses paid trips and overnight stays in posh hotels all over the country in exchange for meeting people and answering a few questions?