Are you preparing for a Skype job interview? This lesson is packed full of tips to make your interview a successful one! I share my years of experience working on Skype in order to answer all your questions, and eliminate any doubts you may have about your upcoming interview. I cover everything you need to know — from avoiding technical issues to preparing so that you can give your best performance during the interview.
Find out:
Skype job interview best practices
Who calls whom, and when?
Best camera angle
Advice for sound issues
How to avoid any technical problems
How a Skype interview is different from a face-to-face interview
Best of luck for your Skype job interview! Wishing you success!
Take the quiz on this lesson here: http://www.engvid.com/how-to-do-a-job-interview-on-skype/
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, everyone. I’m Jade. What we’re talking about today is Skype job interviews. So I’m going to give you some tips and advice that I know about… I work on Skype, I’m always on Skype because that’s how I teach on Skype so this is everything I know from my experience of working on Skype. And I can compare how it was at the beginning… All the time when there was like a technical problem and something went wrong, so I can share all that experience with you to make your Skype job interview go more smoothly. Not just the technical aspect, but some other things you need to consider for your Skype job interview.
So let’s start with the basics of having a job interview on Skype. The reason you’re probably having a job interview on Skype in the first place is possibly because you’re being interviewed for a job in a different country. So when it comes to that, there’s something really, really important you need to consider and that’s the time zone. Okay? Because you need to make sure that you’re appoint-… At the time of your appointment, you’re going to be there at the right time because it’s really, really important to get that first impression right by being there when you say that you’re going to be there. So you can easily find out online what time zone somebody is in in a different country.
One thing I want to mention: if you’re dealing with the UK, a lot of people assume that they know what time it is there. „Oh, they use GMT.” Well, we do use GMT which means „Greenwich Mean Time”, but the time… The time will change. In the summer, it goes forward and then we go into British Summer Time. So you need to watch out for that. Sometimes people just presume they know what time it is in the UK and actually get it wrong by one hour, so you need to check that out.
Before your call, here’s some just general good practice for you. Swap your Skype IDs before because if your appointment is at 2:00pm and then you suddenly realize: „Oh, I don’t have the Skype ID. I better email them.” This is all time consuming stuff, it’s a time consuming waste of time. Swap your Skype ID. But if this is your Skype ID, I recommend you get a different one for your Skype job interviews; it’s not going to look very professional.
You will also want to confirm before your appointment whether this is going to be a webcam call. In my experience on Skype, it really depends. I often work with programmers, and software engineers, and animators and these… These generally guys, I’ve never actually had women doing those jobs, although I’m sure they’re out there, I’m just saying I’ve never had a woman who does those jobs. These guys don’t use webcam, they never use webcams. And I’ve asked them: „When you have job interviews, do you use webcams?” And they’re like: „No, we don’t.” So it probably depends on what area you’re hoping to work in. But in some industries, it’s not necessarily expected to use the webcam. But a good idea will be to just confirm that before: will it be a webcam call? Because if it is a webcam call, you’ve got some extra considerations that you need to get right.
So let’s just imagine it is a webcam call. You need to think more about not just your presentation of yourself and how your face and your hair looks, you need to consider what’s behind you. Okay? Because, generally, people will take a Skype call at home. So you need to consider what’s in your background. Is it your bedroom? Do you want them to see your bedroom? Or do you maybe want to go to a different part of the house where the background is more neutral and not so personal? So you definitely don’t want any mess in the background or any like strange objects in the background, or whatever because people notice on Skype.
