In this episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr. Marianne Trent shares essential tips for thriving in group interviews. Whether you're applying for an assistant psychologist post, preparing for doctorate interviews, or tackling group exercises, this episode will help you stand out while staying authentic.

Key Takeaways:

Collaboration Over Competition: Learn how to showcase teamwork and active listening skills in group settings.

Active Listening Skills: Tips on summarising and building on others’ ideas without overshadowing them.

Managing Nerves: Techniques to stay calm and confident to perform at your best.

Highlight Your Strengths: Showcasing your unique abilities without dominating the conversation.

Preparation is Key: Researching potential tasks and practising clear communication ahead of time.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Introduction - Group interviews and why they matter.
• 01:01 - Why Organisations Use Group Interviews - Understanding their purpose and common formats.
• 03:09 - Active Listening - Key skills to demonstrate collaboration and attentiveness.
• 04:02 - Showing Leadership - How to lead without dominating.
• 05:00 - Authenticity - The importance of being yourself and building genuine connections.
• 06:00 - Avoiding Comparison - Focusing on your contributions and avoiding unnecessary competition.
• 07:02 - Managing Nerves - Tips to remain calm and composed during the process.
• 07:55 - Reflecting on Your Performance - Using feedback and self-reflection to grow from every experience.

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Group interviews can be so tricky. It's easy to either get lost in the crowd or to risk coming across as too pushy. In this episode, I will teach you how to find the perfect balance to leave a lasting impression. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne. Thank you so much for being here. Group interviews have cropped up at all stages of my life and career. The first being when I was being interviewed for a part-time job with boots, the chemist, and I remember at the time thinking, how am I going to stand out? How are they going to get a sense of me? How am I going to form a good enough relationship with the people on the panel to be able to stand out but not be, wow, not be too much? And this has continued. They can crop up in assistant psychologist posts.

They can crop up as part of doctorate interviews. They might well crop up as kind of reflective group exercises. These might just crop up where you least expect them. So having some strategies up your sleeve can be a really good piece of your interview preparation kit. So let's dive in. Let's go through our first of my top tips. So before we get stuck in, let's have a think about why group interviews are used and what the functions of those are. Organisations use these to kind of look at some of the soft skills to look at how candidates operate in teams, to get a sense of what their communication styles are like. And also to think about how problem solving have when you are around. Some common ways that these group interviews will crop up might be role play to kind of think about an assessment or perhaps a tricky or challenging situation that crops up that you might not be expecting.

There might be a group discussion on an ethical dilemma or something that kind of might get people a little bit hot under the collar. Or perhaps it could be a real life practical task that might crop up in the service or in the role that you are applying for, which might be decisions on risk. It might be thinking about who to offer an initial assessment appointment. Two, based on suitability of referrals. And in all of these tasks, it's of course important to have an individual part to play, but it's also worth thinking about what role you might play within that group, whether you'll always need to be the shining star. So let's have a think about some top tips to try and stand out in all of the right ways. Of course, what we know in any interview situation, but also specifically if this is a mental health field interview, is that we are going to need to highlight our skills as an active listener.

That might include summarising, it might include building upon other ideas that you've heard of course, in a way that doesn't just paraphrase exactly what someone said and trying to kind of put it out there as your brand new idea. So you might want to say something like, that's a really great point. Thank you. And I think this might add quite nicely to it. Another really important skill to have is about how to show leadership without dominating a conversation or being oppressive. If you spot that somebody seems to be quieter or struggling to get a word in, it might be an opportunity to say, I wonder what you thought about this. And of course, we want to be offering our clear suggestions without shutting other people down in a way that might be deemed confrontational or rude, or that you're just not tuned into the process.

Our communication always needs to be as clear as possible. Of course, we want to be not too wordy, but not too succinct either. It's that Goldilocks three bears porridge and chairs and beds being just the right size. So we're trying to be concise and confident, but also engaging. If we are using any abbreviations, for example, things like CBT, then it's always good practise to try to use them fully at first before shortening them to the abbreviated form. And similarly, try to avoid using any jargon where possible because people might not always understand exactly what you mean. And it's part of our clear and concise strategy that we want everybody to understand exactly what you're saying first time around. Like I said, we're going to want to be engaging, but we're also going to want to be authentic. We don't want to make it look as if we are playing a role, putting a mask on.

It's supposed to feel like a bit of you, and it's supposed to feel comfortable to be around you. And a way of doing that is to try to think about how can I collaborate best in this setting rather than thinking about how can I win? How can I be the champion? How can I be the ruler in this setting? So thinking about collaboration rather than coming in and stealing the prize can be a really good way to think about this before the interview can be a really good idea to think about your own unique strengths and talents. If you are naturally empathic or really good at analytical thinking or juggling complex ideas, then have those in mind and try to think about opportunities where you can showcase those talents. And one of the biggest top tips is try to avoid the comparisonitis. Try not to think about everybody else in the group interview setting as being your competition.

I think especially for jobs where multiple roles are being offered, it's possible that maybe all of you in that setting, in that interview are going to be or could be offered a role. So try not to think about having to trip people over and get to the finish line before them because actually we are wanting to elevate ourselves, but in a way that is compassionate and that makes us look like a great team player because we are of course. So try to focus on your contribution, how you can contribute rather than necessarily trying to outperform the people that you are in the interview. With any interviews, of course, it's understandable that you might be feeling quite nervous. We need to make sure that we are hitting the sweet spot so that we are getting the best performance possible from ourselves without tipping into our hyper aroused state or dipping down into our hypo aroused state, because neither of those things are going to help us to thrive and to shine.

So in order to manage those nerves, a little bit of preparation might be helpful for whatever job interview you've got, it might be helpful to do a bit of a Google search for that job title and to Google it in combination with common group activity questions or tasks. You might also find it helpful to practise your active listening skills and to try to be as concise as possible. I remember when I was in secondary school, we had to kind of paraphrase kind of chunks of text, and that might be a really nice way of helping you to kind of weed out the great quality stuff that you need to be able to say so that it's not just getting lost in content. If you are feeling nervous, of course, just take a moment, take a breath, and try to reframe that as excitement for how much you want this job so that we can aim to stay within your zone of brilliance.

So yes, group interviews are not about competition. They are about collaboration and helping yourself and everybody else in there to shine. I would love to know your top tips for this. Which one of these has resonated with you best? Please do subscribe. Please do like please do drop a comment. How do you prepare for your interviews? How can you begin to tap into feeling grounded to feeling like you can lift your head high, be yourself and know that that's enough. And of course, like any good interview, regardless of the outcome, it can create a really nice opportunity for reflection and for jotting down in your journal afterwards, which bits felt most comfortable for you, which bits felt like you perhaps needed to work on a little bit more. And whatever the outcome, it's okay to ask the people for feedback about your performance. If you are an aspiring psychologist and you would welcome some support to help you prepare for interviews, either group or individual, please do consider checking out the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can join for just 30 pounds a month with no minimum term. We do really lovely things in there, which covers all sorts of things from CBT interview skills, application skills research, as well as specialist approaches and clinical areas. Please also do check out the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book, the Clinical Psychologist Collective Book, and the Autistic anthology

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