Helping Students Master Interview Skills

Abstract

This action research paper reports on successful class sessions designed to teach students communication skills required to navigate career level interviews. The work is divided into three sections: the first introduces the literature concerning the need for interview training to assist students seeking jobs; the second details the practical class sessions and gives clear instructions on how to conduct them with special emphasis given to practice of interview questions in a classroom setting; and the third suggests two class sessions on mock interviews, one done in pairs and the other in a group setting. The conclusion states that the sessions have been successful and well-received by the student as shown by their higher quiz grades. The authors offer this course in a private university in Lebanon where English, not the mother tongue for the majority of students, is the language of instruction. The students vary between near-native fluency for those who obtained their high school diploma in an English-system school to an intermediate level of fluency for those who did their schooling in a French-system school. The level of fluency in the language is crucial since it seems to indicate how familiar students are with the culture of the system in general. As professors, our aim is to train the students to master the necessary interview skills to prepare them for the positions they are applying for.