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Final Assignment Psychological Communication 2: Professional Skills (2021)
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Reflective final assignment about behavior focused interviewing, where I got a 8.3 grade
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Behavior Focused Interviewing: Final assignmentCaroline Barbier (2623538), Group 26
Chapter 1: My goals
The two learning goals that were the most difficult for me in the final report 1 of
Communication Skills 1 were metacommunication and verbal following. From these two, the
verbal following was the skill I was the least at ease with. Therefore, I have chosen this one to
improve during Behavior Focused Interviewing. It is a skill that is relevant as it encourages
the interviewee to keep talking while I will not have to interrupt them or keep questioning
them to get an answer.
I will now explain why this learning goal is relevant to me. At the end of
Communication Skills 1, this skill was the skill that I barely used. This is a problem as it is a
useful skill to make a conversation go smoothly and I was not able to use it in the best way.
My problem is that I tend to become anxious during conversations where I must lead the
conversation. Due to that anxiety, I tend to start overthinking what I said and especially short
sounds or sentences that I used, for example, the ones used for verbal following. When that
happens, I lose all control I had over the conversation and I could make a conversation go less
smoothly than it was before I used such a skill. Even if I cannot change that quickly, I would
already want to be able to use that skill at least twice during an interview. By achieving this
goal, I would have improved that skill, while I would still have to work on it in the future, and
I would have also shown my interviewee that I am interested in what they are saying and that
I also want them to continue talking to me without me asking them more questions than
necessary.
Chapter 2: Myself as a behavior focused interviewer
An online interview has been conducted as an exercise for the Behavior Focused
Interview. I had the role of an HR-manager of the Amsterdam Institute for Research looking
for a candidate for the vacant job as part-time Research Assistant Intern. I, first, put the
candidate at ease so they could give me honest answers, and give as much relevant
information as possible to assess if the two parties were a match for the vacant job. I also gave
the structure of the interview where I clarified that I was going to ask questions about the
motives, the candidate’s education, and their work experiences.
After the introduction, I began with the first questions about motives. I started with a
broader question (“Could you tell me why you are applying for the position of part-time
, Research Assistant?”). From the answers I got, I asked my candidate why they thought they
would fit for the job and to clarify what area of research they were interested in. Then, I
started with the education part where my questions were somewhat more general (such as,
“What is your biggest academic accomplishment that made you proud and why?” or “Can you
provide an example where you had to show leadership during your study and how it went?”).
I did not go a lot into depth as I had all the information I needed. I finally moved to the work
experience part where I used the same strategy as with the motives. I started with the question
“Could you give an example of a team accomplishment during your recent work experience,
what was your role in the team, how did you contribute?”. My candidate told me they were in
New York and the Netherlands a lot for their recent job, so I asked if they had to travel a lot
and from then on, I kept asking more precise questions.
Finally, I gave some time to let my candidate ask me questions. They asked me how many
hours per week they would have to work and if those hours were flexible to which I told them
it was 14 hours a week and indeed flexible. I then explained what the future process was,
which was making the first selection during the week of the interview, and then reply in the
following week whether they had been selected for the second round of selection. I ended the
interview by thanking them for their time and honest answers.
The entire interview can be found on YouTube on the link provided here
(https://youtu.be/ZeA4vnr8kI4).
Chapter 3: Observations
I wanted to improve my verbal following skill during this interview. However, this
skill was quite difficult to use during this type of interview as I had little time to get all the
information I needed. The lack of sufficient time resulted in my inability to use verbal
following. I will thus proceed with an imaginary moment where I could have used this skill.
As I have already stated, I do not have factual observations, but I could have used
verbal following when I was asking questions about their education. I had asked them to give
me an example where they had to show leadership during their study and how that went. As
my candidate first had a career in finance before going back to university, they provided me
an example of when they had to set up an internal department for project managers and
consultants, but also had to structure, recruit, train, and manage them daily. At the end of their
answer, I moved quite abruptly to another topic, whereas I could have used verbal following
to get more information or examples. I could have used a sentence like “a whole department,
you say?” to get the result mentioned earlier.
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